Artifact Design Task

Goal

This Summer, participating CITE faculty are asked to create an “artifact” — something that reflects how you propose to integrate computing and digital literacies into your work with teacher candidates in the Fall. Faculty can submit plans and designs for any number of activities, for example, for…

🌶️ Assignments / Projects in one course

🌶️ In-class activity in one course

🌶️ Online activity in one course

🌶️ 🌶️ Unit

🌶️ 🌶️ Fieldwork activity (e.g. observation report)

🌶️ 🌶️ 🌶️ Course redesign

🌶️ 🌶️ 🌶️ New course

🌶️ 🌶️ 🌶️ 🌶️ Scope and sequence across courses

You can create something new, or modify something pre-existing. You can work on your own, or with colleagues who teach the same content / are in the same institution etc.

Due date

EOD Friday, 8/4

How to submit

You can submit any planning documents you’d like, but we recommend making a copy of our Artifact Design Template and using it as the basis for your design.

By the due date above, please submit your artifact using the form linked below.

Artifact guidelines

Your artifact should…

  1. Integrate computing:
    1. Engage learners in digital and computing practices, see CITE Framework for guidance
    2. Help support your teacher candidates’ teaching and learning about, with, through, and against technology
  2. Address specific dimensions of equity
    1. Consult our CITE Equitable Pedagogy synthesis to help you consider how your artifact might promote equitable outcomes (including affirming and empowering learners, promoting joyful / meaningful learning, transforming institutions towards justice)
    2. Draw on other relevant lenses and frameworks for equity in your discipline or contexts
  3. Support the teaching of content across teacher education components and courses
    1. Focus on supporting teacher candidates to apply knowledge about learners, learning environments, equity and culturally relevant practice, content, instructional practice, professionalism in Foundations, Methods, Fieldwork
    2. Ensure there is strong “connective tissue” bringing computing and digital literacies together with that content (see the section below on Evaluating and Describing your Artifact)
  4. Support your own development and that of your college/program – This could look like addressing…
    1. A challenge you observe in teacher candidates’ experience
    2. Systemic inequity issues in STEM/teacher education
    3. An area of growth/priority for you or your department

Design Process Timeline

The general CITE PD Calendar can be found here. Below, we’ve excerpted dates relevant to this design task.

June: Orientation (new faculty)

Get oriented to Computing Integrated Teacher Education by engaging in asynchronous modules and synchronous sessions.

July: Design

Learn more about this design task, and get some inspiration at our virtual kickoff session on Thursday, July 6, 10-11:30am

Gain inspiration and ideate an initial design for your artifact by attending a “deep dive” summer camp. If you get stuck, schedule a meeting with your summer camp provider in late July, and/or attend office hours with CITE staff on Mondays 10a – 11:30a all summer (except Monday May 29th session will be on Tuesday May 30th.)

August: Feedback

Submit your artifact design following the instructions above by August 4.

Attend one day for Artifact Micro-Teaching/Presentation and Feedback during the week of August 7-10, 9:30a-2p:

  • 9:30 – 9:45a: Welcome, Reflection and Guidance on Feedback Protocol
  • 9:45 – 12:00p: Four 30 minute rounds of micro-teaching/presentation + feedback with 15 minute break (see feedback protocol here)
  • 12:00 – 1:00p: Lunch
  • 1:00 – 2:00p: Next steps for the academic year including reporting on artifact implementation

👉 Share your availability to present here by July 13.

Evaluating and Describing Your Artifact

You may be wondering how to know whether you’re on the right track, or what a “good” artifact includes. Given there are so many purposes for computing and digital integration, there’s no one “right” way to design an artifact.

That said, there are still some key dimensions to consider that may help faculty strengthen artifacts’ connections between computing and digital literacies and teacher ed.

CITE’s working group, “The Notorious WGA” spent the 2022-23 school year considering the lenses that might be used to help faculty members evaluate and describe their artifacts. Check them out below.

CITE Design Toolkits

Our team has compiled resources and speculative ideas for CITE artifacts about topics from Understanding Learners Digital Lives, to Leveraging Data for Disciplinary Learning, to Digital Storytelling and more in some design toolkits. Click below to access them!

Giving and Providing Feedback

Check out our protocols and norms for giving and receiving feedback on teaching artifacts

Tips and Design Resources

Plan to actually DO the assignments you expect your students to do, so you can anticipate challenges they might face, and set expectations!

Visit our resources page to consult materials that are designed to help you think through your artifact task, including the CITE Framework, Equitable CITE Pedagogy Praxis, Faculty Spotlights, and more!

FAQ

Q: Can I work with colleagues?

Yes! You can work with people at your own institution or at other CUNYs. We recommend keeping design teams of a manageable size, since collaborations of large groups can be harder to manage. Our submission form has space for you to indicate collaborators.

Q: What will CITE do with the artifacts we submit? Will they be made public?

We collect CITE artifacts to support reflective processes and for administrative purposes: We log artifacts in our database, summarize the “gist” of them and tag them with the kinds of digital and computing practices they embed. We use this analysis to help us get a sense for faculty interest, areas for growth, to plan new PD opportunities, and reflect on past ones. You can see the high level summary from 2022 here.

We also share our summaries with team leads so they can get a high level picture of artifacts across programs for planning purposes. We share our high level summaries of artifacts with funders. We will not share the documents that you provide us with anyone outside of the CITE team without your permission.

Any faculty member who consents to being a participant in the CITE RPP research study (we spoke about this in our orientation) gives us permission to analyze your artifacts with our research questions in mind. Our analyses have helped us create materials for practitioners, such as this year’s Faculty Spotlights and Equitable CITE Praxis resource and to create materials for academic and scholarly communities and venues. The consent form linked above includes more information about how we aim to protect your privacy in this process, and about the study research questions. We may reach out to those who consent to request an interview, to invite you to be part of a focus group about your artifact, or to create a case study or spotlight about your work. Even in this case, we do not anticipate sharing raw artifact documents with anyone outside of the research team.