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!