Month: July 2019

Unit 2 Activity 3- Developing a Design Plan

For Unit 2, Activity 3- I was tasked with creating a draft design plan to solve my previous problem statement. “DL students at WCLT have specific motivations and reasons for taking Chemistry 12; therefore, they need to engage more with the course content and the instructor at the start of the course to better understand the expectations of the course and be able to move through with more success.?” (Dunn, 2019). 

Description: The purpose of my digital resource is to better familiarize and engage students with the school, course content, myself, and course expectations. This will be done with the addition of 3 new resources, that will replace the existing introduction to the course. 

Learning Goals:By using the digital resource, students will 

  • Have gained familiarity with the schools drop in centre, and the regular day to day operations that take place there. 
  • Understand the expectations of the course, and the general set up. 
  • Set a goal for when they want to complete the course and communicated that with the instructor. 

Intended Audience: The intended audience will be online Chemistry 12 students at WestShore Centre and the instructor (myself). However, they could be easily adapted to work for other WestShore courses, or other schools. 

Rationale: The digital resource will meet the needs of the students, by allowing them to see what the school looks like before they must attend. This will limit repetitive email questions, and may lower anxiety students feel walking into an unknown. It will clearly demonstrate ( through an interactive video) the expectations of the course and the way in which it is designed to be navigated. Lastly, by answering the Introduction quiz, it will open up conversations with the instructor regarding students prior knowledge, and course goals. This will allow the instructor and student to work together in making sure that this goal is achieved. It will also give the students a detailed schedule, something that many students miss having when first starting a self paced program.  

Tools: As our school currently used Moodle as our Learning Management system, all resources will be developed to be able to be embedded within Moodle. There will be three resources created in total. 

  • Tour Video of school and Storefront: For this, I will utilize video making software and YouTube. 
  • Interactive Video: H5P provides the ability to create interactive video and is able to be embedded within our courses. A video of the course will be filmed, and loaded to YouTube. Once created, it will be uploaded into Moodle and using the plug-in H5P I will edit it to make it interactive with the students. 
  • Moodle Quiz and Excel: For the last resource, I will have the students complete a quiz on Moodle answering questions based on their prior experience and goals for the course ( including completion date). I will then take this completion date and add it to a modified Gantt Chart on excel, made for project management. The Gantt chart will be adapted to fit the tasks and milestones of my Chemistry 12 course. For each student, the instructor will need to add the start date, end date, and students name. The rest will be calculated using excel formulas. Once done, I will send it to the students, and based on quiz answers, have a conversation is the goal is realistic. 

Assessment/Evaluation Plan: A course survey will be created to gather feedback on whether students found these resources useful as well as other aspects of the course. As well, as the instructor, when writing their quarterly reports, I will review their timeline and see if they are on schedule.  

Learning Theories & Instructional Design Principles Used: For my theoretical framework, I will utilize Bates (2015) SECTIONS model through the development and the addition of my new resources into my course. Bates’ (2015) SECTIONS model stands for students, ease of use, cost, teaching functions, interaction, organizational issues, networking, and security and privacy. Even though the SECTIONS model was created with higher education in mind, the flexibility it gives, and the diversity of students it can work with fits within my own context. 

A heutagogical approach will be made when designing these resources. Our current students are expected to work through the course individually, in a self paced manner. One of the main issues that I am hoping to address is the lack of independence and confidence students have working through the course. Since a heutagogical approach “emphasizes self-direction and focuses on the development of efficacy in utilizing the online tools and information available” (Anderson, 2016, p. 42) to students, it can be paired with the rest of the course, giving students the skills needed to succeed. This learning theory will be paired with others to make a blended approach throughout the entire course. 

Instructions for Use: These tools will be used at the start of the Chemistry 12 course. Student will have to complete these, before starting with the course material (Moodle settings will be created to lock course material until resource activity are completed). The students will first watch the video introducing them to WestShore and the Storefront. Secondly, they will participate in the interactive video. Lastly, they will complete the quiz based on their experience and goals. This results of this quiz will be used to determine their individual schedule. 

Plan for Use: The digital learning resource will be used within WestShore Centre’s Moodle course. The first video, the first video may be shared with staff, or added to our website to allow more students to see it. As the interactive video is specific to Chemistry 12, it will not be shared outside of the course. The Excel sheet used to create the individual courses can be shared with other teachers and schools- turning it into an Excel template. However, before sharing, I would want to have experience using it and make sure that it is successful.  

References

Anderson, T. (2016). Theories for learning with emerging technologies. In G. Veletsianos (Ed.), Emergence and innovation in digital learning: Foundations and applications (pp. 35 – 50). Edmonton, AB: AU Press.

Bates, A. W. (2015). Chapters 6-8. In Teaching in a digital age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning. Vancouver BC: Tony Bates Associates Ltd.

Dunn, A. (2019, July 7th). From Empathy to Design. Retrieved from https://malat-webspace.royalroads.ca/rru0052/from-empathy-to-define/

From Empathy to Define

This week in LRNT 527, we were tasked with moving our design further along into the Define stage. For me to complete the define step, I needed to complete the empathy stage- which was my journey map. I ended up hitting a snag, as I originally had planned to use my new Chemistry 12 course that I had not seen yet. This would have allowed me to utilize the “beginner’s mindset” ( Stanford University Institute of Design [SUID], 2016, p. 6 ) as it would have been my first time moving through this new course and I would have less bias. Unfortunately, the courses were not released in time as planned. Therefore, I needed to go back and use one of my current courses that are running, but will soon be discontinued. 

For my journey map, I put a timer on, and went through the first hour of my current Chemistry 12 course. This included logging in and trying to familiarize myself. After completing my hour in the course, I combined my new experience with my previously gathered observations, to create my journey map. 

 A few of my main takeaways from my own experience is how many videos there are for the student to watch. There was also a lack of engagement with the material, at least for the first hour of the course for me. Most interesting was the confirmation I got that the students are not watching and using the videos in the course. I confirmed this when watching the very first content video on the first page, which explained in detail how to complete a certain task ( Writing complete and net ionic equations). Oddly enough, this is one of the most asked questions I get on the first assignment, and one of the largest areas for mistakes. However, the video in the course clearly explains the steps and show multiple examples. If students are watching the videos they are not retaining the information needed. Another main insight I had, was that there did not need to be more videos for content delivery- and the current ones needed to be broken up a bit. 

Once my journey map was completed, I started in the define stage. For this stage, I used a combination of a Point of view (POV) madlib and the Critical Reading Checklist (CRC) (SUID, 2016). I chose these two methods because I am completing this design challenge alone. Many of the other methods utilize teams and multiple perspectives, but I needed methods that I felt I could be successful at doing individually within our short time frame. 

The POV Mad Lib allowed me to reconsider the needs in more detail of my user. The insight gained from my journey along with past observations highlighted many of my previous suspicions. 

After completing my POV Madlib of I looked at the CRC and answered the questions “What is the point?” “Who says” “what’s new?” and Who cares?”

Of these 4 questions, the most intriguing one to me was what’s new? Having had made improvements to courses before, trying to look at approaching this in a new view is intriguing. Along with the results of the madlib, and the CRC, I adapted my POV to be 

“DL students at WCLT have specific motivations and reasons for taking Chemistry 12; therefore, they need to engage more with the course content and the instructor at the start of the course to better understand the expectations of the course and be able to move through with more success.”

Overall, completing the empathy and design phase as confirmed my initial thoughts. It has shown me how slow and heavy the course starts out, which most likely is contributing to the confusion and slow start many students are having. 

From here, we are off to Unit 2, where we start to design and create. Does anyone have any ideas for me to consider when it comes to my design of my digital learning resource? 

Amanda

Reference

Stanford University Institute of Design. (2016). Bootcamp Bootleg.  Retrieved from http://dschool-old.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/METHODCARDS-v3-slim.pd