EfS 162 Section 4 2004 Final Project Main Objectives
Kuwait University
ELU_Faculty
of Science
162s4
Spring 2004
Instructor: Buthaina AlOthman
Social
and Practical Objective:
The main social objective of this class project is to train students
to work Collaboratively and Cooperatively in groups and in sub-groups.
It was observed from last Fall 2003, 162s53 that Kuwaiti students lack the skill of working in groups! Therefore, the instructor of this Spring 2004 class 162s04, Buthaina al-Othman, designed a 10-week Writing Wrokshop, focused on one main topic to involve and motivate all students to work together in groups. Each group is going to choose and research an aspect of one main topic, agreed upon by the whole class, and then each group will write and present its part of one final *class research/term paper, by the end of the semester.
The idea of choosing one main topic for this project is to facilitate learning in a collaborative group-work. Based on her Social learning experiences at Webheads' Communities of Practice, the instructor or the facilitator of this class, believes that commom interests and shared knowledge, besides other factors, exist among a community, for a certain period of time, (a university semester), could motivate, support, and encourage hight level of collaboration and cooperation among groups of learners. The Instructor of this 162s4 class will try to implement Vance Stevens's model of an online community of practice for teachers and learners, Webhead in Action, created in Jan. 2002.
Therefore, a portal page for the use of 162s04 students was created, including students and class instructor images and students' work, to create a sense of belonging to a community and to promote academic competition among students.
Pedagogical Objectives:
- Students will learn how to take notes, outline and organize their ideas and thoughts on a topic to write a final academic term paper and then to present in-class or on-line by the end of the semester.
- Students will learn how to look for required information using online resources or visiting a traditional Library.
- Students will learn how to work as a participating member in a community of online learners to share information and build knowledge through the 162s4 Yahoo group, created sepcially for this purpose.
- Students will learn how to organize, save, and publish required information on the Internet, using blogs for easy access to their work whenever and wherever.
- Students will learn that locating, evaluating, and effectively using information on the WWW require critical thinking skill beyond those needed to research traditional library resources.(Learning ways to imporve web searching).
- Students will improve their online rerading skill.
- Students will learn in depth the benefits of outlining and how to use a standard academic outline form for this purpose; (a 5-paragraph essay format).
- Students will learn how to present face-to-face or online, using various visual aids, effectively.