‘Ideas Worth Spreading’

The technology and learning event Team 2 (Amanda, Dorothy, Jessica, Mary) chose to further explore was TED-Ed video-based lessons.  It is a collection of lessons on a variety of subjects and through this international platform, anyone can create and share their ideas. This intrigued us for multiple reasons, such as the ability to learn from content experts, potential to create and share our own lessons, and have access to global perspectives.

TED-Ed video-based lessons can be searched individually, as well as through a series already populated under one topic. Lessons included TED-Ed animations, TED Talk Lessons, and TED-Ed Best of Web. Within each lesson there were four common sections a learner can access; Watch, Think, Dig Deeper, Discuss.

Watch

The watch part of TED-Ed refers to the videos themselves. We liked the collaboration TED-Ed facilitates between educators and animators in creating the classic animated videos.  We also liked the different formats of videos available, as we found some topics worked better as TED-Ed animations, and others worked better as TED Talks.

Animations were effective at communicating complex processes or topics, the added visuals seem to assist in facilitating understanding. On the other hand, we found TED-Talks very effective when experts had personal experiences and stories to share. It was valuable to hear about experiences from a first-person perspective.

One challenge we noticed in viewing animated lessons, is that several seemed to contain unrelated or unnecessary animation which took away from the intended learning. Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning says that ““People learn better when extraneous material is excluded” (Mayer, 2017 p. 406).  Thus, the unrelated animated content can increase the cognitive load unnecessarily.

Think

The think section has both open-ended questions and non-graded multiple-choice questions that give immediate feedback (limited to right/wrong answers) with helpful links back to the bookmarked video for review. One can use the available questions or edit them to align with course content or goals. This gives learners a low-risk opportunity to self-review, confirm concepts, and deepen or solidify learning.  (Nilson, 2016, Simkin & Kuechler, 2005)

The think section does have a few limitations and challenges such as questions appear in a fixed placement after the video; the ability to embed questions within the video would be a nice option. For some, not being linked to an LMS grade-book is a big limitation because it adds complexity to your course management.

The challenges faced in adapting the think section to one’s course really comes down to the ability to write well-structured questions that align with or drive the thinking and learning goals such as comprehension or critical thinking. This requires a skill level not all instructors have and, at least initially, is time-consuming to develop.

Dig Deeper

This section of dig deeper provides the learner the opportunity to ‘learn more’ about the subject through additional materials and resources.  Some of the resources found within this section are links to external websites, additional videos, podcasts, articles, worksheets and activities.

From a learner’s perspective the benefits discovered was accessibility and ease to additional content on the topic, additional resources were aligned to the video-based lesson, familiar sites providing reassurance of good quality content and variety within additional resources from videos, podcasts, articles, websites, authors & activities.  The limitations and challenges we encountered was feeling lost after hours of clicking on several links unintentionally taking away from our valuable time and focus.  Also, a sense of overwhelmed with the overabundance and sheer volume of endless amounts of additional resources.

From an educator’s perspective the benefits discovered was the broad subject areas provided greater selection & variety to choose from.  Great variety from different global perspectives from all around the world.  As well as another great technology and learning resource to choose from to augment learning.  The limitations and challenges encountered was time consuming to vet, curate and align within a holistic program and course.  No learning objectives associated with the lesson which made it harder to align with existing courses.  Finally, additional technology can compete & interfere with other technologies in place.

Discuss

In the discuss section you see question posed and facilitated by the creator, discussion among learners, and open discussion questions.

The facilitator may utilize the discuss section to ask questions that allow for Higher order thinking. If the video is open to the public,  learners from around the world will see these discussions and potentially participate. This allows the learning community to be larger than a traditional classroom.  Unfortunately, as seen through my learning event, the amount of participation in the discussion is lacking, as many learners chose not to participate in the discussions. The ones who did participate, often just answered the question being posed by the creator. This lead to minimal dialogue seen in the discuss section. As an educator, the idea of an open forum seems intriguing as it would allow my own students more opportunity to meet and connect with other learners and instructors.  However, managing the forum seems daunting, as the amount of responses and the length of time that the forum is open seems unmanageable.