Flight Path Assignment:

Write a proposed flight path during ETEC 565A. Tell us a bit about yourself, your experience, and your goals for this course (or, perhaps, the MET). Explain what you want to learn about Learning Management Systems (LMS), assessment, social software, and multimedia. Give your best estimate about what resources you would need to master these technologies as a novice professional. Be sure to cite relevant literature to support your decision. Be as specific as you can, even at this early stage: you won’t be penalized for your priorities evolving as the course proceeds. But you might not get the full benefit of ETEC 565A if you start out with too general an idea of your aspirations. Your entry should be no more than 1,000 words. Once completed you will “submit” your assignment by publishing it on the Flight Path page of your e-portfolio. Revisit the WordPress setup instructions as required.

Where I came from

My journey to the MET program has been a winding one, I began as a tech & administrative nerd, tutor and casual trainer. I moving on to web design and (minor) web development, later pursuing my undergraduate degree at Emily Carr University in industrial (product) design (ID). In my second year of study I began to focus on systems design, and decided to crosspollinate with communication (ComD) and interaction design (IxD). Basically, I was very fortunate to be permitted to pursue an interdisciplinary path given the very directed area of the different design concentrations.

My creative brain was obsessed with learning about and designing for experiences. I began to co-create, design, and splice together technology-based concepts for healthcare and education, and also began noticing how LMS &CMS systems fail to adequately address the needs of design studio culture. This epiphany lead me to focus my graduating project on re-envisioning a LMS concept to better support students of art, design, and dynamic media. Opportunities for development sprang up but it was only a concept and I quickly realized that I was inexperienced and didn’t want to design for education without having a sound footing in pedagogical theory and practice (which is how I came to the MET program). The MET has so far been the perfect way to pursue my goals, and through my meandering path I bring with me a little bit of technical nerdity: experience in web design (mostly front-end, some back-end HTML, CSS, Flash, some JAVA, PHP & MySQL). I’ve also played with interface design, UI testing, cognitive ergonomics and the like, and want to learn to extend and apply these skills to something meaningful.

Where I want to go

I’ve played a lot with WordPress, PHP script installations, and some customization but have had little time to experiment with Moodle or Blackboard. I’m highly interested in: the customization of Moodle, interface design, and with the potential to link splice or integrate Moodle and WordPress and/or other open-source platforms that are commonly used in smaller institutions due to budgetary considerations. I want to learn how to structure effective modules for learning while applying frameworks and theory that are adapted and effective for non-conventional (creative) learning situations. I also want to capture the attention of students that prefer to work in dynamic and highly visual online spaces. Finding ways to integrate new and dynamic media, online services, and collaboration tools would also be wonderful and part of my flight-path. What I really, really want to do (in the long run) is to help design new LMS solutions that cater to and support creative/design studio culture and activities on the web. In this class (in addition to the items listed above) I am hoping to gain experience from working with existing LMS frameworks to better understand their capabilities and limitations. I’d also like to assess if any of these existing system may be flexible enough to facilitate my long term goals.

I know this is a brief flightpath, but it is also a very directed one that will no doubt evolve and change as I learn and explore!

– Bobbi : )

 

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Some resources and materials that I identify with and will need along the way are:

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Studio Culture & Creative Pedagogy:

Tudor, R. (2008). The pedagogy of creativity: Understanding higher order capability development in design and arts education. Retrieved from http://upcommons.upc.edu/revistes/bitstream/2099/5756/1/l4_pap_Tudor.pdf

Dittmar, A., & Forbrig, P., (2013). Creative practices in the design studio culture: collaboration and communication.  Cognition, Technology & Work, 415-443.
Available here (UBC ezproxy login required).

Nováková, K., Achten, H., & Matějovská, D. (2010). A Design Studio Pedagogy for Experiments with Unusual Material, Collaboration and Web Communication. International Journal of Architectural Computing, 8(4), 557-572.

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Educational Design, Theory & Frameworks:

Anderson, T. (Ed.). (2008). The theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca University Press.
Available here (UBC ezproxy login required).

Chickering, A.W. and Gamson, Z.F. (1987).  Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.  American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), p. 3-7.
Available here.

Chickering, A. W., & Ehrmann, S.C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6.
Available here.

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

Dick, W., & Carey, L. (1990). The systematic design of instruction. New York: Harper Collins. Chapter 1: Introduction to instructional design (pp. 2-11).

“Pertinent avenues of educational theory that support this pedagogical approach include the work of Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (1995) on ‘productive’ versus ‘reproductive’ learning, the culturally pragmatic perspectives of John Dewey (1933, 1934 & 1938), the design oriented investigations of Donald Schon (1985) and the socially situated learning principles espoused by Etienne Wenger (1998) among others.”

– R. Tudor

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Technical Resources:

Rice, W., (2007) Moodle Teaching Techniques: Creative Ways to Use Moodle for Constructing Online Learning Solutions. Packet Publishing. Available here (UBC ezproxy login required).

Moodle Documentation. Available here.

WordPress Codex. Available here.

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Potential Extra Resources:

Bates, A. W., and Poole, G. (2003). Effective teaching with technology in higher education: Foundations for success. New York: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated.

Broadfoot, O., & Bennett, R. (2003). Design Studios: Online?. In Apple University Consortium Academic and Developers Conference Proceedings 2003 (pp. 9-21). Available here.