This cluster of questions is going to focus more narrowly on trouble-shooting learning environments and making good choices about specific learning designs. These questions may be particularly hard in the early weeks of the course, so if you’re one of the first groups working with them, don’t despair! You’ll continue to learn from your colleagues in other groups as they process them, too.

1. Start by using Jane Vella’s list of principles for learning. Go down that list and see which, if any, of these principles were at work in the focus situation. In some of the pieces we’re engaging, there is not a very explicit learning setting, so you’ll have to be creative as you think about how if at all the principles might be active.
2. Next do one of the following: either take the Bloom list of verbs, and the MI list of verbs, and see which if any of those verbs can be found in the focal situation. An easy way to do this is simply print off the lists and highlight with a marker any words you can find in the situation. Or, take the Wiggins and McTighe rubric and see if you can place the situation on that spectrum somewhere, in each of the elements of understanding. This might prove to be especially difficult with some of the focus situations, so give yourself some room to be creative. At a minimum this is an opportunity for your small group to engage the rubric a bit.
3. Ok. Now that you’ve done some “diagnosis” – or at least thought about what is going on in the focus situation from a variety of perspectives, what can you conclude about the learning challenges found in the situation? In what ways can the social science/education theories help you to think through ways to engage that situation more effectively? (or, if the situation is a great example of learning, then in what ways do these theories help to explain why it is so effective?)
4. Conclude your work by posting a summary to the course blog.