Everything is Awesome! Everything is cool when you're part of a team! - Session 10

1. Identify five key concepts or themes related to eLearning Design and Development and explain what you know about each.

Concept the First: Absorb, Do, and Connect activities

Absorb activities are the ones that are the closest to an information dump. According to Horton (2012) they usually, “consist of information and the actions learners take to extract and comprehend knowledge from that information (p.67).” They are best used when learners need a little information or are updating their current knowledge.

Do activities are the ones that transform that absorb activity information dump into knowledge and skills. They allow learners to exercise their learning in a safe, encouraging, exploratory environment that is motivating and prepares them, in turn, for absorb activities. They are best used to prepare learners to apply skills, adapt their general and abstract knowledge, to build their confidence and to automate or verify the ability to apply skills.

Connect activities are the ones that integrate what is being learned with what is already known by bridging gaps. They are best used when application is crucial, when application is not adequate (after having been taught), the subject is general, the learners doubt the applicability of material (ALERT!!! This is where math teachers have been going wrong for so many years. Incredibly applicable and yet we, as a group, rarely abandon our La-Z-Boy chairs in the Absorb and Do realms…), or they cannot make the connections by themselves.

Concept the Second: Testing

Test are essential for gauging the progress of a learner; they indicate how well learners are meeting learning objectives.

Like the witch test from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, (see: She's a Witch!) anyone can write and give a test. The question in eLearning (and, dare I say it, any learning) is really, “Why am I giving this test? Is it warranted?” If you cannot answer this adequately, then your testing really needs to be revisited.

Remember that formal tests are needed when: 1) learners require specific skills, knowledge, and attitudes, 2) the teacher does not know if the learner has these skills, knowledge, and attitudes and 3) when a test is the best way to provide that assessment.

Concept the Third: Types of Learner Interactions

Within the framework of every eLearning class, there are 3 types of learner interactions to consider.

Learner to Content: This is the interaction between the student and the content whereby the student gains new knowledge through engaging with the material.

Learner to Teacher: This is the interaction between the student and the teacher whereby the student refines their new knowledge through teacher response.

Learner to Learner: This is the interaction between the student and other students whereby the student has the opportunity to communicate their new understanding and seek clarification or support from others as they work to synthesize the new and the old into a coherent perspective.

Concept the Fourth: Mobile Learning

Mobile learning is the learning that, according to Horton (2012), “frees people to learn at the place and time they choose and to learn from a world of teachers (p.501).”

In eLearning, this takes a differently accessed course and makes it so that the Learner can be engaged with the course work at any time and any place. Considerations in advance by the instructor (quality of materials uploaded (i.e. size of file), text of audio documents, etc.) in mobile learning allow the learner to interact with the material in a wide variety of ways without needing to consider difficulties like bandwidth access while in the forest, for example. Take a look at Dr. Newberry’s own excellent example on a weekly basis.

Concept the Fifth: Learning Games and Simulations

Games and Simulations in eLearning take advantage of already established understandings and desires of the learner to teach while they entertain. Their many benefits are amazing and can be recounted more fully here, but some benefits include:

·           Allowing learners to make mistakes without suffering permanent consequences

·           Providing a laboratory for learners to test different hypotheses, models, tactics and strategies

·           Making relationships explicit to learners and

·           Helping learners master the subtlety and complexity of skills

2. Speculate on the future of eLearning and what your role in that future might be.

I believe that eLearning will branch into many paths in the future. I have a difficult time envisioning it becoming the central method for teaching all students, as K-12 public education currently is, but that may be what happens. (I suspect it is as difficult for me to imagine this now as it was for people to envision the central role that electricity now has in our society when the work to harness it was first being done.)

What I expect to happen with eLearning in the immediate future is that it will be adopted by a wide variety of educators to help differentiate. Harnessing the tools of eLearning, it becomes much simpler to differentiate the expectations and acquisition of skills and knowledge for the Learner because, well-designed, the course is customized to the needs of each.

I expect that my role in eLearning will be as something of a leader within my district or at least at my site. I have every intention of working to develop the Algebra 2 Honors course that I have been using in my weekly blog posts as a way for students to accelerate who have fallen behind or have need of advancement for one reason or another. Moreover, I intend to move aspects of my own face to face course into the eLearning realm to take advantage of the innumerable benefits we have looked into over the course of the quarter. For example, I’ve pushed out an email to my geometry students (via their school Gaggle accounts) asking them to learn the concept and application of special right triangles. In the email they were given learner to content interactions (a selection of 4 different videos to teach the concept, written notes, a worksheet with answers so that they could check their progress on the topic), learner to learner interactions (they need to send a question or aha moment for themselves to another student (and respond to whomever emailed them, including me as an addressee on their email) and learner to instructor interactions (questions, clarifications, thoughts on the video they watched, additional videos they sought out on their own, and a quiz on the topic). I intend to do more with this and other lessons in the future even though my whole course will not be an eLearning experience.

3. Revise the eLearning development template/instructional design process you developed earlier for yourself. Be sure to:

     a)   List all of the roles of people who will be involved in the typical development.

For the courses I expect to work with in the near future, I honestly expect to be the only person involved in the typical development on a regular basis. As my husband and mother are both math teachers, I’ll likely have them review anything that I create to check for a) are the objectives sound? b) do the activities help the learner to meet the objective? c) are there any math errors? (typos can make a problem irretrievable) so, in that case, I guess I’ll make them the betas of my alpha pack of designers.

     b)   Identify your role.

As previously mentioned, I’ll be the lead designer, but I always like to give myself cool titles (also seen previously) so I’ll be the Alpha of this little pack and others who come and go to help me with be my Betas. (Yes, yes, I did just have myself a Teen Wolf moment. If you haven’t noticed the nerd typing these blog posts, then I don’t think you’ve paid attention to the last several posts…)

 Me - Alpha Designer

 Them - Beta Designers

c)   Explain the type of courses or other eLearning development the template is for (higher education course, corporate training etc.)

In its purest form, this template is designed for my use in developing course for the 9-12 level. I think it could readily be applied to the 6-8 grade level. Elementary is too different from Secondary for me to feel that I have an informed opinion of whether it would work well or not. I look forward to the comments of my elementary age teaching peers.

d)   Provide a clear label for all included elements.

        1) Identify what to teach –

I) the course material is pre-determined by the standards the state of CA requires in K – 12 instruction

II) the (greater scale) learning objectives are pre-determined by the district’s interpretation of the CA adopted standards

III) the pre-requisites of the course will be pre-determined by a) the district and b) the site administration

IV) the teaching sequence within larger topics can generally be determined by the teacher, but for designing an eLearning course (something so GREATLY outside of the norm for our district) adhering to the pre-determined teaching sequence would alleviate concerns of administration so I would include it here.

        2) Analyze learner’s needs and abilities for this course. – Take a look at     

        what can be expected of each learner as far as their     

        computer/technology skills, math skills, and comfort with ambiguous  

        and new ideas.

3) Create tests – How do I know that the learners have met the objectives. This is the one big revise for me based on Horton’s (2012) statement to, “Develop tests first before the content that way the tests can make the objectives more concrete and specific to better guide the development of learning activities and media.” This is a really fair point and one I use in my classroom design for face-to-face projects. Why didn’t I have it like this the first time?

         4) Pick the approach to meet each objective – as directed by both the  

         needs of the learners, the needs of the course, the needs of the instructor  

         and the type of activities that are best going to meet the objectives so  

         students can be successful.

        5) Create objects to accomplish objectives – make educational magic!

"Sometimes lies are more dependable than the truth."

Blog Post 9 (Chapters 7 and 8)

1. Define the terms "Game" and "Simulation" as they relate to eLearning.

·     There is seemingly little difference between a Game and a simulation. Games and simulations are both purposeful: they teach first and entertain second. Games draw on established conventions of quiz show, board and video games whereas, simulations immerse learners in a work-related context and let them verify that they can complete a task. They both provide some type of immediate feedback. The learner is the player in a Game and the user in a Simulation.

·     The author of our text defined a game as a simulation that involves a personally challenging task (p. 329) an ambiguous definition that does little to help distinguish between the two. Later on he says that the difference between a game and simulation can be determined in the following manner: "If game sounds frivolous, call it a simulation. If simulation sounds too stuffy or expensive, call it a game."

·     Looking outside of our text for clarification on the difference between a game and a simulation, I was reminded of one of my favorite books of all time, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

      For background on Ender’s Game, watch the trailer here.

In this book, Ender has to learn a great deal of new material and have the chance to fine-tune his understanding and application of this material outside of a high- risk environment. Failure to learn and apply could, quite literally, result in the end of Earth. I see the simulation being in 2 locations 1) the battle room where army’s battle each other in zero gravity, with flash suits that freeze their bodies working to master tactics and strategy to find the most successful tactics to best each other and 2) in the time when he works with the foremost battle commander in Earth’s history in the new simulator where he is in charge of entire fleets. Watch a protracted (or just a portion) of the clip here to see the 2^nd simulator. (I have no aspirations of achieving anything this realistic for the courses I plan. :-D)

The game is what Ender works with in his free time when he gets to roam around and interact with the environment created for him by the mind game. The objective of the game for the trainers is to ascertain trainees frame of mind. It’s less formal and (seemingly) less high stakes.

2. What are the key characteristics of a Simulation?

·           The learner is presented with a goal.

·           The learner operates inside of an environment.

·           The learner controls the sequence of events presented as choices in the environment.

·           Learners decide and act

·           Learning results from practice (as much as they want/need) and authentic feedback, the consequences of their choices/actions.

·           Useful for educating and training workers

3. What are some of the strengths or advantages of Games and Simulations in eLearning?

·           The reaction of any class of students when you tell them they are going to play a game.

·           Games and simulations show consequences not normally visible to the learner through normal learning. How will my actions impact my company’s branches throughout Coachella Valley? How will staffing decisions and course offerings impact my school, students and community 3, 5, even 10 years from now? (cumulative effect of widespread changes, i.e. they occur too quickly, take too long, occur far away in physical space, are too small or large or are too abstract.)

·           Games and simulations let learners make mistakes without suffering permanent consequences. They can make mistakes that would result in death, injury, imprisonment, financial collapse, etc. in the real world without actually having to go through it.

·           Encourage learners to pause, reflect and revise. (Allows for the learner to rethink and try alternative approaches.)

Take for example this logic problem that I did with my Geometry students: Traffic Jam I had them act it out with their bodies, but the site has this handy applet: Traffic Jam Applet that allows them to try to solve in various ways. Maybe they’ve found a solution method with 24 moves, but can use the applet to find one with 21 or 15.

·           Provides a laboratory to test different hypotheses, models, tactics and strategies. (as evidenced by the Ender’s Game clips above)

·           Simplify complex situations – make relationships explicit to learners

·           Opportunities for abundant practice and feedback

·           Reawaken learning by play

·           Allow people to master the skills that they need to improve and skip over practice for skills of which they have already achieved mastery.

·           Helps people master the subtlety and more complex skills.

4. What are some of the weaknesses or disadvantages of Games and Simulations in eLearning?

·           A learner has to have enough base knowledge to actually engage.

·           Cost of development is egregiously high.

·           Length of time for development is extensive the more complex (and likely, engaging, too) the game is.

5. Pick a topic and describe a game or a simulation that would be an effective learning activity.

Revisiting my dream algebra 2 honors course, one major idea that students need to master is the identification of types of functions (e.g. linear, exponential, quadratic, etc.) Being able to recognize the characteristics of each of these function types in equations, tables of data, graphs and word problems is critical to successful application for how could one possibly expect to model a situation with a certain pattern if one has incorrectly determined to which function family it belongs. So, with the objective of this game being: teach learners to identify functions in various forms and match them with the same function in its other forms, I would suggest a game of dominos.

The game would work like this:

Players would be able to select:

·           The family/families of functions they would like to practice: Linear, Exponential, Quadratic, Cubic, Rational, Mixed (in selecting this option they can choose both which of the other 5 sets they would like to pull to create their mixed set from 2 groups to 5 groups.)

·           The number of dominos with which they would like to work

Once the learner has made their selections, they would be able to start the game. The interface would open with a jumble of tiles reflecting their previous choices. Then, like the game of dominos, the learner would work to create a domino train that includes all the tiles given. The trains would be designed so that all pieces are used and so that each left hand domino has only one right hand domino match. The feedback comes as they work to build their train. If they finish the train without having placed all of their tiles, then they know that they have made a mistake. As this would be done online, they would also be able to link back into the tutorial aspects in case they need to revisit a certain key characteristic as they work. Upon completion of their train they would submit and, ideally, through these checks and balances they would have applied their understanding of the key characteristics of each family to create a full train.

Ex: (The actual interface would look much better and be maneuverable) 

6. Describe the development process you would use to create the game or simulation described above.

First and foremost, as we design the game we need to keep our objective (as we’ve picked one) in mind.

Objective: teach learners to identify functions in various forms and match them with the same function in its other forms.

Each aspect of the game play needs to support this objective and the goal set for the learner needs to be such that the individual will be able to master the objective.

Goal: Using the dominos given, make a train that links each function to itself as presented in its various forms. You are successful when you have created a train that correctly links all dominos.

Working with my team, we’ll build a prototype image bank. That image bank will have linear, exponential, quadratic, cubic, and rational functions in their graph, equation, table and situation (word problem) forms sketched by our subject matter expert (me). The subject matter expert will share the prototype bank without its image matching tags to see if another subject matter expert (one of my colleagues) can make matches from the bank so that every image has a match.

Once the prototype image bank is built, it’ll be sent to our graphic designer/web coding expert(s) (graphics design class at school and ??? my sister?). They’ll 1) build the images on the computer, 2) tag the images (outside of learner view) so that each image knows its mate, 3) build the graphical interface that pulls from the image bank, 4) assembles these images onto the dominos and sets a solution train based on the tags 5) designs the graphical interface such that the learner can build their train in any pattern that they like so long as it matches the tagged images together along one of the 3 faces, generally following domino train patterns from real life.

Following this work by the graphic designer/web coding expert(s), it’ll go back to the subject matter experts (me and my colleagues in the math dept.) to be tested. We will also make sure to test it in each of the computer labs on campus and on several home computers to verify its functionality over various hardware systems.