Category: edci335

Link: https://parmbbedci3352025.opened.ca/interaction/?unapproved=1&moderation-hash=b9f74e536c8e1bd867136e5a2e344c39#comment-1

I really like the video that you chose and I similarly I wrote that I imagined my learners would take notes as a response to watching the video that I chose. I can see that your post-video activity incorporates authentic assessment by utilizing a constructivist approach that relates to higher-order thinking skills of problem solving. Giving students the opportunity to connect to past experiences also goes back to the cognitivists and provides an excellent space for self-reflection. I also liked your array of feedback with self-assessment, instructor comments, and quizzes. This gave me some ideas for ways to broaden my feedback opportunities as mine was more related to instructor feedback. You also did an excellent job by incorporating the notes on accessibility and reducing barriers. Overall really solid response, I think you answered the prompts really well and I don’t have any major suggestions!

• In what way are they likely to respond to the video on their own, e.g., make notes, do an activity, or think about the topic (learner-generated)? Learners watching this video are most likely to take notes because the video presents lots of facts pertaining to the topic. The facts presented in the video would also cause the learners to write a self-reflection of their own sleep patterns, based upon the sleep patterns they heard in the video. These self-reflections are an example of User-generated interactivity (Bates, 2019), where the video could naturally invoke learners to reflect on the hours of sleep they get every night, how often they dream, or how tired they feel after waking up, etc.  
• What activity could you suggest that they do after they have watched the video (designed)? What type of knowledge or skill would that activity help develop? What medium or technology would students use to do the activity? After watching the video, learners could be asked to participate in an online discussion forum that promotes learner/learner and learner/instructor interactivity (“Assessing Interaction”, 2023). Open-ended prompts will be set such as this example question, “After watching this video, think about your own peers. Do you think that all teenagers reach full sleep cycles every night?” These prompts can allow learners to incorporate self-reflections of their own sleep and the new facts that they learned in the video I provided, as well as have an idea of what the instructor wants the learner to get out of watching the video. Online discussion forums are an example of designed interactivity, where instructor intervention is necessary for interaction to occur (Bates, 2019). Interaction between learners and instructors promotes higher-order cognitive skills like critical thinking.    
• How would students get feedback on the activity that you set? What medium or technology would they and/or you use for getting and giving feedback on their activity? Students would receive individual feedback from the instructor on the quality of their individual response, as well as responses to peers and their overall interaction with the material presented in the video. Since the discussion took place in an online forum, the feedback would be sent to the learner directly from the instructor in the same online space that the forum took place in. 
• How much work for you would that activity cause? Would the work be both manageable and worthwhile? Could the activity be scaled for larger numbers of students? Discussion forums are perfect for small or large group discussions because no matter what there will be some sort of activity and participants. However, designed interactivity often causes more work for the instructor because of the time creating the activity and distributing feedback (Bates, 2019). By setting prompts and word counts for responses, the work could be lessened. This work is completely worthwhile because it allows the instructor to receive direct feedback from students on their interaction with the material, as well as allowing the student to improve upon their work by receiving feedback from their instructor.

Reference

Bates, W. A. (2019). 9.6 Interaction, Teaching in a Digital Age – Second Edition, https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/chapter/pedagogical-roles-for-text-audio-and-video/.

It is very helpful that you gave an introduction to your groups project as it provides a good background for readers who are unaware of your topic. Alzheimer’s is a very complex subject that can be very useful to teach, especially in the name of this week’s topic on accessibility. I liked that you mentioned how articles can be hard to focus on for long periods of time, so therefore your suggestion of videos and diagrams will help alleviate this concern. I think it would be interesting if in your assessment you elaborated on the diagram you described and had students draw their own diagram on the stages of Alzheimer’s to asses how well they absorbed what you presented during the learning process. Or possibly a self-reflection from the students reflecting on a combination of elements that you presented and which activities they enjoyed the most. Overall, from your description it seems that your project has a lot of potential for using the accessibility methods we have learned in our course material!

Link to Response: https://bashar.opened.ca/post-3/?unapproved=14&moderation-hash=adf48bfa04f665a7d02a295d352baa52#comment-14

1. How will your interactive learning resource specifically ensure that the needs of all learners can be met?

Our interactive learning resource can ensure universal accessibility by supplying a diversity in activities for learners to use, scaffolds/supports, and principles like UDL, i.e., planning for barriers that learners may encounter. First of all, our learning activities and assessments include a mix of reading, writing, discussion, and self-reflection. Using a diverse number of learning methods will allow all students to be accommodated. Our interactive learning resource also incorporates the use of technology by providing a list of videos for learners to watch in case they want more information on the sub-topics or are confused and need more clarification. Online articles are also linked throughout the introduction and misconceptions section in order to offer even more clarification on the information that is being provided. Reducing barriers can also be applied in the grading scale. As described in the post on Measuring Learning, the less precise the grading scale, the better. Our interactive learning resource can implement a grading scale with approximately four to five broad categories of ratings, such as the one, two, three four scale, with one being the lowest grade, and four being the highest grade. Instead of percentages, this scale will allow for wiggle room with the diversity of students and their work abilities in the classroom.        

2. Choose one (or more) of your planned learning activities from your Blueprint and identify any barriers to student success. How can you alter or adjust your current plan to reduce those barriers?

One of our learning activities involves a jigsaw group activity where students gather into groups and read articles, and are then instructed to articulate the information from their chosen article and teach it to the class. Although this exercise is efficient and a way to increase participation, this activity can be improved by catering to students with disabilities. Such as the fact that the activity solely attains information from articles. The delivery of information to the groups could be broadened beyond articles to include podcasts, slideshows made by the instructor, or even a transcript for deaf students or those who are learning English as a second language, an example mentioned in the Universal Learning Post for this week. In general the suggestion for the jigsaw learning activity can fall under the category of using technology to increase accessibility in the classroom and allow students of all abilities to be equally engaged.

Link: https://dawsoncharles.opened.ca/2025/02/06/blog-post-2/?unapproved=9&moderation-hash=2e2c2d8315394f2376dee636d32bcfc2#comment-9

This is a really great response, not only to learn from and read, but it is also visually stimulating. Separating each component of your post into different sections made it very clear and easy to understand. I liked that you described students in open pedadgogy as “active contributors rather than passive consumers,” which encapsulates what open pedagogy is all about, student participation. It was also helpful that you included hyper links to a website and video, making your blog post in general more engaging as it links to even more information on the subject. As a member of your learning pod I enjoyed your suggestion of using open pedadgogy to encourage learners to make videos of their sleep strategies in the interactive learning resource. Overall, this blog post does a good job at answering the prompts, as well as providing thorough information on the subject of open pedagogy. Good job!

I will describe the design thinking approach to learning. I will first use information from our assigned post on Planning Frameworks, which says that design thinking is an approach to learning that encourages learners to prototype in order to solve a real world problem. Design thinking is also based in the category of the Understanding by Design principles, where instructors plan their courses based on a set of desired outcomes. Design thinking says that learning designers must base their objectives off of the human needs of their learners because empathy and human need are the foundation of design thinking. There are five phases (empathy, define, ideate, prototype, and test) which can be incorporated into an outline of a project (once an instructor has grabbed the learner’s attention). During these five phases learning designers may find they need to revisit the phases in order to better cater the design to their learners. Overall, the post Planning Frameworks argues that design thinking uses a group-based approach that motivates students to solve a problem in a creative and pragmatic way (like the constructivist theory), where the thinking process of the designer is catered to the individual who will benefit from the result of the project. I found more information on design thinking in a blog by the Harvard Business School titled What is Design Thinking & Why is it Important? This blog provides the insight of design thinking into work life. For example, the blog suggests that employers should increase employee engagement and not focus on problem-solving (Han 2022). Reading through the rest of the blog provides awareness into design thinking outside the realm of education, such as design thinkings’ benefits in the modern working world.

In my group’s interactive learning resource on the topic of sleep, the learning objectives and activities line up with a constructivists approach and therefore align with design thinking. To incorporate design thinking into our resources, we can find more learning activities that incorporate the needs of the participants in our study of sleep, where learners track their sleep and mood everyday. Asking the learners ways in which they prefer to track their sleep or what is most convenient for them can help the learners feel motivated to participate in tracking their sleep and discussing their experiences. By incorporating the opinions and needs of our learners, my group can integrate design thinking into our interactive learning resource.

Reference

Han, Esther. (2022, Jan. 18). What is Design Thinking and Why is it Important? Harvard Business School Online. https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/what-is-design-thinking.

https://lunaz.opened.ca/

Your post very deeply connected the course material to your own lived experiences which I enjoyed reading! I relate to the fact that you made a mind map to comprehend the difference between cognitivism and constructivism, as I had a similar process for figuring out the concepts I found difficult to understand at first. Your interests in the health informatics field and climate change are interesting to read as I don’t know much in those fields, and I found your lessons in climate change to be very useful to learners, specifically in cognitivism with graphic organizers, as those are really good ways to see the mental processes that students go through. From your other writing on constructivism I can see why that is your preferred learning style as it really shows through that you care about activism and helping others any way you can in the real world. Lastly, I liked how you took a short answer approach and answered several prompts. I took the opposite approach and answered two prompts with long answers, but after reading yours I will definitely try the multiple short answer prompts for my next blog post!

1. What concept did you find difficult to understand? How did you approach learning the concept?

The concept I found difficult to understand was the confirmation bias in the Why is Learning Hard? post. I was initially confused between the factors of the way students understood the misconceptions vs. the correct information. I couldn’t understand how the misconceptions produced better learning results than correct information. After rewatching that part and reading the rest of the post it began to make sense to me that confirmation bias must be looked at through the lens of student engagement. I realized I was confusing myself by thinking that the misconceptions simply made the students do better on the quiz. I now know that confirmation bias is the understanding that students are less engaged with the material presented to them when they are aware that the material is correct. Hearing incorrect material made the students more engaged and aware of what is wrong so that they don’t put that information on the quiz.

2. Based on your reading, would you consider your current instruction style more behaviorist, cognitivist, or constructivist? Elaborate with your specific mindset and examples.

I would consider my instruction style mostly cognitivist, but it could also be a bit constructivist. I like the idea of taking a student’s previous understanding and incorporating it into lessons as an aim to help them understand the material I am teaching. For example I like to use activities that force the learner to be an active participant instead of just a passive learner. One activity is the pair and share, where I would propose a prompt before the lesson giving me the opportunity to hear their knowledge of the subject. The students get into small groups and each read out their answers to get the conversation going. After the lesson I propose that students take what they know and what they learned to answer a question in small groups again. This gives the opportunity to not only expand on their knowledge, but also assure that everyone gets a chance to participate, no matter if they like speaking or not. I am using prompts and questions, but it is through the learner’s answers that I take into account their mental processing and do not just let them passively answer like in behaviorism.

Hello! My name is Katelyn Grove and I am in my second year at UVic studying history and minoring in education. I am originally from San Diego, California, and after spending the past year and a half in Victoria I truly have an appreciation for all parts of the West Coast! I’m excited to build up my posts on this blog!