Adventures in MET Land

TELE Design Introduction

The ultimate goal of our technology enhanced learning environment (TELE) team is to create a deep meaningful face-to-face learning environment to support students learning/understanding of the chemistry topic stoichiometry. In order to create such an environment, the pedagogies of constructivist learning, scaffolding, and community of practice were all taken into consideration. The resulting design creates a TELE that will help students become successful practitioners in stoichiometry. Attached to the mini assignment will be our groups BC Chemistry 11 Unit map and its corresponding unit lesson plan. The actual learning environment will be hosted within a Moodle course shell and can be observed by clicking here. Click on “Dale Addis – Chemistry 11”, sign in as a guest and scroll down to unit 7 – stoichiometry.

TELE Design Plan

The beginning of the unit starts with an introductory page. A few written examples to introduce stoichiometry to the students are provided. A video showing students the process of stoichiometry follows. This allows students to see what they will be able to do upon completing the unit and provides them context as to why they are performing the unit (Merrill, 2007). The introductory page continues to outline to students how to access the virtual labs followed by blog/discussion post instructions, unit timeline, and pointers to be successful within the unit. Students are instructed to post at least two reflective blog posts per week, unless a specific blog activity is indicated within one of the learning sections. In this case the specific blog activity will act as one of the weekly mandatory blog posts. Since Moodle’s blog does not support comments, discussion forums will be used to support asynchronous communication activities. Assigned blog and discussion activities will be indicated at the end of the specific learning sections. Unit due dates will be posted within the embedded Google calendar. Student work will be conducted on Tablet PC’s. Tablets will allow students to perform mathematical work easier than a laptop with an equation editor (Oviatt, Arthur & Cohen, 2006). Tablets will allow students to maintain a single source of documents and to submit labs and other materials online. Paper will only be exchanged between students and teachers in times of marked tests and quizzes.

Five learning sections and a final assignments information page follow the introduction page. Learning sections range from mole coefficients to percent yield. At the beginning of each learning section students will be required to write a Moodle supported formative practice quiz of the last day’s lesson or a marked paper based quiz. Within learning sections one through four a constructivist approach is used. Virtual labs from Chemcollective.org (2010) act as authentic learning objectives. Students will use virtual labs to solve problems or authenticate rigor based mathematical problems. Students will participate in a community of learning in groups of two or three and will be required to hand in a single virtual lab assignment. Text based notes, with screencast mathematical solutions, will be used to scaffold students stoichiometric understanding and help them complete the virtual lab assignments. Students will be encouraged to print the notes to MS OneNote and digitally ink in the example solutions while watching the worked screencast solutions. Instead of using a virtual lab for section 7.5, students will go through the guided notes and use the extra in-class time to create a flow chart for the unit’s hands on lab. Homework style section questions will be assigned upon completion of the virtual lab assignments (or reading/watching of the notes in the case of section 7.5). In-class discussions will be used to complete the in-class portion of the lesson. At the end of various sections, blog and discussion post writings will be assigned. Students will be required to comment on at least two other students’ discussion posts. The final lesson page (assignments information page) outlines expectations for a hands-on lab, unit review assignment, and the final unit blog activity where students will be required to write a unit reflection and post a screencast explaining how they solved one of the virtual lab assignment problems.

TELE Design Rational

A constructivist style of learning is incorporated within our design model. As stated by Jonassen (1999), students within constructivist environments learn concepts through the solving of problems. Virtual lab assignments will consist of challenging problems which students will be expected to solve using problem-solving skills. Worked examples will be used to scaffold student’s stoichiometric understanding, which in turn help students to develop strategies and tools to solve these problems (Jonassen, 1999). The use of virtual labs will enhance student understanding of chemistry concepts. They allow students to manipulate variables in a similar manner as to real world labs (Ash, 2009); thus, will act as authentic learning artefacts’ within our TELE. Authentic activities help students transfer knowledge and allow them to take more responsibility for their learning (Francom et al, 2009).

In-class discussions and online discussion forums are incorporated into the design to help create a community of learning. In constructivist learning environments, Jonassen (1999) recommends students collaborate to generate and expand knowledge. In-class discussions/collaboration on assignments will help students construct knowledge. However, these in-class discussions may be controlled by a few individuals, which does not allow shy students to participate nor provide students with enough time to reflect on an answer (Wang & Hsua, 2008). On-line discussion forums provide shy students with a venue to speak and all students with time to respond with reflective answers. However, they are a collection of opinions and feedback is specific. Blogs will be used to allow students to write reflective responses not led by the class. This will allow them to take ownership of their authored space (Wang & Woo, 2008). Blogs in conjunction with virtual/real labs, Moodle, tablets, screencast videos, text notes, homework problems, and discussions will allow students to meet our TELE goal.  Altogether they will create a learning environment that will help students become proficient in stoichiometric knowledge.

References

Ash, K. (2009). High-tech simulations linked to learning. Education Week, 28(28), 20-23.

chemcollective. (2010, March 29). Retrieved March 31, 2010, from chemcollective:            chemcollective.org

Francom, G., Bybee, D., Wolfersberger, M., Mendenhall, A., & Merrill, M. (2009). A Task-          Centered Approach to Freshman-Level General Biology. Bioscene: Journal of College          Biology Teaching, 35(1), 66-73.

Jonassen, D. (1999). Designing constructivist learning environments. In C.M. Reigeluth (Ed.),      Instructional-design theories and models: Volume II (pp 215-239). Mahwah, NJ:             Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Merrill, M. D. (2007). A task-centred instructional strategy. Journal of research on technlogy in    education , 5-22.

Oviatt, S., Arthur, A., & Cohen, J. (2006). Quiet interfaces that help students think.          Proceedings of the 19th annual ACM sumposium on user interface software and        technology, (pp. 191 – 200). Montreux.

Wang, S., & Hsua, H. (2008). Reflections on Using Blogs to Expand In-Class Discussion.            TechTrends: Linking Research and Practice to Improve Learning, 52(3), 81-85.

Wang, Q., & Woo, H. (2008, September 1). The affordances of weblogs and discussion forums    for learning: A comparative analysis. Educational Technology Magazine: The Magazine     for Managers of Change in Education, 48(5), 34-38.