Material Detail

Overall this STAIR was very easy to follow.  I liked that you could choose the path you wanted to take and I did not feel that is was overwhelming because it only had the three choices.  One problem I had right away was with the prior knowledge question.  If you clicked either "yes" or "no" for your answer, it said you were correct and took you to the same slide.  The purpose and objectives were stated at the begining, which I thought was nice to inform students what they would be learning about.  I also thought the scenarios were great examples to tie in the real world.  This STAIR contained mostly text and although it was nicely organized I thought it was too much.  When answering questions in the STAIR slides it gave feedback right away and provided help if you chose the wrong answer.  I also liked that in the Quizlet there was both multiple choice and written response questions.  I did not like that there was no information provided to help if you choose an incorrect answer.  I would think that because of all the information provided in the STAIR, it would be hard to answer the questions in the Quizlet correctly.

Positive Feedback: Multiple pathways presented in a way that allows student choice in the order of the lesson. Once on a path, the lesson is linear and easy to navigate through. The StAIR does a good job of activating and accessing prior knowledge with the question about people’s religious practices in the 13 colonies. The insertion of the Youtube video added to the multimedia nature of the StAIR concept. The Quizlet quiz did a good job of checking for understanding and provided excellent feedback in terms of correct answers and grade.

Critical Feedback: More sounds and images could be used to engage the audience. There seem to be some missing gaps in the historical narratives of the two main characters’ lives. For example, how did an uneducated man become the president of a relatively prestigious school like Oberlin College? The StAIR made me think of this and other questions, but did not always answer questions. There were a few typos/grammatical errors in the StAIR. The Youtube video was somewhat long and did not hold interest because it was largely text based. The Quizlet did not allow for variance in correct answers. For example, when Garrison’s last name was provided the answer was marked wrong. Overall, the StAIR was extremely text based and provided few, if any, adaptations for students with language or vision impairments.

Technical Remarks: