Building SDI Journal Posts

Your SDI journal provides documented evidence of your experience, skills and understanding of:

• project management
• communication
• project implementation
• research
  
• In other words the journal provides formal evidence supporting the four criteria for the course.

To achieve your desired final award it can help to structure journal posts so that they include four components:

1. Description
2. Analysis
3. Reflection
4. Connection

1. DESCRIPTION

• What have you been doing?
• How did you do it?
• What resources did you require?
• Who did you need support from?
  

2. ANALYSIS

• What were the results?
• How did it work?
• Which research does this relate to?
• What pattern or trend is emerging?
  

3. REFLECTION

• How do you feel about what has happened?
• Have the results met your expectations?
• What have you learned? What has surprised you?
• What questions have emerged?
• What planning, knowledge, skills, resources... do you need for your next step?

4. CONNECTION

• What connections have you made with people, organisations, theories, ideas...
• Reply to comments others have made on your post (come back later and check).
• Comment on other journals in the SDI class - or journals/blogs/forums related to your project.
  

Don't forget to include pictures, graphics, screenshots, video clips, audio, links to relevant sites to enhance your post. If you don't have any multimedia clipart such as the one in this post can help illustrate a point as well as make your journal more interesting for the reader.

Not all posts will include all these elements but over 2 or 3 posts you should cover most of them.

Heather and I will make comments on you posts to help you - and you can comment on each others posts to do the same :-)

Assessment AS Learning

Student-Directed Inquiry emphasizes assessment AS learning rather than the more traditional assessment OF learning where testing of what you know is often carried out at the end of units, topics or the year...

Essentially assessment AS learning supports student management of their own assessment - incorporating assessment FOR learning and even some assessment OF learning as required. It is about SELF assessment.

This course has FOUR criteria or ‘dimensions’ of learning. For each criterion we are looking for documented evidence of a range of ‘elements’. See presentation.

Learning and research tools can provide ways to capture, edit, organise and share work.

Regular use of these tools can help to improve the efficiency and quality of the documentation process required by the qualifications authority. These same tools also enable students to:

• participate in learning communities
• engage in accountable communication
• manage learning and assessment
• organise, authenticate and reference research

This level of self assessment will be new for many students - and may be challenging for some. Hopefully however it will become a natural part of the learning process and be fairer, more transparent and more useful than traditional assessment methods such as a three hour written exam.