An update on IGC Award at Discovery College

[Peter Muir]

Just a quick update as to how we are going with the IGC Award at Discovery College.

We have about 16 Bronze and 4 silver students.

As we have found it very difficult to find a lunch-time that suits all, we concentrate on having relevant discussions in online forums with the odd face-to-face meeting.  This allows more flexibility, however we must ensure that students are active in forums to get the most benefit.  To do this we set deadlines and ‘tick off’ students once they have added a post.  Some good discussion has been generated.  It also allows for ease of communicating with students and sharing information with them.

With this many students, we grouped Bronze students together with a silver ‘mentor’ to give presentations on the ‘understanding others’ section.  Some good small group discussion prevailed.  We’ll combine this with each student having a Googlesite to share their efforts and, importantly, their reflections.  All of these sites will be embedded in one central location with discussion forums on our school’s Moodle platform.

We have had a few students who were going to complete the silver award pull out, citing lack of time – clashes with commitments to assessment tasks, other student groups, MUN.  Informing of their withdrawal coincided with the time to present on ‘understanding others’ section – it seems that it was best to say this rather than say that they had not yet done their personal interviews.  In discussing this with Boyd, it seems that we were a little too prescriptive in our approach to this area – once we get back from Easter break we’ll discuss with students the possibility of being less rigid in our approach.  The bottom line is that the involvement of these students in other student group (Human Rights group, MUN) does develop an understanding of others – just not in the method that we prescribed (personal interview plus research)

A few weeks back we started focus on ‘personal global footprint’ in discussion forums.  We will be using these forums as the method to explore and develop understanding in this area.  Students will be asked to add details of their personal action plans and their relevant reflections to their Award Googlesite.

Working with others – relevant work that students do as a part of their MYP Community and Service programme, which began in August, can be included in this section of the IGC Award .