Session 104 - What Activities are Needed? (Patti Shank)

How do songbirds learn their songs?

Objectives for this presentation are to (1) Determine which practice activities are needed and (2) Consider ways to build these activities online.

Focusing on the "How-To's", the presenter used an example of performing a workplace violence threat assessment. The overall goal is to make selecting activities easier and make the activities mroe valuable. Out of the three steps (Uncovering the DOs, Converting the DOs into activities, and Selecting media to support), we mainly focused on the second step.

We looked at the first step briefly - Uncovering the DOs (recall facts, find and make use of information, etc.). Basically, this is task identification. Look at the DO types and assign them to specific DOs. Once you've identified these tasks, or DOs (if you will), you need to identify the practice activities. The overall flow looks like this:

Do Types --> DOs --> Practice Activities --> Media

An example would be as follows:

(5) Complete Needed Steps --> Perform a Threat Assessment --> Threat Assessment Completed and Submitted to HR --> Threat Assessment form, etc.

Another general breakdown of this concept: What do they need to do? What don't they know how to do? What can they do to learn it? What do we need to help them learn?

Overall, this presentation covered assigning appropriate activities to appropriate tasks, all the while making sure these activities are appropriately administered (ex: If the DO is online or computer based, the activity should be, as well). A nice, in-depth look at instructionally appropriate activities for specfic learning tasks.

"The songbird must babble before they can sing" - but the songbird must listen to another bird, not pop radio...