Becoming Mindful with WIKI (8 Week Lesson Plan)
King, K. P., & Cox, T. D. (2011). Voice, Empowerment, and Impact in the Classroom. In The professor's guide to taming technology: Leveraging digital media, Web 2.0, and more for learning (pp. 20-21). Charlotte, Car. du N., NC: Information Age Pub.
Title: The Mindfulness Journey Self-care 8 week lesson plan
Target Audience: Ages 18-25
Course Learning Outcome: Understand the tool of mindfulness in coping with stress in everyday life
Course Learning Objectives:
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Develop knowledge of the definition of stress
- Create a personal plan of coping skills
- Cultivate a "toolkit" of resource tools for mindfulness
Introduction: In this course, students will engage in a collaborative journey about stress, coping, and mindfulness. Students will become aware of what they are thinking, feeling, and comprehending as they endure stressful moments. Students will learn about stress coping mechanisms and create self-care plans. This workshop will motivate students to continue getting to know themselves and strengthen their confidence while coping with stress.
This course utilizes cooperative learning, students working in collaborative groups that support individual learning (King & Cox, 2011). We will use the following online writing tools:
- Blog
- Google Drive
- Wiki
Week 1: What is Stress, and why is it important?
Learning Objective: Identify personal stress journey
Assignment 1: Blogging Activities: Ready and create a blog on your personal journey with stress and what you have learned about stress from the assigned readings. Identify what healthy and non- beneficial forms of stress are. Comment on 2 Blog posts each.
Assignment 2: Look up wiki pages, and start to click around on the wiki template made for your practice and familiarize yourself with the fundamentals.
Wikis show great promise for enhancing learning. Within a wiki, learners possessing little or no knowledge of HTML can collaboratively use, create and modify Web content (West & West, 2009)
Week 2: The Effects of Stress
Learning Objective 1: Recall stressful events
Learning Objective 2: Recognize personal stress triggers
Assignment 1: Blogging Activities: Reflect on the side effects of emotional, mental, and physical signs of stress. What are our emotional, psychological, and physical triggers regarding pressure? Comment on two blogs each.
Assignment 2: Group Activities: You will create a shared PowerPoint on google drive. You will be broken into three groups and make a list of emotional, mental, and physical stress symptoms, and how are women and men affected differently?
- Group 1- Symptoms of Emotional stress
- Group 2- Symptoms of Mental stress
- Group 3- Symptoms of Physical Stress
Google Docs includes a mighty page editor compared to many other wikis. Google Docs also allows to create pages offline using Microsoft Office products, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and then to upload the documents directly into the wiki (West&West, 2009)
Week 3: How to Cope with Stress and to build a supportive community?
Learning Objective 1: Describe past stress coping mechanisms
Learning Objective 2: List potential members for a personal support community
Assignment 1: Blog Activities: What is a support community, and how can that help with stress?
Assignment 2: Navigate practice with the wiki group page. Please test it out and create a list of coping habits with identified stressors.
Week 4: Introduce the concept of mindfulness
Learning Objective 1: Differentiate between mindfulness and meditation
Learning Objective 2: Practice mindfulness or meditation
Assignment 1: Discuss your experiences of practicing mindfulness and meditation and write a personal blog reflecting your experiences. Comment on two other blogs.
Assignment 2: Collaborate with an assigned group to create a chart comparing mindfulness
and meditation and upload it to the wiki page.
Week 5: Creating a self-care plan
Learning Objective 1: Design a mindfulness self-care plan
Assignment 1: Create a draft centered around healthy habits regarding stress posted to your group's wiki. Each assigned group will incorporate identified emotional, mental, and physical stressors.
Week 6: Continue collaborative self- care plan
Learning Objective 1: Organize additional elements of a mindfulness self-care plan.
Assignment 1: Add effective coping strategies learned to the mindfulness self-care plan and upload it to the wiki.
Week 7: Collaborate and Learn
Learning Objective: Organize additional elements of a mindfulness self-care plan.
Assignment 1: Critique two other groups' wikis and defend or support your group's wiki.
Assignment 2: Turn in the final wiki.
Week 8:
Learning Objective: Reflect on objectives learned through course.
Assignments 1: Present group self-care plan.
Assignment 2: Create a final blog, including your understanding of stress, coping skills, and mindfulness.
References
King, K. P., & Cox, T. D. (2011). Voice, Empowerment, and Impact in the Classroom. In The professor's guide to taming technology: Leveraging digital media, Web 2.0, and more for learning (pp. 20-21). Charlotte, Car. du N., NC: Information Age Pub.
West, J. A., & West, M. L. (2009). Getting Ready to Wiki. In Using wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write web (pp. 1-19). San Francisco, CA, CA: Jossey-Bass.
As I've been reading through the different lesson plans created for this weeks assignment, I have been so amazed with the creative use of wikis. Your lesson illustrates yet another powerful example.
ReplyDeleteI think this would also be a perfect opportunity for sharing experiences. As Knowles (1984) indicated, adult learners are rich with experience, and that experience should be utilized in the learning process. I see that in week 2, the second objective is to "Recall personal stress triggers." I think that type of sharing can be very beneficial, but some people may be reluctant to share that type of personal information. How do you overcome resistance to this? Or, how do you create an environment of trust with people who may not know each other?
Knowles, M. S. (1984). Andragogy in action. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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DeleteHi John,
DeleteThank you for your notes and questions. As an instructor, it is essential to quickly build rapport in my classroom, especially when dealing with personal emotions or experiences. In this particular exercise, my target audience is 18-25; millennials are not afraid to ask questions, engage others, and seek answers. (West & West, 2009) I use a personal touch to warm my audience up; usually, I start with an icebreaker where every student must share or engage with the group. That usually helps my students get to know their peers and myself. I also am aware of my tone, personal examples, and relatability when conducting this session.
Fear and mistrust are natural reactions to the unknown and the unfamiliar (West & West, 2009), its not an expectation that students share personal stories. Still, my mission is to encourage reflection, understanding, and challenge students to create a stress success plan to achieve healthy habits.
West, J. A., & West, M. L. (2009). Getting Ready to Wiki. In Using wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write web (pp. 1-19). San Francisco, CA, CA: Jossey-Bass.
I enjoyed reading through your unique lesson plan. It is easy to follow and I like how you started with an opportunity to practice with a wiki. I can also appreciate how your assignments gave students the opportunity to build up their wiki throughout the eight weeks, with the final portion being the self care plan.
ReplyDeleteOf course, it is essential to determine how students will graded for their contributions to a wiki. West and West (2009), mention several important things to consider regarding assessment: what will be assessed, who will be assessed, and who will participate in the assessment (West & West, 2009.) Would you, the instructor, plan to be the sole assessor or would you also consider incorporating self-assessment and team assessments?
West, J. and West, M. (2009). Using Wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write Web. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Hi Shana,
DeleteThank you for your notes, especially regarding the wiki build up. Also great assessment question. In this exercise, I will be incorporating self-assessment and team assessments.
It is essential to have a balance of assessment measures that can provide feedback to both the individual and the team. (West & West) Palloff and Pratt suggest that collaborative activities such as wiki projects are best assessed through collaboration. In this exercise, students will self assess their blogs and weekly blog and wiki contributions through questionnaires. Team assessments will be formulated through a rubric. There will be an overall assessment from my lens as the instructor due to the topic's sensitivity.
I appreciated your questions, Shana; it helped me think more in-depth about learning outcomes for the students and not just interactivity.
West, J. A., & West, M. L. (2009). Getting Ready to Wiki. In Using wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write web. San Francisco, CA, CA: Jossey-Bass.
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ReplyDelete"This assignment was my first time creating a lesson plan that was over two hours, and the challenge itself incorporated critical thinking skills beyond the task of integrating a wiki into the curriculum. "
ReplyDeleteLearning design is time consuming but everything is paid off when you see learners' aha! moments. To piggyback on Shana's question, is there a way you can think of that not only helps assess student learning but also gets students more engaged in learning process?
Oh, by the way, the two lesson plans below might be of interest to you. One is about photography. The other is about virtual self-care:
https://amberalbano.blogspot.com/2020/09/wikis-for-collaborative-learning.html
https://creatingpathswalkingpaths.blogspot.com/p/virtual-office-wiki-lesson.html
Kang
Hi Dr. Kang,
DeleteI appreciate the lesson plans on photography and self-care, in this exercise I was struggling between the two topics.
Thank you for your comments. I have definitely has some aha moments in this course. Shana's questions helped me think about students learning outcomes. Reflecting on student engagement with the learning process, I think immediately think about my audience ranging from ages 18-25. Millennials learners prefer to learn by doing and are impatient with passive activity (West & West, 2009). One of the reasons why students are utilizing wikis from week one through week eight so they can explore new tools, especially alongside peers. This wiki was designed for critical thinking, promoting critical evaluation, judgment, and choice based on research and reasoned argument (West & West, 2009).
Students will also engage in blogging, co-creating a PowerPoint wiki, and critiquing other groups wiki during these eight weeks. My hope with these assignments is to collaborate, utilize research, and critical thinking skills to assist in there overall learning.
West, J. A., & West, M. L. (2009). Getting Ready to Wiki. In Using wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write web (pp. 1-19). San Francisco, CA, CA: Jossey-Bass.
CattEye,
ReplyDeleteGreat wiki course idea! I would go. I say this jokingly but I don't meet the age limit on the class. I think there are many older and middle-aged groups of adults out there who have a harder time with mindfulness and self-awareness in the workforce. This comes as a shock since mindfulness has been cultivated over the past 25 centuries (Shapiro, S. & Weisbaum, E. , 2020). I think these skills are widely unknown and underutilized; as well the workplace stress, anxiety, panic and insomnia in high operational tempos of the military; its needed. There is a stigma attached to getting help and needing a mechanism to cope and get through the stress. What was the reason behind your targeted age range?
References:
Shapiro, S. & Weisbaum, E. (2020). History of Mindfulness and Psychology Retrieved from: https://oxfordre.com/psychology/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.001.0001/acrefore-9780190236557-e-678
CattEye,
ReplyDeleteI have to admit your blog really resonated with me. Since the beginning of COVID-19, I've incorporated a mindfulness practice into my daily routine. In my practice, I use a mindfulness app that provides very similar training, reinforcement, and journaling features that you described in your lessons. I really like how you scaffolded the lessons creating a good foundation for the students build upon. I often wonder about the security and confidentiality of these very intimate types of activities especially in a higher education context. How might you navigate informed consent and confidentiality of students using blog activities in this context?