Peer Review

I reviewed Pod 4’s (Cao, Jiang, Xie and Yang) resource on Spicy Chinese Food Culture.

Your resource is extremely well done! I appreciate how it works to engage learners by involving and developing critical thinking skills while working at their own pace. I broke my review into sections so that it was easy to follow.

Learning Theory: I agree that utilizing the cognitivist and constructivist approaches makes the most sense as it really allows students to dig into the material with a critical thinking lens and opens the path to experiential learning.

Learning Design: ClausBrabrand (2009) included a quote from Ralph W. Tyler in their video, which stated that: “Learning takes place through the active behaviour of the student: it is what he does that he learns, not what the teacher does.” Your open learning design accomplishes this idea nicely in that it helps learners engage with their peers over shared learning and understanding.

Outcomes: Your outcomes are clear and explain what the participants will learn from taking part in this resource. My one question is if there is a way to reword your first learning outcome of “Understand the history of Chinese cuisine, its origins and culinary regionalism”? The only reason I say this is that it can be difficult to measure ‘understanding’ (Shabatura, 2013a) as a learning outcome. I wonder if ‘describe’ could be used here instead, as it is still in the ‘understand’ heading but has a more measurable quality and aligns well with the blog post activities. I found Shabatura’s (2013b) Bloom’s Taxonomy article helpful for writing my learning outcome!

Alignment: Each activity aligns with the outcomes and assessments very well! Three of the four outcomes have a directly linked topic with an adjoined blog post, and the other outcome encompasses the entire resource as gained knowledge throughout.

Inclusion: In terms of the Universal Design for Learning (CAST, 2018), your resource provides multiple means of representation via articles and videos, multiple means of engagement with the material, the self, and other learners, and multiple means of action & expression via the final presentation being an open style. I might suggest opening it even further and perhaps allowing for a video presentation; writing can be difficult for some learners and they may be able to express their knowledge better through another format.

Interaction: Your resource includes a variety of student/student, student/content, and student/self interaction (Madland, 2014); however, I may have missed when/how the instructor explanations take place. Additionally, how do the instructors interact with the learners? Would they provide comments, feedback, or other related resources on blogs? 

Assessment: Having community contributions as formative assessments are a fantastic way to have learners engage with each other! Perhaps you might consider adding a minimum number of comment/feedback posts in your community contributions section? I have found that some learners are less enthusiastic or more nervous about commenting on others’ posts, and having a minimum number ensures that they are participating and engaging with their peers/colleagues. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but the way I read the summative assessment is that learners can choose any topic of interest to them – I wonder if that is including outside of the topics discussed? From what I gather, it seems that the students would take what they have learned and apply their critical thinking skills to another area, but perhaps it is meant to stay within the themes of the resource?

Overall, your resource is excellent! I only had a few questions/feedback that I think would help refine it. I am very impressed with your draft and don’t believe that there is much that requires improvement! Well done to everyone in your group!

References

CAST. (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Retrieved from https://udlguidelines.cast.org/ 

ClausBrabrand. (2009). Teaching Teaching & Understanding Understanding (2/3). [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfloUd3eO_M 

Madland, C. (2014). Structured learner interactions in online distance learning: Exploring the study buddy activity (Master’s Thesis, Athabasca University). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10791/47 

Shabatura, J. (2013). Learning Objectives: Examples and Before & After. Retrieved from https://tips.uark.edu/learning-objectives-before-and-after-examples/

Shabatura, J. (2013). Using Bloom’s Taxonomy to Write Effective Learning Objectives. Retrieved from https://tips.uark.edu/using-blooms-taxonomy/