2 Storyboard
Savvy Start
Title:
Introduction to Theological Education, INT2501 (overall course)
Citation as a Practice (tentative first module title)
Pretest for basic bibliography skills (e-learning prototype)
Summary:
Students enter our school often from long breaks from formal education and from various disciplines and backgrounds. This prototype is intended to test their (open book) skills and knowledge of constructing bibliographic entries (in Chicago/Turabian). Students who struggle with the pretest will be given additional worked examples and practice, while students who excel will be given the option to skip more instruction and practice. All students will have practice in constructing bibliographic entries from more complex sources (audio and video recordings, social media, unpublished works, etc.) and this module will eventually contrast footnotes with bibliographic entries and build toward introducing bibliographic management software (Zotero, Mendeley, etc.). Without a basic knowledge of what goes into properly formatted entries students generally accept whatever the systems output, with poor results.
Feedback and revision:
I will look for opportunities to make this more interactive. There was a concern that the interactivity was low, so far.
I will make sure that the audio for each page/section can be repeated by the user. The content of the actual examples may initially draw attention and the instructions may need repeating.
Making the entire pretest (especially the examples) UDL and ADA compliant is important. This is a mockup and some images will definitely need to be rethought (to insure readability), closed captioning added, and alt text included.
There was concern from a management perspective that were no media examples. I will consider it but will need to carefully choose an example that is not, itself a form of bibliographic entry. Also, this is just the pretest and other formats will be covered later in the lesson.
From a developer role, there was concern about being “dropped in” here. Why bibliographies, why citations, why do this? Again, this a prototype and not the absolute beginning of the lesson. Conceptual aspects will be addressed at many points in the larger lesson.
A helpful suggestion was made to give an optional free response at the end of the pretest asking: “What do they see as gaps in their knowledge of these practices?”
Crucially (and not unrelated to previous concerns about font size and compliance) is this iPad compatible. We have grant support to provide all students (who want one) an iPad and this needs to work flawlessly on that platform. This will be key in considering platforms to actually build this.
Two hours goes quickly; the instinct to tinker and polish needs to be set aside.
The goal is feedback, not accolades. Revealing blind spots and shortcomings = success. Lean into the iterative nature of instruction and leave things behind that don’t work.
Getting the right people together for the process is the biggest challenge; the process itself can be quickly learned.