Linear attacks

I had another major eureka moment in week seven. And, yes, it involved my struggle with cyclical designs. By now, one would think I would be an expert! I had helped create an ID design that was cyclical in nature. But both the feedback we received from our peers and the formal feedback from the evaluation of our model, suggested the cyclical nature of the model did not go far enough. The process would be completed when there was a connection between the last stage and the beginning stage. This idea bewildered me; I had returned to Commander Sisko and the wormhole aliens. The idea of chaos was at play as I struggled to figure out the meaning that I knew was there. The other group members appeared to understand it, and I would be darned if I was going to let on I did not! So as our designer in the group went about making changes to the visual model for our revision assignment, I started to collect information and reflect on the assessment of the original NEAT model. It became clear to us that more evaluation and reflection within the model would make the model’s design stronger and also provide us with an even catchier acronym: NEATER. I understood these concepts. So happy with this fact, I ignored my continued struggle with that final blasted arrow making its way back to the first stage! All was neatly stuffed away until I went into the Google Document at the end of week seven as our deadline loomed and saw this statement left by one of the other group members:

Could revise prototype and evaluate prototype change places? Evaluate prototype seems to deal with...the plan working in this case. Revise prototype could and most likely would be situational. What works in this class situation could not work in another. Differentiating our instruction is a big part in what we are trying to do, isn’t it? Maybe part of the evaluate prototype section could be document what works and even invite reflection from the participants on some level. An excerpt from a learning journal can tell you if a lesson even came close to learning.

The observation made sense to me, but it was also gnawing at me. I could see both sides of the argument to why revise should be before evaluate and vice versa. In some of the previous feedback to our model, some peers felt we should combine revise and evaluate, and I was against that as well. So I replied to the comment with this:

The revise prototype allows for the teacher to return to the previous stages and make more changes. Then if things work well, say on the second go, they can do an evaluation to confirm then implement. The new NEATER model, I think, addresses your concern in regard to it being situational. If the model needs more changes you go back around the cycle because it could also be the case where you need to analyze learners' needs again which is a step in differentiation. Thus with the ability to return back to the first stage, the teacher can revise an existing model.
I think another way to look at it, is the small cyclical part we have in the inner circle allows for quick changes to the prototype while the large cyclical nature of the entire ID allows for a prototype to go through bigger transformations, since it also involves addressing the students and learning environment again.

Suddenly, the reason for that final arrow connecting the last stage back to the first stage made sense to me! I really wonder if it would have made complete sense, or if I would have appreciated the revised design of the model, if another group member had not left that comment. It was genuinely a third Eureka moment for me in this course. And when the revised NEATER model was revealed, the design with the inner circles made complete sense and reflected, for me, the power of reflection-in-action:

It's just NEATER...