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Review by Bielefeld_Inclusion_across_borders
Philosophy
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The material does not offer any insight into it‘s conception. There are no explanations as to why the creator/creators of this material chose to present or design it the way they have.
The material never once mentions inclusion or inclusivity and subsequently, it seems like inclusivity of the material can’t have been a very high priority in it’s design.
That being said, the material is structured logically and according to it’s title. It is called “Democracy in Athens – for all?” and the first two tasks focus on just that, Task 1 provides an overview of the political system in ancient Athens and Task 2 allows for a closer insight into who could and could not participate in politics. Task 3 serves to connect Athenian democracy to modern democracy, thus still very much remaining in the scope of the task outlined with it’s title.
Most tasks contain sources for information and translation and all sources seem reliable. The first task (the visual quiz) does not seem to include a source, even though there should be plentiful of citable materials when it comes to the ancient Athenian constitution.
Learners' needs
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While the material doesn’t necessarily offer parallel learning paths for the same information, it DOES offer a limited degree of adjustable complexity level, in the sense that the quiz at the top of the Modul can not be failed and students can just shift around the answers until they get it right. Other than that, there is one task that allows for independent online research, when looking for information on Pericles. That being said, all of the task, the quiz in the beginning being the notable exception, are text-based and require text-based answering.
There is little to no scaffolding I can discern, no hints or tips or help for students who might be struggling with the tasks. There is one link for a child-safe search engine (Kinderzeitmaschine.de), but nothing beyond that.
Safe for the illustration/quiz, the entire module is text-based and thus not very adapted to learners needs. It provides a challenging quote that is to be reproduced in one’s own words in task 2 and task 3 provides a lot of numbers and percentages but notably fails to provide a graph or other visual representation.
The task including the quote should include an easier to understand summary of the same, so that the students who don’t understand can do the following exercise that relies on understanding of that quote. Also, one could add a graph or visual representation for the statistics of the second and third tasks.
Learners’ environment(s)
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The material doesn’t seem like it is necessarily intended to be done in group work, but it also doesn’t actively impede letting students just solve the tasks together. Of course, unless every student has access to a digital device, it will likely fall to a single student to input all answers, making it easier for the other students to shirk their own part in the work. It mostly lends itself to individual work, though the visual quiz may well be done with the whole class.
The module is primarily designed as a digital resource and meant to be solved on the website. Of course, the industrious educator may be so inclined to print the questions onto a paper and bring it to class, but in doing so they lose the interactivity of the visual quiz and will still require the digital angle for the task that requires individual research into Pericles.
The material is freely accessible to anyone (with a digital device and internet connection) and theoretically even available via mobile phone. Sadly, there is only one format, the digital quiz.
The material as is (that is to say: if the educator chooses not to actively modify it) is only accessible digitally and hardly an attractive exercise to work at in any other way than on ones own. With the rise of digital media in schools and at home, one can deem it accessible enough, for homework if nothing else.
Learning Feedback for Learners
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The material offers next to no feedback on its own. Once again, the notable exception proves to be the visual quiz at the very top of the page, which will show which answers are wrong and which are right. Other than that, any feedback on the learners’ answers to the questions seems to be the educator’s responsibility to provide.
Subsequently the students are incapable to use the (non-existent) feedback to reflect on their learning process on their own. The notable lack of sample solutions proves quite disappointing and leaves the responsibility of feedback and correction entirely on the shoulders of the educator.
For the purpose of rating the feedback provided for learners, the exception of the quiz is deemed insufficient to justify the rating of this material any higher than the absolute minimum. This could be easily changed with the trivial addition of sample solutions.
Learners’ Reflections on Learning
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The material does not explain possible approaches, strategies or techniques for learning. While it does contain different approaches, such as the visual quiz and the task to do individual research on Perikles, but these are not reflected by the material itself, the material does not explain how or why the material is presented as it is. Additionally, it does not offer any advice on how to formulate the answers to the questions or how to properly research Perikles.
Furthermore, the material doesn’t encourage the learner to reflect on their learning process at all. It seems primarily concerned with content and not the way that content is learned.
To amend this, a short review at the end on how the students chose to approach the different tasks or the occasional hint on how one could possibly approach a task might be useful.
Learners’ Agency
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This seems to be one of the stronger points of the learning material. By not demanding a certain number of words or specific amounts of time spent on specific tasks, the material manages to allow for an appreciable degree of learners’ agency.
The first exercise, the mentioned visual quiz, allows the learner to try out any combination until they find the right one, though there is only one definitive right way to solve the visual component. The learner is then supposed to write a text (5-6 sentences) on how the Athenian democracy (as depicted visually above) functioned. This first exercise is somewhat limiting in scope, as it does offer a sentence count, but doesn’t require specific answers, allows for the students to describe the Athenian democracy however they like in their own words.
The material really shines in the way it asks the learner to form their own judgment of things, first in task 2c, when the learner is supposed to judge whether Athenian democracy really was a democracy for everyone, and again in task 3, when the learner is instructed to consider similarities and differences between contemporary German political institutions and ancient Athenian one. The former of these tasks even allows the learner to do their own research on a historical figure (Pericles), meaning different learners may emerge with different, yet simultaneously correct, answers to the same question, depending on what aspects of the individual they choose to focus on.
The same task also shows how the learning material does deem the learner capable of controlling their own learning process, as the learner is to research their own information, without the material providing it in advance.
Yet at no point does the material ever critically reflect on the material. The material does offer sources on all the information provided yet does not critically question these sources. Of course, given the scope of the material, I don’t believe questioning the historians on a topic as well researched as Athenian democracy would add anything of value to these tasks, but a more critical view on the number of non- voters in Germany (in the third task) might have been beneficial.
I don’t see how the material would not respect the diversity of learners overall, except maybe for the font not being very accessible to people who may have difficulty reading. Also, the material necessitates access to a digital device of some capability and size, which might be an unrealistic expectation for learners of lower income families.
