We have made significant progress on the course, and finalized the material. We had a lot discussions with my partner, about what types of activities we can include and why they are better than others. I would like to dedicate this post to the review of the materials and the reasoning why supported by some literature.
As you can see in the picture above, we divided the material into half, to ensure somewhat equal load for each partner. My partner made the first 5 lessons and I made the other 5. This way, we will have equal distribution and allow for more diversity in terms of the materials and activities. Interesting how it goes along with the quote: "One head is good, but two is better".
(https://new.edmodo.com/post/836282897)
The post explains what students have to do, and submit their assessment to the submission tab of Edmodo. The connectivism aspect comes here in terms of the comments. The concept of Academic Counselling may lead to misunderstanding and further confirmation being needed. Students are encouraged to make comments and inquire in regards to the counselling.
To start, I would like to show the material we have developed. I would like to mention that we stayed close to the plan, that I mentioned in the previous post.
Let us go through each lesson, and review what has been done. To help students understand the usage and make a small introduction, we have made a few posts on the Edmodo feed to introduce the students to the platform and the university.
With this post, we hope to introduce to students what they need to do to start their orientation and explain how they can get started. Since all the material was placed in the "Folders" tab, to ensure that students know where it is, my partner made a post explaining where students can access the orientation material.
Lesson 1
The first lesson is most important, and we have tried to make it approachable and user friendly.
The lesson is structured with a video and some additional reading. In terms of the activity, we included a crossword. It takes students to an external link, on wordwall.net, with a premade crossword for students to complete. The reason behind this simple activity, is to start with what is familiar to the students (PISA, 2011). Since most of the students have most likely had a crossword in their life, it is logical to include it as a familiarity trait for the first lesson. The crossword is not difficult to complete, and does not include any "trick" questions that would doubt the students.
Even though this is an asynchronous activity, we want to establish a positive relationship (Juhary, 2014) with the students prior to making the material more challenging. With this "distant rapport" being built, further activities will not seem significantly more challenging and allowing us to ramp up the difficulty in increments.
Lesson 2 - 4
Continuing the trend of familiarity, is the second to fourth lessons also incorporates a crossword. The structure of the material is the same, were there is a video and reading material. Not much to be said additionally here.
Lesson 6
This is the point where there is a change of pace. The students are now directed to another quiz, but on a different platform. This is the transition point where the familiarity aspect is used to transition into newer tools. The quiz in this lesson, focuses on breaking the "comfort zone". The tool used here, is TypeForm, a simple and elegant quiz based activity. There is little to not pressure on the students at this point, but this is about to change.
Lesson 7
This is the point where elements of connectivism start to develop and be incorporated. We want students to share their thoughts and ideas about Academic Counselling, This is a concept that is familiar, but generally new for a lot students. This is closest to "классный руководитель" (class representative/responsible individual) from local institutions.
To further their comprehension and encourage students to connect with each other, the assignment in the picture above links to a post made on Edmodo.
Lesson 8 and 9
Not much interesting of note here, since this is an instructional video. This lessons are used as a break for the students after the cognitively demanding activity of answering the questions for the assignment. This is not a significant cognitive load, but is still a consideration to make sure that students are not deterred from completing the orientation (ibid.).
Lesson 10
This is the finale for the students, where their orientation will end, and this will engage students to the fullest. The material in the lesson tab, consists of only the video materials, but then students have to follow instructions on the feed.
Students are expected to partake in a competition, where they will develop a poster/flyer/leaflet for the Student Support Services lesson. Students are provided with a tool that can be used online, as an example for what they can use to make their poster.
Overall, the course is organized to be simple in the beginning and become more challenging and engaging to the end. This is somewhat mentioned with the concept of ZPD (Podolskiy, 2012), which places the learner in the position that is challenging, yet obtainable. We wanted to make the transition for the students smooth, understanding that there still might be students who are deterred from such fluctuation in difficulty, we expect the majority to be engaged.
On this note, it is important to note and observe, that we are not able to please everyone. In marketing, there is a concept of Target Demographic for a product, which defines who the product is made for. Yes, everyone drinks water, it is a product for everyone. Yet a company does not target water to everyone, but rather focuses on a particular demographic, such as Families. The same concept and thought process was applied here, since we cannot create a platform that is viable and reachable by all students, we focus on engaging the majority. This is unfortunately an inherent flaw in teaching and learning, when dealing with large cohorts of students and being limited in resources.
Indeed if we had more resources available, in terms of time and hands, we would be able to develop materials that are more inclusive towards a larger group of students. Furthermore, online modes of education have their own problem, where learning is more challenging for the learners, but is easier (generally speaking) for teachers to develop.
What could be done differently
To think of what we could do differently, is include more diverse activities for the beginning of the course. We could have included more activities that focus around what is familiar to the students, in the same manner as the quizzes and crosswords. Since the students that are Digital Natives (Connaway et al., 2017), they would be more comfortable using different online tools and activities.
Understanding that students are more familiar with online modes of engagement, is important to teachers, since a lot teachers are digital visitors (ibid.), we have to understand the background of students. Having students of foundation from previous years communicate their worries and interests significantly helps the understanding of where the students are in terms of digital literacy.
(1214 words)
Connaway, L.S. et al. (2017). The Many Faces of Digital Visitors & Residents: Facets of Online Engagement. OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Available from https://www.oclc.org/content/dam/research/publications/2017/oclcresearch-many-faces-digital-vandr.pdf [Accessed 15 April 2022].
Juhary, J. (2014). Perceived Usefulness and Ease of Use of the Learning Management System as a Learning Tool. International Education Studies, 7 (8). Available from https://doi.org/10.5539/ies.v7n8p23 [Accessed 15 April 2022].
PISA. (2011). PISA 2009 results : reading and using digital information. Available from https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/students-familiarity-with-information-and-communication-technologies_5kg9p44hfjr8.pdf?itemId=%2Fcontent%2Fcomponent%2F9789264112995-9-en&mimeType=pdf [Accessed 15 April 2022].
Podolskiy, A.I. (2012). Zone of Proximal Development. Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning, 3485–3487. Available from https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6_316 [Accessed 15 April 2022].
Comments
Post a Comment