Author Archives: alexis handford

Assignment #5 Case Study – Alexis Handford

For the final assignment I chose to do a Case Study, rather than a Final Synthesis. Although, if you are interested in my final synthesis, you can check out my video recording in Connect, or navigate to the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT9Basdt8tc&t=203s

Here is my Case Study:

Jennie is a member of the support staff in the faculty of Advancing Education at Fields University in Alberta, Canada. Jennie works in the Blackboard LMS (Learning Management System) to help set up courses for busy contract instructors. While Jennie has an educational background in instructional design, her options for course design within the Blackboard LMS are limited.

Even though many of the contract instructors that Jennie helps to manage are keen to experiment and try new layouts within their Blackboard sites, the faculty of Advancing Education has policies in place that restrict the Blackboard course designs to the following pages, accessible through the course menu tabs:

As it is currently designed, all course content must be under the Course Content tab/page. The University Information page is designated for general university information including information on accessing the library, as well as resources to visit for copyright information. The Contact Information page is for instructor and department contact information, and the Tools page is for university tools including internal email, course grades, etc. Other than the Announcements page and the Course Content page, all Blackboard courses in the Advancing Education department have the same layout for their LMS sites.

Jennie is frustrated that all course content must exist within the Course Content page, as she believes that this is poor instructional design. She often receives feedback from students and instructors that it would be beneficial to include a tab for Discussion Boards, or for an Assignment Dropbox. Having to place everything within folders in the Course Content page leaves students searching for specific content and she frequently hears that students have missed critical information from the feedback she receives from her instructors.

What can Jennie do to help tackle the issue of students who are missing information because of the condensed nature of the LMS layout requirements? Is there anything that Jennie can do with instructional design within the constraints she has been given? Additionally, is there anything that Jennie can do to help convince her department that the layout would benefit from changes?

Thanks for a great term everyone!

Assignment 4 Reflection – Alexis Handford (& Joyce Kim)

Assignment 4 Reflection

To best recognize our extensive work together throughout this project, we wrote a collaborative reflection. When we calculated our working hours together, we realized that we have spent up to four synchronous meeting hours per week to discuss, design, and edit all of the different aspects of Assignments 3 and 4. We will include an individual reflection portion at the end of each of our posts in addition to our collaborative reflection.

Our Course and working in Moodle

When we first met to discuss creating our course module, we knew we wanted to explore an LMS tool and content that would both utilize and challenge our complementary skill sets (Alexis’ experience as an instructional designer and Joyce’s teaching experience). Bates notes to adhere to best practices for online learning design teachers must “[work] closely with instructional designers and media professionals whenever possible” and that “teachers working with instructional designers will need to decide which media they intend to use on pedagogical as well as operational grounds” (Bates, 2015). Implementation of the SECTIONS model means collaboration between multiple stakeholders. We also wanted to work with an LMS with which neither of us had worked extensively. This left us with the two choices of Moodle or Google Classroom as we had interacted as students or administrators for the other LMS options. Our next step was to refer to each of our LMS Evaluation rubrics that we had created in Assignment 2 to assess Moodle and Google Classroom. Though neither LMS platform met all our expectations, we felt that Moodle best fulfilled our criteria for functionality. When referencing the LMS Evaluation Rubric (Cruz et al., 2018), Moodle met or exceeded expectations in the following areas:

  • Fully supports user-intuitive actions, such as WYSIWYG drag-and-drop functionality, instant upload and auto-save, history tracking.
  • Provides a comprehensive range of assessment and evaluation tools: standardized and non-standardized testing methods, assignments, and activities.
  • Allows for a complete range of both synchronous and asynchronous modes of communication.
  • Fully supports instructor-student, student-student, and third-party interaction..
  • Allows for user-unique curation of course content including the integration of external learning tools.

Continue reading →

Digital Story by Alexis Handford and Joyce Kim

Here is a brief justification of our use of the Pecha Kucha medium for our digital story:

We chose a medium that would work well with our course topic of introductory postsecondary research and writing, so we chose to work with Pecha Kucha as it is a proven effective storytelling technique (Beyer, 2011). On first glance it might seem like Pecha Kucha is a slide show presentation, but Pecha Kucha presentations are more strategic than slideshows or traditional PowerPoint presentations in the use of storytelling, images, and time.

Continue reading →

ALEXIS’ ASSIGNMENT 3 INTRODUCTORY MODULE REFLECTION

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.

Continue reading →

Alexis’ LMS Reflection

For the LMS selection and rubric assignment, I worked with Paige, Mimi, Faeyza, and Andrew and our target audience was adult Francophone students looking to complete High School and improve their ability to read and write English.

Overall, this project was an excellent exercise in learning more about LMS selection, and how to work as a team to determine necessary elements in evaluating LMS systems for specific user needs. We recognized as a team how difficult it can be to accommodate each individual user’s needs, and through that initial frustration, we learned how important discussions and collaboration are in selecting the best LMS possible. While we had originally attempted to organize our rubric by users: Students, Teachers, and Administrators, we quickly realized it is difficult to divide these users in such a separate way. We realized that there is a lot more overlap between users than we originally thought, but it was important we came to this realization during our process, as we diligently worked to ensure that our collective final rubric factored in the needs of all the potential different users, facilitating their different needs (Spiro, 2014). Ultimately we divided our rubric into three sections, High Priority, Medium Priority, and Low Priority. The High Priority chart focused on LMS elements that are essential and necessary to most LMS users. Medium and Low Priorities are more “nice to have” items that allow for greater customization, and Low Priorities, more specifically, are for future predictions. Then we further organized each rubric section into Technical, Functional, and Network (with colour coding) to allow a greater visual overview of which elements the LMS is targeting.

Continue reading →

Flight Path for Alexis Handford

If I could have looked into the future five years ago, I would have been very surprised to see myself in the MET program. My journey to MET wasn’t direct, it was a result of small realizations over time. My background is not in education. I don’t have a BEd and I don’t have any experience in the classroom. My background is in communication. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Communication, with a major in Information Design. Throughout my time as an Information Designer, I have spent a lot of time reworking materials, studying user needs, conducting usability studies, etc. Yet, it wasn’t until I had a course in Instructional Design at the end of my undergraduate degree that I found an interest in Education. After studying about some instructional theorists, such as Benjamin Bloom, John Bransford, Lev Vygotsky, and the theories of Behaviourism, Information Processing, and Constructivism, I realized there was a whole new realm of design that I hadn’t previously encountered as an Information Designer. Throughout that course I designed two lesson plans, and after that, I became interested in designing for education. Continue reading →