Synthesis Assignment:
A final e-portfolio synthesis reflection, including a:
● 1-2 paragraph précis of your flight path
● Substantive, comprehensive, and detailed reflection about your eLearning toolkit experiences
● Substantive, comprehensive and detailed reflection about your overall ETEC 565A experience
● Substantive, comprehensive and detailed reflection about next steps for you, in terms of your practice in educational technology, which could include what technologies you hope to explore moving forward, or how you plan on engaging as a lifelong learner in terms of educational technology?
Flightpath Précis
In my initial flight path I outlined my winding path to the MET from the design disciplines and my belief in how one might inform the other. Basically, I have a great interest in how design and educational theory can be fused, and at the beginning of this course communicated my desire to: establish a firm footing in pedagogical theory and practice; to learn how to select and apply relevant frameworks and theory; how to structure effective modules & resources for learning; and, how to adapt these practices to non-conventional (creative/design/studio-oriented) learning situations. I hoped to explore frameworks like Moodle/Blackboard, WordPress, and Web/Learn 2.0 tools to evaluate their features, flexibility and affordances. My motive in doing this started out as a way to validate and improve my own LMS concept, but has evolved during my progression through the MET. During my explorations, I’ve come to believe that experiences like the unorthodox blend of IBL/PBL/CoP/CLE/Random-Ideation that I encountered here and in my undergrad can be facilitated powerfully through creative and dynamic pedagogical use of technology at a post-secondary level. For my future, I envision a meld of design thinking, exploration, inquiry, and teaching as a meaningful part of an effective Learn 3.0 strategy. I wanted to explore these possibilities by pushing an existing LMS framework (Moodle) farther (farther than even required in the course) to understand the current state of LMS frameworks in relation to my own future work. Through my hijacking/redesign of the Moodle interface, creative media use selection/implementation strategies, and blend of creative pedagogy (see my course site post for details), I am happy to say that I accomplished all of my intended goals (with the exception of fully exploring Blackboard). I very much feel as though I have pushed my creative limits, explored relevant boundaries, and learned to select and apply theory and frameworks with a critical eye in relation to seating these activities in theory and context. I have, and will continue to extend this exploration in my self-hosted, custom-themed Moodle install, as well as in my future concept LMS re-design.
eLearning Toolkit Experiences
For me, the ETEC 565A eLearning Toolkit MediaWiki was a great launch-pad for my technological explorations. Although I tended to quickly surf beyond this for more in-depth resources, I returned frequently as it provided a range of resources for just-in-time knowledge. I was pleased to find a Web Design and HTML Authoring entry which linked to relevant and useful to-do’s and not-to-do’s when working with HTML. Although I’m experienced with these, I found myself re-reading useful particulars to brush up on. U followed many of the important principles while hijacking my Moodle layout such as: not auto-playing videos; understanding the importance of typography; adequate spacing; individual pages vs endless scroll (the reason why I hijacked the moodle layout); the use of alt tags; linking between content (leading to greater course interactivity); wire-framing and storyboarding. All of these had an impact on my weekly forum/blog posts as well as my design decisions to complete my course modules. With regard to other e-Learning Toolkit resources, I also made use of the ‘design questions/issues’ and ‘reflection/practice’ activities under the Synchronous Communications Tools entry as they related to a weekly discussion topic. This helped in my decision making process and reflective process in Synchronous/Asynchronous tools post activity. The resulting creation also helped to populate and inform the week 2 activity of my Moodule course. The Social Software, Weblogs and Wikis entries were equally useful for several of the class discussion forum topics and I also found myself referring often to the ETEC 510 Design Wiki linked in the toolkit for relevant readings resources to summon. Overall, the resources provided in the Toolkit helped me to pull in many different ideas and perspectives, and the readings found there constituted some of the final reference quotes used in my Final Module reflection.
ETEC 565A Experience [and an analysis since I’m newly trained at this!] 😉
In contrast to my ETEC 510 class (which I see as having a macro approach of broad overarching frameworks and theoretical application only), 565A allowed for a much more focused (micro?) approach. Rather than answering broad general questions in relation to our own diverse contexts, we were first given problem scenarios where we had to apply theory seated in a singular shared context. This allowed me/us to situate ourselves more fully and to develop our knowledge collectively. For me this fostered a greater desire for, and feeling of shared social-presence Anderson (2008). This meant I felt like a part of a community of practitioners (Barab & Duffy, 2000) in a model that actively supports knowledge-building (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994). Each weekly problem scenario served as inquiry-based case for exploration, and the forums served as a type of CAA supported self and peer assessment (Jenkins, 2004). Similar to design studio pedagogy, this conceptual exploration of ‘fuzzy’ problems and perplexity, left much room to inspire creative solutions and exploration (Tudor, 2008). It was really interesting to see just how much each person’s thoughts or approaches differed based on experience and socio-cultural context. These differing views forced me to challenge my own assumptions and reactions, widening and revising my initial thoughts, views and approaches. In short, I was highly meta-cognitive!
The 6-7 medium-sized e-portfolio projects then asked us to our newly expanded insights/learning into play in own realms of thinking and creating (after much valued group practice) in a meaningful and timely way. This was the most engaged MET community that I’ve experienced to date as my sixth class in the MET. It was also first time that I encountered high levels of student-teacher interaction (Anderson, 2008) that effectively helped direct and further inquiry. [Thanks for that John!] The weekly problems fostered high levels of student-community interaction and the individual activities fostered high levels of student-content interaction (2008). This became manifest in my own work as I was able to work with the knowledge presented in a way that related to my own context. In sum, social-, teaching-, and cognitive- presence for me were all very high. It was the frequency of interactions, projects, and formative assessment that helped to motivate my learning by better distributing my effort and interests (Gibbs & Simpson, 2005). As a result, I received feedback more often, I was able to use this feedback more reflectively (during the course rather than after it, unlike MOST of my other MET courses), and was able attend to it more effectively (Jenkins, 2004). In all honesty, I know now that I prefer a higher-frequency of medium-sized assignments to that of a few high-stakes assignments, as this better helps to scaffold my learning experience and directly apply my knowledge. It might be my newly re-wired, on-the-cusp-between-generation-Z/Millennial-brain speaking, but a higher frequency of assignments and interactivities helped not only to better secure my engagement, but to ensure that I didn’t become bored or complacent during the course of learning. I discovered recently that increased frequency of interaction and activity in online activities may be considered a valid and useful part of ‘Digital Native Methodology‘ (Prensky, 2001). I plan to explore this idea more in my own future work.
Future Directions
To design of course! Since I’ve already written a novel here, I’ll refer back to my beginning paragraph where I explain how my beliefs are evolving, and propelling me towards the design (hopefully) of Learn 3.0 tools. After this course (and the MET) I plan to bring my newly trained, critical eye back to my earlier LMS concept designs. I plan to write extensively about it, situating my choices in the educational theories and frameworks to validate and strengthen/modify my design decisions. I have amassed a library of resources, references and tools with which to do this, and I plan to continue collecting and developing these in any way that I am able. I actually find myself excited by the flexibility of open-source resources, CMS and LMS frameworks like Moodle, Symphony and WordPress (although they may seem inflexible if you’re not into the coding bits). I recently found this document by the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD) which lists the LMS/CMS resources used by a number of privately held creative institutions. This has me investigating such services as Canvas, Elgg, Mahara, and a few others. Interestingly, I now also plan to pursue instructional design activities, using my newly acquired skills and integrating my industrial, interaction, and communication design skills. I’d be happy to eventually teach and consult regarding technology for learning (in addition to design), as I’m learning to find confidence in these unexpected aptitudes. Being in love with learning can constitute a good teacher and being in love with design and technology (and all the ‘nerdy bits’ that accompany this) creates a wonderful trans-disciplinary space within in which to work. I’m looking forward to getting started!
