ED268 Power, Leadership, & Education

Educational Technology Leadership Program   The George Washington University

Syllabus

This course will address the following issues: the nature of power, leadership, and education; the relationship of power, leadership, and education leadership models and styles and related issues including:

• developing strategies for leadership
• building a learning organization
• research perspectives on leadership
• organizational transformation
• re-conceptualizing teaching and learning

The course is conducted at a distance by means of weekly assignments and activities, along with interaction on the internet. Convenient access to a computer equipped with a modem and telecommunications software is necessary to take this course as well as an internet account (including web access).

Six weeks of web based study with on-line activities and asynchronous interaction via the world wide web.

This course assumes a basic understanding of how to operate a personal computer and use applications software (e.g., word processing, spreadsheets, databases, telecommunications), as well as use of the internet/web.

Participation in online discussions is expected of all students registered in this class. Regular reading and posting of e-mail, and contributions to discussions groups is mandatory. Non-participation may reduce your final grade average up to one-third of the total grade.  Each student must post at least FOUR messages each week (four messages each lesson).  One message in response to the weekly discussion questions must be posted early in the lesson (W-Sa) and a message responding to the comments of peers must be posted later in the lesson (Su-T).  Failure to post these messages each week may result in a grade reduction.  Students are required to participate in online discussions regularly throughout each week of the semester.  The table below is shown to help you understand when to post the messages. However, the requirements of this course are not satisfied by simply posting four messages a week; the quality of participation and interactive engagement are necessary requirements to learning in the environment of this class. 

Here are some guidelines to assist participants to accomplish regular postings to online discussions.  

1. You should complete the activities throughout the workweek and avoid leaving them until the last day.

2. Your posting should be thorough and thoughtful.  Just posting an "I agree/disagree with your comment" or an "I think the same" to someone else's thoughts is not considered an adequate response.

3. It should be evident from the postings that participants are reading one another's comments.  That is, the participants should make references to each others points of view.

4. Four comments per week are considered marginal, four or more are expected.  Of course, posting more frequently is certainly welcome.

Students are required to form a team.  Each team is composed of three members.  However, when one or two students are left without a team, they may be assigned to a group to form a team with 4 members.  It is recommended that students select teammates who have similar professional interests.  Reading the self-introductions will help you to become familiar with your classmates and their interests.  Teams will collaborate throughout the entire  semester; therefore, building good relationships with teammates is highly encouraged.  Here is a tip for you, reading your classmates' bios will help you to determine who can  be your ideal teammates.  Therefore, you must be thorough in your bio and be open about yourself. 

Team activities include:

• Moderating at least one online discussion for one lesson.  Moderating more than one lesson is encouraged if the chance is available.
• Conduct a team project (Assignment 6).
• Support each other in various learning experiences.
• These guidelines to building good team relationships have been identified by researchers and the experiences of previous students.

Each team must moderate one, or more, online discussion of a lesson.  Moderation duties include: (a). posting of one or two discussion questions on the discussion board, (b). moderating/facilitating the discussion, ensuring that the focus of the discussion is maintained, (c). and posting a summary of the discussion at the end of the lesson (the  Wednesday following the completion of the discussion).  Teams/Students will select one lesson to serve as moderator at the beginning of the summer session.  Team members will share the moderating responsibility.  The moderators of the lesson will need to post the discussion question(s) by Tuesday midnight prior to the lesson they moderate.  For example, if the lesson begins on 5/19 (Wednesday), the moderator must post the discussion question(s) by midnight 5/18 and post the discussion summary by the Wednesday after the lesson ends.  Generally, posting one or two questions is appropriate.  Moderation includes the questions posted by the team and the instructor.

Team members should actively moderate, participate, and facilitate the discussions. Failure, or simply refusing, to facilitate may result in grade reductions.

There are several useful resources that focus on how to moderate an online discussion.  Students are advised to read these resources to become acquainted with the process of successful moderation of online discussions. 

• Team Building Guidelines.

• Moderation resources.

•  Moderation guidelines.

• Moderation Q & A (A database-driven knowledge management; please check back as frequently as possible)

• General Team Q & A (A database-driven knowledge management; please check back as frequently as possible)

Assignment 1-5 (10 points X 5 = 50 Points)

Assignment 6 (Team project; 26 Points)

There are a total of six assignments that students must accomplish to meet the course requirements. The first five assignments are individual assignments while assignment 6 is a team project.  All assignments will be written in APA (American Psychological Association) format, double-spaced, including page numbers, pin.  Failing to follow the required format may result in point deduction.  The individual assignments (1-5) should be TWO pages in length and double-spaced while the team project (Assignment 6) should be 5-6 pages in length and double-spaced.  These papers are to be submitted, in PDF format, via the Drop Box.

The grading scheme for the paper will be: clarity of writing (2 points), depth of thought (5 points), conciseness/focus (2 points) and references/sources (1 point).

The assignments should be concise, illustrating your knowledge and position on the issues at hand. It should not be verbose. You will be evaluated on the clarity of your thought and your writing.

The assignments must be written in a clear and concise English format.  Students should follow the required length requirements of each assignment.  All assignments should be in APA format, doubled-space, font size 12, and include pin, and page numbers.  Failure to follow the proper format will result in grade deduction.  See each assignment for the details.  The standard file format is Adobe Acrobat, unless otherwise specified. 

APA is the style to be used for references and bibliography.  If different reference styles are required in your professional field please note this on each of your assignments.  Those of you in educational fields are required to use APA style.

APA resources

American Psychological Association. (2002). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

American Psychological Association. (2003) Electronic Reference. Retrieved October 12, 2003 from http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html

Here are some APA examples for your references:

Journal:

Tu, C. H. (2000). On-line learning migration: From social learning theory to social presence theory in CMC environment. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 23(1), 27-37.

Book:

Short, J. A., Williams, E., & Christie, B. (1976). The social psychology of telecommunications. London: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Book chapter:

McIsaac, M. S., & Gunawardena, C. N. (1996). Distance Education. In D. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook for research on educational communications and technology (pp. 403-437). New York: Scholastic Press.

Web site:

Jacobson, J. W., Mulick, J. A., & Schwartz, A. A. (1995). A history of facilitated communication: Science, pseudoscience, and antiscience: Science working group on facilitated communication. Retrieved January 25, 1996, from http://www.apa.org/journals/jacobson.html

Here is the guidelines for conducting peer evaluations.

How to evaluate peers' performance.

View Collaborative evaluation information.

Submit team Collaborative evaluation information.

The number of points for each evaluation is decided by an agreement reached by the team at the beginning of the semester and these results should be submitted via the online form.  Below are examples of how percentages of the different self and collaborative evaluations can be combined.  If a team has three team members, the peer evaluations will be computed on the average score.  The combinations are not limited to the examples listed below as long as the total evaluation and peer evaluations do not exceed 50%. Teams should discuss the point allocation at the beginning of the course and submit their decision to the instructor. Teams may alter their percentage allocations as frequently as their want; however, alteration should only be made with the agreement of all members of the team. If teams need to update the point allocations, please visit the Point Allocation Form.

Syllabus

SUBJECT TO CHANGE

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