Final Reflection

Looking back at the full course — what you learned, what you will use, and what we could do better.

Before You Begin

You have reached the end of the course content. Eight weeks, seven competency demos, and a significant amount of computer science. Before you close the book on the material, we are asking you to do one more thing: reflect on the experience as a whole.

This reflection has two parts. The first asks you to think about your own learning — what was new, what was useful, what still feels uncertain, and what you will carry into your classroom. The second asks you to give us honest feedback about the course itself — what worked, what did not, and what we should do differently.

About the grade: This reflection is graded for completion, not for content. There are no correct answers here. We are asking for your honest thinking — including criticism — and the only way to earn full credit is to respond thoughtfully and genuinely to each prompt. A polished, positive response that does not reflect your actual experience is less valuable to us than a candid one that identifies real problems.

Part One — Your Learning

These prompts ask you to think about the course from the perspective of your own professional development as a CS educator.

1. What was most new to you?

Identify two or three topics from this course that were genuinely new to you — content you had little or no prior knowledge of before the course began. For each one, describe briefly what you learned. You do not need to write a technical summary. Just articulate what you now understand that you did not before.

2. What will help you most in your classroom?

Which topics or ideas from this course do you expect to be most directly useful as you prepare future teaching materials or work with students? Why those topics in particular? You might think about content that connects to your grade level, content that addresses questions your students already ask, or content that changes how you think about technology your students already use.

3. What was missing?

This course deliberately focused on non-programming, non-algorithm topics in computer science. Algorithms, programming languages, and software engineering will be addressed in the next course in the sequence. With that boundary in mind: what topics do you wish this course had covered that it did not? Are there areas of CS that feel important for K-12 teachers that you feel were underrepresented or absent?

4. What still confuses you?

Which topics from the course still feel uncertain or unclear to you? For each one, reflect briefly on why: Is it that the learning materials did not explain the concept well? Is it that the concept is genuinely difficult and you would benefit from more time with it? Or is it that you do not currently see how the topic connects to your teaching context — and the confusion is more about relevance than comprehension?

That last distinction matters. If a topic feels confusing because you cannot see why it matters for your students, that is useful feedback for us. If it feels confusing because the explanation was unclear, that is also useful — and different — feedback.

Part Two — Course Feedback

A note on these questions: The prompts in Part Two are related to those in Part One but are asking something different. Part One asked about your experience as a learner of this content. Part Two asks about your experience of the course as a designed learning environment — the structure, the materials, the pacing, and the activities. You may find that your answers overlap, but try to focus each section on the question it is actually asking.

5. What worked for you in this course?

Describe one or more aspects of the course that you found effective — things that helped you learn, stayed with you, or that you would want to see preserved if this course is taught again. This could be specific readings, the structure of the weekly materials, the small group discussions, the competency demo format, or anything else.

6. What did not work for you?

Describe one or more aspects of the course that you found ineffective, frustrating, or unhelpful. Please be specific. "The readings were too long" is useful; "the readings were too long because they repeated information covered in the topic index page" is more useful. We cannot improve what we cannot identify precisely.

7. What should we do differently?

If you were advising the course design team — not just identifying problems but proposing changes — what would you suggest? These can be structural changes (different pacing, different activity types, different assessment structure), content changes (different topics, different depth, different examples), or anything else you think would improve the course for the next cohort of educators.

Submitting Your Reflection

Copy your responses into the Blackboard submission box for the Final Reflection assignment and submit before the end of the course.

Thank you for your time in this course. The teachers who go through this program are the reason it exists, and your feedback directly shapes what the next cohort experiences. We take it seriously.

Once you have submitted, return to the Week 8 Overview.