Entry 12: Reflecting on Student Learning Outcomes

Keeping a blog this semester has helped me in many ways become more flexible in my thinking and my writing process. I have enjoyed sitting down to write with only a vague idea in my head of what I wanted to say, and then my thoughts and words interacting to create whole new thoughts. This blog allowed that to happen.

Our class syllabus points out the 6 student learning outcomes for this course, and I believe this blog as helped me meet all of them. The first outcome deals with knowledge of the genres. This blog allowed me to better meet that outcome because of the space it allowed for reflection on the genres we have read about in Tompkins (2012) and discussed and presented in class. It also provided me with a digital format to write, which further enhanced my learning of formats and how we adapt and use our writing in different ways.

The second outcome deals with audience and purpose and author's craft. Again, having the space to reflect on these ideas was great, but because the blog is public, it helped me realize how important audience is when writing. Each week's entry was usually up to us, even when we had a prompt, it was guiding us, not inhibiting us, so I feel that I alos was able to see first hand how when we have purpose we are more at to write something we believe.

Going along with the third outcome, in this blog I was able to test out certain theories and beliefs concerning reading and writing. At the beginning of the course I was much more set in my ways, but throughout the course, reading the texts and participating in lectures, I was able to develop much more flexibility in my thinking and openness for digital formats.

I remember on the first day of this class, as we sat in room 38 (I think) brainstorming the writing process, and then the reading process and seeing all the similarities. Outcome four deals with this relationship. The only thing I can really say about how this blog has helped me meet this outcome is when I write, much like when I read, I participate in the same patterns, I move in spurts, and then pause to clarify and repair, and then move on.

The fifth outcome deals with metacognition and its role in writing proficiency and reading comprehension. This blog has helped me meet that outcome by thinking through my writing, thinking about my writing, and allowing my current thinking to shape my writing and new thoughts. Much like I discuss in reference to outcome four and in the introduction, metacognition plays a large role in my writing and my understanding while reading. I am constantly thinking about my thoughts and why i feel or believe a certain way, and this blog aloows for this because it is so immediate, we can think through our writing.

I do not feel I really addressed the issues presented in outcome six in my blog. That is not say I did not develop in ways that allows me to meet this outcome, just not in my blog. It did allow me to assess my own learning I suppose, and therefore I could use it as a self-assessment. Also, it could be used by you Dr. Jones to assess our learning from the course. it did allow me the space to experiment with the topics and themes in the texts we read and therefore we could be evaluated on how we used certain strategies while reading to extract information and write about it.

Overall, this blog has allowed my thinking to grow in ways that could not have happened without it. It gave me a space and freedom to write and think simultaneously. I would love to keep this blog going, if I do i would probably continue with the same types of topics, and also use it to work though dilemmas in my own teaching nad classroom.