Learning Designer 

Coaches model and support educators to design learning experiences and environments to meet the needs and interests of all students.

Artifact One: Sign Up Sheet for Professional Development on ‘Ed Talks’ 

Indicator

4.4.a, Collaborate with educators to develop authentic, active learning experiences that foster student agency, deepen content mastery and allow students to demonstrate their competency.

Description

This artifact is a copy of the rolling signup sheet for 'Ed Talks' in the Education and Experiences Department o the museum. The purpose of Ed Talks was to give everyone in the building the opportunity to share knowledge, expertise, or curiosity with the entire staff. Sign up for Ed Talks are open to anyone who would like to present any information in any they would like to. The presentations are also open to all staff members. Time is set aside weekly during the morning meeting for one Ed Talk. Topics have ranged from Socratic style “Should we colonize Mars?” to hands-on construction of computer hardware.

This artifact exemplifies the indicator 4.4.a in several different ways. By allowing the Ed Talks to be about any topic they create learning experiences that are authentic, and foster agency within the staff. Because the talks are on any topic and open to everyone, they are an opportunity to enhance content mastery throughout the museum, and for the educators to demonstrate their competency. 

Implementation

As a more veteran member of the Education and Experiences team at the Museum of Science and Curiosity I have pushed to open opportunities for a wider number of staff members to become invested in a Professional Learning Community (PLC). Because it is an informal education site, the museum doesn’t necessarily have any single population or focus to build a PLC upon. Due to this it was decided the purpose of the PLC would be to present open learning and use the opportunity to assess and build teaching techniques. A digital sign up was created with some potential topics, but anyone who was interested was invited to participate and bring their own interest. The staff ranges in education and experience from undergrad students working their first job to retired PhD’s so the amount of niche information has kept the talks popular and engaging. After a talk one or two more senior members of the audience are encouraged to utilize the “Two Glows and a Grow” feedback form described in more detail below.

Impact

The implementation of Ed Talks has been a huge success in the staff. It has helped develop a better sense of community within the museum, and gotten people excited about learning again. More importantly it has been an opportunity for newer staff to gain experience teaching content they are comfortable with while in a controlled environment. This is an opportunity that most new educators don’t really get, and it has been a significant boon to the confidence of many about the idea of getting up in front of a class of children and teaching science experiments. Overall the talks have continued to develop authentic, active learning experiences that allow new educators to better foster student agency, deepen content mastery and allow students to demonstrate their competency in informal educational environments.

Artifact Two: Digitized Professional Feedback Form

Indicator

4.4.b, Help educators use digital tools to create effective assessments that provide timely feedback and support personalized learning.

Description

The form uses the format we call “Two glows and a grow”. Previously it was a simple sheet of paper that anyone was able to fill out when working collaboratively with a peer. The purpose is to create positive, but constructive, feedback. The form has open text sections for narrative feedback, multiple choice selections for data tracking, and automatically sends multiple copies to several people for quality assurance and documentation.

By digitizing this form I exemplified indicator 4.4.b in my ability to support the use of digital assessment tools, promote effective and timely feedback, and help support personalized growth of staff.

Implementation

With the original paper form after the feedback was discussed with your peer, copies were given to the peer, two administrators, and a copy kept for yourself. The administrators wanted to maintain records of all feedback and interactions for general documentation, but also for potential data collection and identification of trends. I offered to digitize this form to reduce paper waste, ease access to records, and streamline the collection and interpretation of data. 

I worked with my administrators to understand what specific data they might want to be identifying, and create a form that automatically graphs responses to the form. 

Impact

Since the implementation of this digitized form, staff members have been able to view their feedback more easily. They have enjoyed the ability to view trends in how others see their teaching style in real time, and being able to self-correct based on feedback.

Administrators have been able to use this data to better understand trends on a larger scale. They have found commonality within departments and between different educators. They have been able to use this to pair educators more effectively to learn in a more effective collaborative fashion.

Reflection

I thoroughly enjoyed the creation of the Ed Talk program supporting indicator 4.4.a. The staff responded very positively to the program as the opportunity to share and teach others something you are interested in is empowering. This empowerment went hand-in-hand with digitizing  of the Two Glows and a Grow feedback form supporting indicator 4.4.b. The utilization of these tools together has helped build a supportive environment for educators at every step of their career. It has helped reinforce a growth mindset within the staff, and pushed many to analyze their ability to create the most productive learning environment possible. 

The coaching standards I have been unable to achieve are the ability to collaborate with educators to design accessible and active digital learning environments that accommodate learner variability (4.4.c) and to model the use of instructional design principles with educators to create effective digital learning environments (4.4.d). The roadblock to these standards has been building a digital environment. Unfortunately, the museum has not engaged in generating distance education experiences. I believe that this is a distinction with little difference as I am comfortable with the coaching and design aspects as well as the distance education and design principles. I have simply not been able to place both together.