Unit 2 of Geography 12 Online: Making Connections

The goal of Unit 2 is for students to gain a working understanding of the five stages of geographic inquiry that will inform their first collaborative project. The activities have been designed to build on learner’s understandings while they develop the skill set needed to conduct an authentic geographic investigation. The introductory unit fosters a willingness among students to learn in a new way, to prepare them to work successfully in groups, and to motivate them to learn more about geography. Unit 2 provides the skill development and knowledge that will prepare them for the long-term problem-based and project-based learning units that begin in Unit 3.

This unit is consistent with the Constructivist design of the course, which is characterized by active knowledge construction, collaboration, self-reflection and authentic assessment. The Constructivist Instruction Model (CIM) has been adapted in the first four activities of the unit, where students use a variety of tools and media in the process of re-thinking their understandings and consider new ways of learning and reflecting on those processes.

Unit Structure and Design

The unit is organized around five activities designed to build skills and knowledge of the geographic inquiry process: questioning, acquiring information, exploring and analyzing that information, and acting on a solution. Each section has a brief overview and activity description, followed by the Moodle activity and resources icons. A single logo image of the digital tool used in each section is the only other visual element. My strategy is to offer a uniform compositional footprint for each section that provides a synoptic view of the unit elements and generates student curiosity to investigate further. In this way I maintain the two-click maximum practice that I began in the introductory unit. The clean, uncluttered look and uniform appearance is maintained throughout the site to reduce cognitive load and provide predictability on the location of the site elements. The Ask, Acquire and Explore & Analyze sections are composed of different combinations of activities, forums and reflections. Content is provided in more detail within the resources and activities, including external tools and media, such as tutorial videos.

The last section, Putting It All Together, outlines the final collaborative geographic inquiry of the unit. My first inclination was to design all section activities to address the same inquiry. I decided against this to allow students to have greater subject variety, especially in the case of researching their family histories on the mobile ARIS game. The current design allows for another iteration of the each skill set. It also allowed them to gain the skills on their own before moving into group work. The unit is scheduled to be completed in 7 weeks (e.g. October 5 – November 23, 2015). All sections are 2 weeks with the exception of a single week for the “Acquire” section.

Students are put into discussion groups for activities 1-4 comprised of 4 people. They are encouraged to respond to as many of their classmates as possible in the forums, but they must respond to their 3 group members at a minimum. They are put into new groups in Activity 5 for their geographic inquiry.

Achieving Unit Objectives Through Tools and Design Elements

It is critical that students meet the objectives of Unit 2 to position themselves for success in their inquiries for the remainder of the course. Students should be able to:

1. identify and create effective geographic questions that foster inquiry
2. create a geo-locative, real-life digital story that generates geographic questions
3. demonstrate the effective collection of data in the field using mobile devices
4. search and locate desired databases that inform a specific geographic inquiry
5. manipulate and explore different layers of geographic information with online visualization tools
6. create and present an interactive digital visualization that addresses a geographic question
7. engage in a formal geographic inquiry process as member of a collaborative group
8. present the processes and results of a collaborative geographic inquiry on a self-authored e-Portoflio

The first two objectives are addressed in the “Ask” section: Posing Effective Geographic Questions. All geographic inquiry can be applied to a wide range of subjects and branch into numerous disciplines; however it is fundamentally organized around spatial patterns and processes. Creating effective questions drives inquiry. It is a skill that requires practice and involves recognition, elaboration and iteration. In Activity 1, students play the mobile game Family Geo Journey on the ARIS platform. This is the story of my family moving from various places and eventually settling in Vancouver. It addresses the question “how did I come to be here now?” In order to advance through the game, players must ask geographic questions when they are confronted with migrational push and pull factors experienced by the characters in the game. They are provided with a number of questions to consider when crafting their questions, as well as some background information on migration in the Activity 1 instructions page. There is also a short Youtube video that I made to provide context and generate interest in the process. Students then post two of their best questions to Forum 7 for review by the rest of the class. Here, they assess and evaluate each other’s questions using criteria provided.

In Activity 2, students use their new understanding of geographic questioning to construct their own family geographic journey using ARIS Games. The purpose is for learners to apply their new understanding of effective geographic questioning by creating a story that elicits that process from other class members. The game format situates both the authoring student and their eventual viewers into the narrative. It is an engaging way to experience a story which may lead to deeper questioning skills. My game in Activity 1 serves as a model for them, but they are encouraged to be creative in their own design. The information page provides training videos, a link to the ARIS manual and a list of suggestions for getting started. When they are done, they post the title of their game and a brief description to a Padlet, which they create in Forum 8. A tutorial video guides them through the simple creation of making a Padlet, which is an online bulletin board where posting has a greater optical presence that a typical discussion thread. Students are responsible for playing their group member’s games, then posting two effective geographic questions into their Padlet comments. Next, they reflect on their thoughts on the experience with guided questions in Reflection 3.

The “Acquire” section describes the next stage in geographic inquiry process – collecting and locating information. It addresses objective 3: students will demonstrate the effective collection of data in the field using mobile devices. The section page provides an overview of data acquisition, differentiates between primary and secondary sources and introduces online databases. The Activity 3 page provides text and visual instructions on how to use the Siftr, a social media photography App designed for fieldwork, in order to collect data on geographic questions related to students at Kitsilano Secondary School. The App allows metadata like location, tagging, themes and comments that are attached to photographs, which can be transferred to a spreadsheet for uploading to online databases. It is a simple but effective means for students to experience authentic fieldwork and data collection. Like the Padlet in Activity 2, students provide feedback to each other through the comments function on the App.

Objectives 4-6 are addressed in the third section: Exploring and Analyzing, where they are concerned with locating, manipulating and interpreting geographic information. The section overview discusses how these processes are currently approached and facilitated by publicly accessible data and online visualizations. Gapminder World is a database aggregator and interactive visualization site, which is introduced in the section overview. Activity 4 details how students will use Gapminder World to recognize relationships and patterns, then create their own visualization that illustrates connections between phenomena. The page also includes videos that demonstrate the power and impact of visualizations. Students export their digital artifact as a link to Forum 10, where their discussion group and other classmate’s will provide feedback and comments.

In the final section, Putting It All Together, the last two objectives are addressed. Students will have the opportunity to conduct their first formal collaborative inquiry using the skills and knowledge that they have gained during this unit. The section overview describes how the final stage, “Act” (present findings to an authentic audience) will be integrated into the project. Students will also be introduced to e-Portfolios as the documentation space that they will create to present their work to others for the remainder of the course. Activity 5 details how to create and add unit artifacts to their e-Portfolios using WordPress, which includes a tutorial video. They are also required to post their digital artifacts from activities 1-4 into this space. The instructions then outline the steps that their groups will go through to conduct their inquiry. Like the previous activities, students are responsible for providing feedback to each other’s group projects using the comments space on the digital tool. They are also required to invite at least one external stakeholder (an authentic audience) to provide feedback to them in the same manner.

The final section also contains two assessment tools. Reflection 4: Self & Group Assessment uses the Moodle assignment tool to ensure student privacy. The difference between this reflection and past ones is that students must evaluate the efforts of their group members in addition to providing a question-prompted self assessment. The autorated grading system is described in this space to demonstrate how the marks for individual group members are calculated according to their level of participation, contribution and engagement. The Workshop tool is a peer assessment instrument that enables different groups to assess each other’s inquiry, and in turn receive a grade from the teacher for the quality of their assessment.

The objectives of Unit 2 are derived from the five stages of the geographic inquiry process which are mirrored in the sequencing of the sections and activities. Although the process is iterative in professional practices, it is pedagogically important to present the them as building off each other in a linear manner. It is also important to reinforce the Constructivist Instructional Model (CIM) as a consistent course approach to learning between the introductory unit to Unit 2. It is my intention to continue this practice in the remaining course units. Similarly, I plan to prioritized a consistent organization of design elements and visual aesthetic across all units to harmonize the site.

Pedagogically, the inclusion of communication tools for students to provide feedback, engage in discourse and reflect on their own learning connects well to the unit objectives. The combination of communications tools like Moodle forums, assignments (used for reflections), and workshops are complemented by the commenting functions of the external tools, like Padlet, Siftr and WordPress. Didactic tools, such as section overviews and Moodle pages provide practical content and instruction placement, which is also accomplished by various media, like embedded videos (ARIS, Gapminder, WordPress) and images (Siftr).

Formative assessment is accomplished through these tools in the form of self-reflection and peer feedback (forum and web tool comments). Summative assessment is introduced at the end of the unit as the e-Portfolio. The timing of the introduction of this tool has been designed to correspond with the first collaborative inquiry project. This provides a presentation and feedback space for showcased course elements. It also aligns nicely with the course objectives by providing a way for an authentic outside audience to give feedback through the comments spaces of the site. The course assessment practices explained in the introductory unit will be applied to determine the first term grade, which corresponds with the end of Unit 2: forum participation 25%, self-assessment through reflections 25%, peer and teacher assessment (e-Portfolio review) 25% each.

Conclusion

The creation of this unit has been an intense but rewarding experience. My personal goal has been to produce a fully operational learning module that aligns with my Constructivist beliefs and leverages new and innovative educational technologies. This unit is ready to go “as is” and I am excited to implement it this fall.