Joyce Kim and I completed assignment three together, and we are in the process of completing assignment four together as well. Joyce and I have complimentary skills as I have experience in information architecture, as well as post-secondary instructional design, and Joyce has extensive teaching experience. This is why we chose to develop an introductory post-secondary writing course in continuing education, as we believed it would be relevant to our career paths.
Joyce and I worked in Moodle for this project. Overall, we feel as though Moodle worked well for our project. There are limitations to all LMS systems; however, we were able to accomplish a design and layout that we feel fits well with the constructivist, inquiry-based, student-centered environment we were aiming for.
Because of the subject-specific and also personalized nature of post-secondary writing, we felt as though focusing on constructivism to guide our content and design was appropriate in order to give students the opportunity to explore the content and build on their prior understanding through activities and discourse with their peers. We used Ernst von Glaserfeld’s work as a guide for our design. We want to encourage our students to problem solve and to skillfully reflect on their learning (Glaserfeld, 2008). As there is more than one effective way for students to research and write, there is more than one Truth (Glaserfeld, 1995, p. 4 & 9). We want to give students a choice in how they engage and discover postsecondary writing, while still offering structure in the course design. As well, we want our students to gain social emotional competence (through social constructivism), as, through social interaction, learners further engage in reflection and knowledge building (p. 7). To aid in this, we use a discussion board as a foundation for peer-to-peer discourse. Our first discussion board, the Introduction, helps students build an online community. Our second discussion board post is designed to help students gain skill in reflective learning processes, which is an important aspect of constructivist learning. As well, through the use of a discussion board, students gain further experience in writing at a post-secondary level. While our course focuses on writing academic proposals and papers, we are expanding on academic discourse through peer-to-peer discussion and reflection.
We recognize that many students that might take our course wouldn’t have experience with academic language (Lahey, 2017), and that is why our Moodle design employs page header “questions” to help new university students navigate throughout our course. We were mindful about the terminology we used to help minimize student frustration, ie. for our Learning processes page, we used the term Learning Processes rather than Methodology, and we followed up with a potential student question How was this course developed? to essentially act as a definition for the academic term “Learning Processes.” Joyce and I reflected on our past experience in online MET classes, and our personal struggles we faced to help guide our course structure. As well, we brought in the practice of “chunking” to help organize our course into manageable sections, which is an important aspect of information architecture. As well, chunking can help to increase knowledge retention and knowledge building (Carter et al., 2001). All design choices within our course were made with the theme of user-centered “transition” in mind.
Finally, Joyce and I intensified our collaboration in the final assessment portion of this project. We wanted to ensure that our exam didn’t take away from the constructivist nature of our course. As such, we worked hard to create questions that would encourage meaningful individual reflection (Chickering & Gamson, 1987, as cited in Gibbs and Simpson, 2005) on the course content, as well as assess the social-emotional competence of the students. This will help students to identify and articulate their weaknesses and develop a plan of improvement which will help them in future post-secondary courses.
Overall this project has been a great learning and collaborative experience!
References:
Carter, T., Hardy, C. A., & Hardy, J. C. (2001). Latin vocabulary acquisition: An experiment using information-processing techniques of chunking and imagery. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 28(4), 225.
Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf
Glasersfeld, E. von (2008). Learning as a Constructive Activity. AntiMatters, 2(3), 33-49.
Glasersfeld, E. von (1995) A constructivist approach to teaching. In: Steffe L. P. & Gale J. (eds.) Constructivism in education. Erlbaum, Hillsdale: 3–15. Available at
http://www.vonglasersfeld.com/172
Lahey, T. (2017). Collaborating to address the challenge of academic language. The Free Library. Retrieved from: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Collaborating to address the challenge of academic language.-a0492535590