Online Reading Circle Role Sheet

Question Collector and Process Checker

Name: Wes Williamson
Group Identification: Group B

Book Chapter: Chapter 4

Date: June 15, 2015

(Tess Collins, Lainey Howard, Alan Ledford, Wes Williamson, & Vicki Young)
___________________________________________________________________________________

You will be responsible to collect a list of questions from the Reading Circle session to be
included in the final Reading Circle Portfolio of the group. Your job is to organize the findings of
the reading circle session for that week and compile it into a single report that will be included in
the final portfolio. Your final portfolio should have the following subtopics:
Findings from the Keeper of the Talking Stick (Alan) You must include the discussion
questions that your group engaged in based on the required readings.
Findings from the Passage Master (Tess)- You must include key passages and discussion
questions that your group engaged in based on the required readings. (The Keeper and Passage
Maker role can be combined *** Strongly recommended)
Findings from the Illustrator (Lainey)- You must attach the picture, sketch, cartoon, diagram,
flow chart or stick figure that the group used in the online reading circle session to capture the
meaning of the readings in a creative way.
Findings from Creative Connector (Vicki) You must include the creative connections to other
important ideas and or personal or professional experiences of the members of the group in your
portfolio. . (Combine the Illustrator and the Creative Connector role *** Strongly
recommended).
Findings from the Question Collector and Process Checker (Wes) You are to compile the
findings of the above four roles under the sub headings listed and prepare final report for the
groups final portfolio.

A. Questions from the Keeper of the Talking Stick

1. What are the factors that motivate adults to learn?
2. What are Wlodkowski and Ginsberg Motivational Framework for Culturally Responsive
Teaching?
3. When does Wlodowski say that adults receive the best sense of confidence?
4. How does Wlodowski believe is the best way to create a favorable disposition toward
learning (pg. 116)?
5. Referencing the table 4.1 (pg. 118), give a sample learning activity that reflects the
motivational condition of enhancing meaning.

Discussion / Responses:
Tess - Our text first notes that RESPONISBILITY is center to why adults may be
motivated. This is also one thing that differs us from children's learning.
Responsibility is a social value and adults need to feel competent.

Adults need to be treated as capable and often times are motivated to build on their
experiences such as enhancing their career. As I am sure many of us are doing =)
Prior knowledge and experience are influential in adult motivation. (q. 1)
Follow-up thoughts from Alan: Thanks Tess, I totally agree as adults we learn
better from someone that knows what they are talking about and are able to build
on there own past experiences.
Wes - I think you are right with the mention of responsibility. As adults, we
reach a point we are responsible for ourselves, our own success and failures,
and often we are responsibly for others. We will seek what will promote our
life-style and careers and learning is often connected with this.

Another difference between adult and children's learning is the nature of the direction.
With children, the instruction is often presented in a more authoritarian style. I think all
of us can remember being told to get in line and stay in lines in elementary school, being
told to take out this book or that book and being told facts. Contrary to adults, who learn
more effectively with a collaborative style of instruction, it seems that this would connect
well with the previous discussion on responsibility. (q. 1)
Wlodkowski and Ginsberg have defined four essential conditions that are part of the
framework for culturally responsive teaching. They are establishing inclusion, developing

attitude, enhancing meaning, and engendering competence. It strikes me that these four
conditions intend to promote a sense of value within the learners. This sense of value
promotes an intrinsic sense of self-worth within the learners that promotes confidence to
think, share ideas, engage with others, and truly learn from experiences. In essence, the
value of that person's history, personal culture, and uniqueness are valued to the extent
that his insights and perspectives enrich the learning experience for others. This type of
learning is optimized in a non-punitive environment, in which contributions are
recognized and bring about further contributions. The conditions also center the
education around teaching something that is relevant to the learners, perhaps even
permitting the students to take some direction with the learning activity, which creates an
attitude of 'ownership' over the project. (q. 2)
Follow-up thoughts from Alan: Thomas, I believe you have hit on it, the best
classes have multiple disciplines involved with multiple backgrounds and experiences.
Wlodowski says that adults are most confident when they feel competent. I would
strongly agree with this. There is nothing quite as rewarding as successfully completing a
new task. Conversely, failure can be a destroyer of confidence and thus motivation. Just a
personal anecdote . . . My house is about 75 years old and when we bought, the previous
homeowners had those little 80's style mini blinds in all of the windows. Overtime, they
have become discolored and have that 'old newspaper' yellow dinghy look to them. We
have decided to replace the blinds ourselves - sounds like a good plan! There is not
telling how some part of this house was constructed. We almost couldn't even get started
with the new blinds. There was something about the frame space around the window and
we couldn't even drill the holes for the screws! We both got mad, frustrated and almost
didn't get the blinds installed. Eventually, we did, but we have been very hesitant to
continue with replacing blinds in the house. (q. 3)
Follow-up thoughts from Alan: To often students in general take a failure as a
route to quite, but then you have those that see that failure as a chance to do
better.
He suggests using his motivational framework for culturally responsive teaching. In order
to better actualize this model of instruction, he suggests using a self-directed learning or
situational learning. (q. 4)

B. Findings from the Page Master

Here are some thoughts about important passages and some questions to begin our discussion.
I have included one of the additional resources (the first video). I'll try to post 1-2 things about
the additonal articles as well, but here is a start:

Role: Passage Master

1. Inclusion video and pages 102-104: Impact of inclusion in the classroom.
This video expressed how inclusion is important in the classroom. Without it, a learner may not
feel engaged and thus lose motivation. Diversity and inclusion are intentional behaviors and
feeling connected is important for learners. Knowing our instructors are paying attention to us
helps us pay attention to them. Encouraging acceptance of all learners builds trust, value, and
esteem. Think about what would happen if you feel rejected in a class or work environment.
Not feeling included can be a barrier for learning and success in any field. Inclusion also
increases open discussion-we can all learn something from each other. A learner should feel
safe. How would you define inclusion?
2. p. 98 The neurons in the frontal lobe form rules from learned experiences; this is where we
create large holistic views of what the world is, what we want to do about it, and in what
direction we want to go. How does this affect what we are motivated to learn as adults versus
when we were children/adolescents? (p.99)
3. p. 106 Attitudes constantly influence our behavior and learning. -Relevance and volition are
two of most important criteria for positive attitudes towards leaning in adult learners.
4. How do we understand meaning? What is the meaning of meaning? (p.108-110).
1. Neurological
2. Increased complexity of experience or values/purpose
3. Ordering of information that gives identity and clarity
5. p. 111-112 How can an instructor encourage competence (p.111).
Competence allows a person to feel more confident. (p.112) -ALSO SEE table 4.1- example
6. Are there any examples of real-life motivational conditions you have experienced? Either as
a learner or instructor? (p.118)
7. Here is some additional passages I thought may be helpful for our discussion. Comes from
article- The Are Not Just Big Kids (Thoms) p.2 Andragogy vs. pedagogy
How does the role of the instructor differ? p.5 Learning is not its own reward the why do
adult learners learn? Why may we be in this program?
Discussion / Responses:
Lainey - Here are some thoughts on Questions 3 and 6.
(#3) - The two most important positive attitudes toward learning that constantly influence
our behavior are relevance and volition. Adults want to know why they need to learn
something. If it is not relevant it is a waste of time. If something is a waste of time this
can leads to negative attitudes toward learning due to frustration. Not everything adults
are familiar with is relevant. Personal relevance is when learning is connected to who
they are, what they care about and how they perceive and what they know.

Volition is the curiosity and interest that leads to research. Adults personally endorse their
learning and value their pursued goals.
(#6) - An example of real life motivational conditions occurs when the learner is
motivated to work toward a grade. The learner completes each assignment to reach the
goal of an A in the course. The learner completes all course requirements to reach the
goal of a desired degree.
Wes Responses to questions 1 and 4.
(#1) - It's actually somewhat of a challenge to adequately define inclusion. I would say
that inclusion is really an attitudinal behavior whereby an individual not only accepts but
attributes value to those characteristics of another person, most particularly those that are
different from your own. Those characteristics are part of who that other person is and
includes their unique perspectives, beliefs and experiences.
(#4) - Importance helps to provide meaning to something. If something has no
significance to us then it will fail to have meaning. Often, our emotions can
play a role in the meaning that is garnered from something.

A great example for me. . . I really do not like seafood. Let's just think about salmon.
There are plenty of recipes for cooking salmon and salmon is considered to be an healthy,
lean meat that is rich in unsaturated fats. I do not care how 'good' salmon is for you to eat,
I have no desire to cook it, learn recipes to cook it, or even buy a cookbook with recipes
for cooking it. Styles for its preparation hold not meaning for me, because I will not eat
it.
C. Findings from the Illustrator
The image is
intended to
represent:
Inclusion!

Thoughts on inclusion:
1. What does the illustration mean? This illustration means to me that all the different
colors represent different people. It is import to include all people. All of these
people are facing the same direction and looking up. While they are all different
they are all working toward the same goal in the same group.

2. Where did it come from? It came from INDIE: Irish Network for Digital Inclusion
and Engagement.
3. What does it represent to me? To me this is a reminder that it is important to think
about and be mindful of providing equal chances for all adults to engage in digital
services and learning opportunities.
D. Findings from the Creative Connector
1. When I began reading Tess comments, I immediately thought about my daughter and her
experiences in first grade. Lindsey was born with a cleft palate and had many surgeries to
repair the problem, but had tremendous difficulty speaking and swallowing. Lindsey also
had seizures and had to be monitored very closely to ensure her safety. She felt left out of
the group and often had stomach problems because of the medicine.
Lindsey loved school in kindergarten, so I was very surprised when she told me she hated
school. Lindsey told me that she had choked on her food and had to spit some of it out in
her napkin and the teacher moved her to an unoccupied table and told her that she could
not sit with the other children because she could not keep her food in her mouth. I had
discussed her problems at length with the teacher when school started so I was very upset
to learn about this incident. I scheduled a meeting with the teacher and principal to
resolve the situation, but the damage was already done. Lindsey failed first grade under
this teacher but had wonderful scores under the next first grade teacher she had and
passed the course with As.
I completely agree that feeling included is vital to student success. We all want to feel
validated and that our success or failure is important to our teacher. Any contention in a
learning situation will compete with learning because students get so involved in the
contention that they do not participate or just tune everything out. Lindsey was not an
adult when the incident occurred but she still has self-doubt related to this experience and
she is a junior in college now.
2. I work closely with our faculty who develop online courses to ensure that the course
functions correctly and that instructions and navigation are clear and easy to understand. I
look at the course and then ask our part-time staff to review the course and point out any
problems they see or any instructions that are not clear. Many of our students are first
generation college students and have no idea what to expect when they take courses
online. I think instructors need to be very aware of the fear of failure some students
experience and take steps to help learners know what is expected and how to get help
with assignments. Few of us want to attempt anything if we feel sure we will fail. It is
painful to fail so instructors need to help students understand the rules and how to
succeed in the course.
3.5.
Part of my job is to train faculty to use D2L and other educational technology they
may use in their classes. When I started my job, I had several scheduled classes with
specific agendas of the information I planned to cover. I quickly discovered that
faculty came to training sessions with very specific ideas about what they want to
learn and what they do not want to hear about. Sometimes they felt apprehension
about using specific tools or did not understand how they would use them in their
class. I found out that I had to introduce the tool and include some possible uses for

the tool. If they did not know how the tool would make their job easier or help them
teach their class, they had little or no interest in learning how to use it. I found out
that faculty enjoyed a one-on-one type of training where they could set the pace of the
training and select the material they wanted to learn. I now offer both types of
training but find the personal training sessions are more popular.
6. My motivation to learn usually comes from a need to accomplish a task. I am a
technology coordinator, so I routinely have to solve technical problems for faculty and
students who teach or complete distance education courses. I research problems that I do
not know how to solve, so one of my biggest motivation to learn something is having a
need to use it to do my job.
When I take a class that is required to complete a program or degree, I am motivated to learn
because I want to achieve the goal, but I am more motivated if I know the skill or knowledge
gained will help me, or the subject is interesting to me. The instructors skill does influence my
satisfaction in the class, but it is not the most important motivating factor for me. Having a bad
teacher would make learning more difficult,
Discussion / Responses:
Tess - Thank you for sharing this personal experience.
I think fear of failure can be a huge barrier! If an instructor is not aware of these fears
then it may be difficult to enhance motivation and meet students where they are at in
order for them to be successful.
I have had my share of good and bad instructors, as I am sure we all have. I do know that
I learned more and was motivated to learn more when I felt the instructor cared and
"check in" with our goals.
Wes Wow! What an amazing story! Lindsay was lucky to have a great mom that knew
how to intervene and help her succeed!
It is somewhat interesting that you mention need as being part of motivation. You
mentioned a need to accomplish a task as part of motivation. I'd say that we could almost
make a base comparison and say that we seek out food and eat out of a need to satiate
hunger. At the other end of the spectrum, maybe we could even go so far as to say that we
sometimes seek out learning something new to because we want to satisfy a curiosity or a
need for greater fulfillment. Just because I am curious, one of these days I would love to
take some courses on German.