A Better Place to Be:
Designing a Learning Environment to Support Disadvantaged Students

EDD 631, Section 223367
Educational Research Seminar: Overcoming Adversity
Spring, 2014

Overview

For this assignment, you combine will use what you have learned so far in this and last semester with your own personal experiences in education settings to design a new or revised learning environment, teaching technique, management/motivation strategy, or collaboration to better nurture one or more aspects of the development of at least one population of disadvantaged students. Your re-design should be discrete and replicable—the sort of thing that could be used by a variety of teachers, although it’s fine if it only pertains to certain students (e.g., of a certain age or with particular needs). Your re-design should be be for a single classroom, a grade/cohort of students, or specific group (e.g., extra-curricular activity). Although I would prefer your re-design pertain to an actual place (say, the classroom in which you’re student teaching in), it can be for any realistic environment in which you would likely be working with children and/or adolescents.

Your re-design should refer to s at least one thing we’ve covered in class: one topic, article, intervention strategy, etc. You will, of course, relate this to a real-world or realistic setting. It also must involve different elements than your thesis. It can pertain to the same, general thing, but should at least include significant, new elements (ideas, research, populations, strategies, etc.).

The products of your re-design are two:

1. A roughly 15-minute, in-class presentation explaining your strategy its outcomes,
2. A 1 – 3 page paper (not including references) that gives sufficient details to allow other educators to replicate your re-design.

Presentation Schedule

We will take three class days near the end of class for your presentations. We will determine the order of the presentations a few weeks before we start them. At least the day before your presentation, email me the written product of your re-design. I will post them in BlackBoard under the day you give your presentation.

Assignment Components

Overview

In general, first describe the target environment and students. Next, list your objectives (i.e., the changes you would make). After that, detail the re-design and its outcomes; if you are proposing something that you haven't actually done or seen done, you will give expected outcomes, relating it to the information we cover in class or in the supplemental readings list. Your paper should be 1 – 3 pages long, followed additional pages for references, materials, lesson plans, etc. You will not receive credit for papers handed in after your presentation.

Detailed Contents of Written Product

Specifically, your written product will contain:

1. Title and Names: At the top of the first page, center-align a title followed by your name(s) on a new line.


2. Location: Explain the setting of the re-design, e.g,. a given class, school, etc. Provide whatever details are relevant to your re-design.


3. Population: Describe the population of students targeted with this re-design. Again give sufficient details to place the re-design in context. After this, specify with which groups you believe this re-design could work (e.g., all upper elementary students or children with ADHD) and why you believe it will work for them and not so well for others.


4. Objectives: Enumerate the objective(s) of your re-design. These should be objectively measurable, so note how you are measuring each objective.


5. Summary: Provide a one paragraph summary of your re-design.


6. Detailed Description: Create a 1 – 3 page description of your re-design. Make sure you give enough detail so that the reader could accurately implement the changes you suggest. Consider practical constraints—like time, personnel, and resources—when detailing the re-design. Support each aspect of your re-design with APA-style citations of research, population statistics, etc. Of course, you can rely on what we’ve already covered in class: The point of this assignment is to process what we’ve talked about and share with the class a way to help students that you’ve either seen work or really expect would.


7. References: Provide an APA-styled reference section on a separate page immediately following the detailed description.


8. Optional Material: If you have any additional materials for your re-design (e.g., diagrams of a new classroom, mock flyers to be distributed at community centers, sample management plans, etc.), please give them as appendices at the end of your assignment.

Grading Rubric for Re-Design Assignment

Please consider these criteria by which I’ll grade this assignment when you peer review each other’s assignments in class. Having someone else look at your work before handing it in is a great way to help them do better—and yourself to learn the content and get some more good ideas.

Element	Percent Weight	Criteria
Summary	5	Succinctly, comprehensibly summarizes re-design
The Re-Design Itself	45	Re-design is: Feasible, e.g., Any additional personnel, resources, expenses, uses of people’s time are accounted for Outcomes are likely to be achieved in the given time-frame Etc. Creative Sufficient explanation is given about the various components of the re-design (location, population, method of implementation, resources considerations, etc.)
Justification and Supporting Evidence for Re-Design	25	Support is pertinent to the elements of the re-design Support cogently defends the efficacy of the proposed re-design Evidence and reasons why the re-design may not attain its stated goals are sufficiently considered and addressed E.g., if some researchers find an intervention succeeds while others find it doesn’t, explanation is given why it is believed that it will work here.
References	5	Citations are: Well-chosen given topic At least four in number Properly formatted
Overall Writing Quality	10	Writing is strongly succinct, coherent, and engaging Ideas and clearly communicated Ideas are well-organized within paper (paragraphs build on each other, each paragraph has a topic sentence that is supported by all other sentences, etc.) Assignment: Contains all requisite components Is grammatically correct Is spelled correctly Adheres to APA style
Overall Quality and Sophistication of Thinking	10	Demonstrates a strong understanding of the relevant topics and support Addresses at least two different topics discussed in class Demonstrates sophisticated critical thinking about sources and implementation Demonstrates sound logic and sophisticated thinking about evidence when explaining the re-design

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