This post is a peer review of Pod 6’s Interactive Learning Resource on K-pop.

Learning Outcomes

I think you are off to a good start in keeping your learning outcomes a bit more on the broad, open-ended side, but also having concrete answers (for example, to outcome #1 “students will be able to understand the reasons for the popularity of K-pop”). Your topic allows for more freedom of discussion through cooperative learning, and I can definitely see how sharing ideas with other students could fulfill your learning outcomes. The only question I have is about outcome #4 “students will be able to know the impact of K-pop on students”. Does “impact of K-pop on students” refer to the students themselves? Could this be incorporated into a self-reflection or discussion activity?

Content Organization

I was wondering how you intend to deliver this learning resource to your intended learning context and audience (“higher education . . . students who are interested . . . could choose this course as their [elective]”): would you send this Word document to an academic institution? Would you put the learning content on a website and send a link to the institution?

As such, I was also wondering if you intend for students to read and watch all of the learning materials for each learning outcome before doing the associated interactive activity for that learning outcome? For example, would students be expected to review all of the materials associated with learning outcome #1 before participating in the interactive activity for learning outcome #1, or would students review all of the materials for all learning outcomes, then participate in all of the interactive activities, one after the other?

It would also be helpful if you provided some direction and content of your own addressing students to help them navigate this Interactive Learning Resource as opposed to providing links to external resources with little introduction or guidance. This way, students would likely be more engaged in the material and have a better idea of what to look out for while reviewing the material. For example, before providing the link to resources for learning outcome #4, you could say “while reviewing the following materials, pay attention to your own life and how K-pop affects you as a student,” then provide links to the associated resource.

Interactive Activities

You have an interesting assortment of interactive activity styles: for learning outcomes #1 and #4, there is a “right or wrong” seemingly black-or-white style of activity with statements that students identify as right or wrong, or identify what exactly is wrong. I think this style of activity works better for learning outcome #1 than it does for learning outcome #4. With learning outcome #1, you have provided clear resources to answer “why is K-pop popular”. With learning outcome #4, I think students would benefit from a clearer definition of who “students” is referring to when you say “students will be able to know the impact of K-pop on students” in your learning outcome. The associated activity for learning outcome #4 is too subjective without a clear definition of who the students are, and your example clearly illustrates this: “K-pop has brought positive effects to students and maintained good study habits”. I know that the resource you provided explains that there is an association between K-pop and bad study habits (“The Korean Wave has affected students’ way of living, as well as their attitudes. . . . Korean dramas also have a stronghold on many students. As such, they spend hours watching these dramas and often neglect their studies. That is why many students say ‘write an essay for me’ to essay writing services”), but this is very subjective and opinionated, and your students may become frustrated when they are forced to take a point of view and explain arguments that they may not agree or identify with. Your students may see themselves as the “students” being referred to in this activity, and may have different opinions.

This could be an opportunity instead for students to discuss and share how K-pop affects them as students, which would support your cooperative learning strategy. For some students, they may agree with your view of how K-pop contributes to bad study habits, while for others, they may see K-pop as a common interest and a medium to connect with other students, build meaningful relationships with similar-minded people, which may be beneficial to them as students.

I think your interactive activity for learning outcome #2 is great: you create an opportunity for open-ended discussion and cooperative learning. I think you intended the activity for learning outcome #3 to be similar, but it would be helpful if you could clarify what you mean by “choosing a video related to the topic can help students visualize the content they are learning. It can also increase students’ interest and improve the classroom atmosphere”. Does this mean that students will find YouTube videos about “the views of K-pop from a public perspective” and share with other students?

Assessment Plan Alignment

For your assessment plan, you provided five multiple choice questions: do you plan for your entire assessment to be a single, summative evaluation based on this quiz? My concern is that some of your learning outcomes are not addressed in this quiz, while other questions are not relevant to your learning outcomes. For example, I do not see any question that addresses outcome #2 “students will be able to infer future development based on the current status of K-pop,” and question 1 “which K-pop sectors are not mentioned” does not map to any of your learning outcomes, but rather tests rote memorization only, which does not align with the rest of your instructional methodologies.

As part of your assessment, perhaps you could include a score for students’ participation in the discussion activities – that way all of your learning outcomes are covered.

Designing for Inclusion of Diverse Learners

You have explained how your Interactive Learning Resource will accommodate single parents working full-time and have two kids, but you did not explain how your resource will help to include English language learners – there is a resource that you linked that says “English learner:” but I am unsure as to how this will help to include English language learners. Is it because there are subtitles in the video so that English language learners can pause and read the text easier? Also, this is the only resource that has been labelled “English learner:”.

Readings and Resources

I noticed that you have put all of your works cited and learning resources together in one list. For clarity, it may help to have a “works cited” or “references” section separate from your learning resources section; it would also be helpful to clearly state which learning resources map to which learning outcomes so that students know what to review before doing the interactive activity for that learning outcome (unless you plan on having students review all of the learning materials at once, then doing all of the interactive activities afterwards).

Overall

Overall I think that Pod 6 is on the right track to creating an engaging Interactive Learning Resource on a fascinating topic. You have chosen a good instructional approach to encourage cooperative learning to suit the nature of your topic. Going forward, this Interactive Learning Resource could benefit from more structured content delivery, adjustment to some of the interactive activities (black and white right or wrong quiz-style questions vs. cooperative learning and discussion), and the inclusion of a rationale for why a summative multiple-choice quiz is used to assess students.

Featured photo by Kirstine Rosas on Pixabay