History of Canadian Music:1917-Present
Assignment 2 Project Documentation
ETEC – 565
UBC Instructor: Tatiana Bourlova
Brendan Clark
Organizational Context and Audience
History of Canadian Music: 1917-Present is a course designed using the Moodle LMS platform and is intended to be delivered in a blended educational setting. The design is largely influenced by the organizational context and the audience expected to have access to the course. The organization is a rural public secondary school operating in British Columbia attended by approximately 800 students from the eighth to twelfth grade. Students attending the secondary school choose an extra set of electives each year offered as short courses which run within the regular timetable. Class time occurs twice a week for a twelve week term. Each term students choose a new short course from a variety of offerings from each department in the school. Courses are offered both as pass/fail non-credit electives as well as for-credit graded classes which allow students to work towards graduation with more options than typically available in a rural school. I intend to offer History of Canadian Music as a partial credit course which supplements grade ten or eleven social studies curriculum allowing students to experience a more narrow focused history course with an alternate form of delivery than a traditional classroom. Students who sign up will meet twice a week in a classroom, computer lab, or library to primarily gain access to the required technology as well as some face-to-face instruction and collaboration. The design is intended to be simple allowing for efficient use of the limited instructional time per week and to allow flexibility so students can guide their own learning. A flexible design will also allow instructors to utilize their own sets of skills if they wish to offer the course in the future. Simplicity is also a necessary design feature as the school’s technology is a limited and many students who attend do not have access to high speed internet at home. The course is designed to be accessible. Because the intended audience is secondary aged public school students, the course’s required online participation will be primarily hosted on the Moodle LMS. Moodle is a private site which helps to ensure privacy, online safety, as well as address copyright issues related to sharing media (these issues to be discussed further below).
Functions of Key Features
The course is designed to be easy to read and easy to use. The course uses of many of Moodle’s platform based tools to guide learners through content and activities in a linear direction while providing convenient access to supplemental resources and supportive information. The most significant key feature is the course’s Moodle homepage where all course announcements and links to each learning module can be found. The homepage also features links to the course calendar, gradebook, and discussion pages. Learning module pages use a variety of media to explain the module’s learning outcomes as well as provide related discussion topics and activity instructions. Moodle’s discussion page is key feature which is used to facilitate online conversation and the sharing of student projects. The discussion page is also used to provide course and tech support when face-to-face support is not available. The course also utilizes a number of Moodle based tools to provide assessment, feedback and course management. These tools mainly include a course gradebook, calendar, assignment dropbox, course evaluation, and announcement pages.
Online Tools: Accessibility and Security Risks
The core set of online tools that the course will utilize are hosted on the Moodle LMS platform. Because Moodle is a privately hosted site designed to be used in educational settings by young learners, the risk associated with providing personal information for online use is low. The use of private discussion forums will be used by both students and facilitators which means that students will be expected to participate, as well as share opinions and different types of media. The course includes a description of proper online etiquette and forum monitoring by the instructor to ensure that the blended courses online component is as safe as possible. To supplement the Moodle platform, the course will use a variety of web-based tools to provide additional functionality. These tools mainly consist of YouTube and other media production and editing sites like Powtoon, Prezi or Audiosauna. Tools may also include some collaboration tools such as Padlet or Google Drive. All online components which are not hosted on the Moodle platform are either optional or can be utilized anonymously; students are not required to share private information on unsecured sites.
Because the course focuses on music it requires the use and manipulation of various types of media. Much of the material used is subject to copyright law and special consideration must be taken. Students will learn what they can and cannot use copyright material for when creating digital projects and all presentation of student projects will be hosted privately to ensure no acts of infringement.
Role of the Instructor
The role of the instructor for this blended course includes providing students with course content, explaining key concepts, helping students navigate the course learning modules, communicating assessment and feedback and providing technical support. The blended delivery of the course means that the instructor will be communicating with students both face-to-face as well as online. In class communication may include one-on-one as well as one-to-many interactions in the form of lectures, group facilitation and individual feedback. Online communication includes the use of the Moodle forum discussion tools as well as email or external communication tools. Online communication will mainly involve asynchronous messaging and sharing of course projects since students will be able to communicate in real-time during classroom sessions. Feedback in the form of formative and summative assessment will be provided using a blend of Moodle tools and face-to-face communication. One of the strengths of the course’s blended format is the ability to give feedback often in a variety of formats.
Structure and Pedagogical Objectives
The course structure is influenced by both social studies and education technology pedagogy. Generally, the course is influenced by constructivist learning theory; this is described by Koohang, Riley, Smith, and Schreurs (2009) as “active construction of new knowledge based on a learner’s prior experience” (p.92). This means that the learner is active and engaged in building their own understandings and meaning as opposed to passively receiving knowledge from a teacher. History of Canadian Music: 1917-Present includes multiple learning modules that each include activities and assignments that allow individuals and groups of learners to make personal decisions and critical choices in their research when creating personalized and active learning. The course is also designed to be participatory in the context of new media. Kafai and Peppler (2011) discuss constructivist theory in the context of creative media production arguing that active learning includes “creative designs, ethical considerations, and technical skills to capture youth’s expressive and intellectual engagement with new media” (p.2). The blended Moodle course includes the sharing of digital media projects which reflect the theory that participating in the production of media requires the learner to not only create their own knowledge but also use critical thinking to present and share what they have learned. The pedagogical objectives from a history perspective are influenced by the skills approach described by The Historical Thinking Project (n.d) and the teaching history backwards theory described by Dresden (1936). The course is structured in a linear fashion with the objective of building of historical thinking skills instead of structured chronologically by content typical of many history courses and textbooks. The historical content of the course will be largely influenced by learner decisions and begin with more recent and relatable materials. As noted above, the Moodle structure is designed to be accessible and have a high degree of usability. The design follows recommendations made in Online Course Layout: Navigation, Structure, Look and Feel from the George Washington University Libraries online resource (n.d.) and Fink’s A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning (2003). These resources both stress the importance of creating a design with a clear starting point and outline so learners have a clear instructions on how to navigate the course content, tools and assessments. These resources also suggest starting the course with student and facilitator introductions to get learners active early in class discussion and to verify that the students enrolled have the basic skills required to participate in the class. Feedback and assessment are another important feature of the course, the design is intended to clearly provide information as to how students will be graded, by including rubrics and easy hand-in tools as well as allow various forms of communication to receive formative and summative assessment. A final key objective is to include communication tools and activities that promote both student and facilitator reflection. Mahmud (2013) argues that reflection is a key component of constructivist learning for both facilitators and learners. The author explains that reflection creates opportunities for learners to find relevancy in the course by encouraging effort to be put towards exploring links between “varied information, social situations, and experiences” (p.247). The course structure includes reflection components for learners throughout the various activities as well as course evaluation tools so that the facilitator can also reflect on the course using student feedback in addition to their individual experience.
References
Dresden, K. W. (1936). Teaching history backwards. Social Studies, 27(1), 37. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/1296520565?accountid=14656
Fink, L. D. (2005). A self-directed guide to designing courses for significant learning. Retrieved March 1, 2015 from Dee Fink & Associates (PDF)
Kafai, Y. & Peppler, K. (2011). Youth, Technology, and DIY: Developing Participatory Competencies in Creative Media Production. In V. L. Gadsden, S. Wortham, and R. Lukose (Eds.), Youth Cultures, Language and Literacy. Review of Research in Education, Volume 34
Koohang, A., Riley, L., Smith, T. (2009) E-Learning and Contructivism: From Theory to Application.
Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Objects. Volume 5.
Mahmud, A. a. (2013). constructivism and reflectivism as the logical counterparts in tesol: Learning theory versus teaching methodology. TEFLIN Journal, 24(2), 237-257.
Online Course Layout: Navigation, Structure, Look and Feel | GW Libraries. (n.d.). Retrieved October 08, 2016, from https://library.gwu.edu/utlc/teaching/online-course-layout-navigation-structure-look-and-feel
The Historical Thinking Project | Historical Thinking Project. (n.d.). Retrieved October 18, 2016, from http://historicalthinking.ca/