Authored by Gwen Bourque and Joyce Wimmer<\/p>\n
While working on this design challenge, we found that we come from different backgrounds and fields; however, our practices intersect at the post-secondary setting. We have a variety of students coming from different backgrounds, experiences and ages.\u00a0 We both require a way to engage diverse groups of students who could be\u00a0coming straight from high school to those who are mature learners.<\/p>\n
Through feedback and feed forward responses, we edited our problem statement to reflect that these students have many different needs. Thus, our new problem statement is:<\/p>\n
Because we, Gwen and Joyce, work at post-secondary institutions where students have many different learning needs, we need a way to engage a variety of learners, those coming straight from high school to those who are mature learners that have a degree or in pursuit of a second or third career.<\/em><\/p>\n Our solution involves a blended learning environment which incorporates online synchronous discussions and includes all students and the facilitator.\u00a0 The facilitator will have a presentation on the topic of discussion.\u00a0 Throughout the presentation, online polls will be conducted by the facilitator to engage all students. The students will be able to use their devices (i.e. phones, computers) to answer the multiple-choice questions. The results will be displayed immediately and anonymously which gives the facilitator an opportunity to discuss the correct and incorrect answers.\u00a0 Because the polls are anonymous, students will feel more comfortable and will take an intellectual risk. According to Wiley Education Services (n.d.), polls are effective tools that will help to connect students with each other by sharing their thoughts, and by guiding students to focus their learning. Additionally, the polling software, such as Socrative or Poll Everywhere, is easy to access and is used at both of our institutions.<\/p>\n Throughout the learning session, the facilitator will also incorporate blank screens in the presentation where students could post questions about the content which would enable them to suggest what they would like to learn more about.\u00a0 This will help to demonstrate student engagement and accountability for their learning.<\/p>\n Furthermore, students could use a social networking forum such as Slack to create a social space to work in. This platform offers a way for students to interact with and get to know each other to develop a safe online community where they are comfortable to ask questions, to clarify assignments, to share thoughts and feelings and to celebrate accomplishments.<\/p>\n If we are to describe our solution to our trusted colleagues, we believe that they would find our solution very interesting and engaging for students. Our solution follows the empathetic design in Mattelm\u00e4ki, Vaajakallio & Koskinen (2014) where they suggest that the design focuses on four layers of sensitivity: (1) toward humans, (2) toward design, (3) toward techniques and (4) toward collaboration.<\/p>\n Overall, it can be said that we developed a solution to engage and build confidence in intellectual risk taking for a diverse group of students coming straight from high school to those who are mature learners that have a degree or are in pursuit of a second or third career. As both of our practices are within the post-secondary setting,\u00a0we have a variety of students coming from different backgrounds, experiences and ages who may or may not be comfortable with technology use and who have many different learning needs. This approach addresses our needs in our workplace environment. Is this a method that you could incorporate in your own setting\/industry?\u00a0 Lastly, do you see this as an empathetic design?<\/p>\n We will be replying to your comments, thoughts and advice until December 4, 2018 at 10 pm EST. Thank you!<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n References:<\/p>\n How to Increase Student Engagement in Your Online Course with Polls. (n.d.). Wiley Education\u00a0<\/em>Services<\/em>. Retrieved from\u00a0https:\/\/edservices.wiley.com\/increase_student_engagement_online_with_polls\/<\/p>\n Mattelm\u00e4ki, T., Vaajakallio, K., & Koskinen, I. (2014). What happened to empathic design?.\u00a0Design Issues<\/em>, 30<\/em>(1), 67-77.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Authored by Gwen Bourque and Joyce Wimmer While working on this design challenge, we found that we come from different backgrounds and fields; however, our practices intersect at the post-secondary setting. We have a variety of students coming from different backgrounds, experiences and ages.\u00a0 We both require a way to engage diverse groups of students … Continue reading Introducing Our Solution to the Design Challenge<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0064\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0064\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0064\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0064\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0064\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0064\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0064\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions\/307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0064\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0064\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0064\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}