For the purpose of ETEC565A I designed an Introductory module for a fully online grade 7 English class. I would like to begin my reflexion by talking a little about the context in order to explain certain decisions that I made regarding this course.

CONTEXT

This grade 7 English course will be offered throughout my school board which is a French Catholic school board located in northern Ontario. For most of the students in our schools, English is a second language, French being the maternal language for most. Most of the schools are small and have multiple grade classrooms. Therefore, the board could benefit from offering certain elementary curriculum courses online to students, allowing them to work with peers in the same grade level.

I decided to use Blackboard connect as the course LMS because it is most similar to the current platform that is used for elearning in Ontario K-12 schools (D2L).

COURSE DESIGN

I used a backward design approach (Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J, 1998, 2011) to plan and organize the course, starting with identifying learning outcomes (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2008) based on the Ontario grade 7 language curriculum (2006). I then envisioned what assessment strategies would help me (the teacher) better assess student learning in order to provide valuable descriptive feedback. Since it is an online course, technology had to be an important part of the assessment strategies (ISTE, 2008). Many factors had to be taken into account when choosing which tools to use for assessment. I wanted to integrate technology seamlessly into the learning process in an authentic way to increase student engagement (Nel, C., Dreyer, C., & Carstens, W. A. M., 2010), therefore, my choice of tools were the discussion forum and Blog available in Connect. Since it is a language course, students will be doing reading and writing and I wanted them to be able to do it in an authentic collaborative context. According to Bates’ SECTIONS model (2014), it is also important to consider the students, ease of use, organizational issues and security & privacy. With that in mind, I chose the Blog tool from Connect, rather than an external blog, for security purposes (Ontario ministry of education, 2006). Since grade 7 students in our board are not that familiar with technology collaborative tools, it will be easier for them (ease of use) to have all their tools in one place, Connect. Finally, our board has one person (a teacher) who is responsible for LMS administration and support for teachers and students. Therefore, students will have greater technical support with course tools. Other tools are also available to students in our board: Office 365, Google apps for education and Kurzweil. Students will have access to these tools and software as well as technical support.

 

COMMUNICATION

Students registered in this course are French speaking, English is their second language. Therefore, I think it is important to ensure that communications means are appropriate for the demographic. I chose to post two introductory videos (one is bilingual, one is in English), introducing myself (the teacher) and presenting an overview of the course in order to insure comprehension (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2005, 2007). Students can also use Kurzweil for reading and translation if need be.

The LMS email, Skype (available in the board), discussion forum and blog will be the tools used by students to collaborate and communicate with one another and with their teacher.

I will use asynchronous audio and video descriptive feedback to communicate with students as it can improve social and cognitive student engagement (Nadeau, 2012). Feedback for formative and summative tasks will provide students with precise information on their strengths, what they need to improve and their next steps.

 

References

Bates, T. (2014). Teaching in a Digital Age (Chapter 8 on SECTIONS framework). Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage

Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (2009). Developing the Theory of Formative Assessment. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability 21(1), 5-31. doi:10.1007/s11092-008-9068-5

Joint Advisory Committee, Centre for Research in Applied Measurement and Evaluation, University of Alberta. (1993). Principles for fair student assessment practices for education in Canada. Edmonton.

Harlen, W. (2006). On the relationship between assessment for formative and summative purposes. In J. Gardner, ed., Assessment and learning. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.

International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). (2008). Standards for teachers. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/standards-for-teachers

Maloy, R. W. (2011). Transforming learning with new technologies. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon.

Marchand, L., & Loisier, J. (2004). Pratiques d’apprentissage en ligne. Montréal (Canada): Chenelière Education.

Nadeau, J. (2012). Expérimentation de la rétroaction audiovisuelle asynchrone dans un cours à distance d’information dans la perspective de la théorie de la communauté d’apprentissage (Community of inquiry) (Master’s thesis). Retrieved from http://biblio.teluq.ca/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=ISkXNYulN2xtgpPTmjiMAw%3D%3D&tabid=39743&language=fr-CA

Nel, C., Dreyer, C., & Carstens, W. A. M. (2010). Educational technologies: A classification and evaluation. Tydskrif vir letterkunde, 35(4), 238-258. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ajol.info/index.php/tvl/article/download/53794/42346

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2005). Many roots, many voices: Supporting English language learners in every classroom. Toronto.

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2006). E-learning Ontario: Policy document. Retrieved from www.edu.gov.on.ca/elearning/pdf/Policy_document.pdf.

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2007). English language learners / ESL and ELD programs and services: Policies and procedures for Ontario elementary and secondary schools, Kindergarten to Grade 12. Toronto.

Ontario Ministry of Education. (2008). Growing success: Assessment, evaluation and reporting: Improving student learning. Toronto.

Prensky,  M. (2010). Teaching digital natives : Partnering for real learning. Thousand Oaks, USA: Corwin.

Piskurich, G. M. (2006). Rapid instructional design: Learning ID fast and right. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Sutton, R. (1991). Assessment: A framework for teachers. London: Routledge.

Volante, Louis. (2006). Reducing bias in classroom assessment and evaluation. Orbit, 36 (2), 34–36.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice-Hall.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2011). Understanding by design guide to creating high quality units. Alexandria, VA: Association for supervision and curriculum development.