Reflecting on the Flight
565 Course Synthesis
Introduction:
This course started with a personal jolt from our facilitator, Dr. Egan, to begin our journey and confront our own pedagogical conceptions about the world of educational design. Throughout the course, I was able to identify and examine my own misconceptions about various issues. Having used computers and Moodle in teaching my own high school courses, I came to this course believing I had a strong understanding of the technological revolution in education. Nearing the end of this term I have come to understand that the presence of a tool does not by itself enrich education. It is through thoughtful design, supportive facilitation, and critical review of familiar practices that improvements can be rewarded to the process of learning.
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Pictures of the area chosen for reflective Synthesis
I am sitting on a rock at the edge of the harbour and feel I am in an exceptional place to synthesize a reflective conclusion to this course. The sun is setting, the water is calm, and it all seems a little too perfect if you divert attention from the elements of seediness that this park is beginning to show. This small area on the edge of the city appears to be facilitating illicit activities evident from the fragrant waffs. The park has many things to offer, but I have chosen it because of its isolation and lack of Wifi penetration.
One of the strengths of this course, and others in the MET program, include the interconnections afforded by technology. Learning is enhanced by engaging with other members through internet signals carrying massive amounts of information. These interactions are extremely valuable to my own learning process and allow me to read, absorb, think, and respond in an environment that has elements that are superior to face to face engagements. One particular downfall of this level of engagement is the fact that it is possible to be always engaged. I chose this park to disengage from interaction and focus on the introspection required for deep reflection.
A older, lone man delicately holding something in his closed fist approaches me and says “I’ve got a little bit of weed and I’m lookin for a way to puff it.”
This may not be the most appropriate place to become lost in thought (I am feeling a little on edge). There are wonderful things that come with isolated introspection and I hope to capitalize on their power with this reflection. The act of looking in can detract from an awareness of your surroundings and due to the progressing darkness in the park and my growing feelings of insecurity, I will continue my reflective synthesis in a new location.
Flight Plan Précis:
I referred back to my Flight Plan several times throughout the year and used it to find inspiration for several of my projects. Locke and Latham(2002) suggest goal setting becomes even more powerful to affect change when the goals are deemed important and feedback is provided on progress. Having the Flight Plan goals placed as the front assignment of the blog is a testament to their importance and regularly reviewing the goals allowed for progress to me measured. The blog was an excellent place to host the Flight Plan as it was readily accessible from web enabled devices such as phones and laptops.
In the Flight Plan I wrote about my previous experience using Moodle with high school classes. I share a similar experience with Perkins and Pfaffman (2006) in finding that the tool was well received by students and improved communication about assignments, due dates, and other course requirements. It has been helpful to improve a collaborative environment not just among students, but also between myself and students. Chickering and Gamson (1987) identified that the building of reciprocity and cooperation were crucial to the development of a healthy learning environment. I have anecdotal evidence suggesting Moodle can be used as a medium to help achieve this goal.
One goal was to develop a deeper understanding of Moodle and to move beyond the superficial motions of using the technology. Throughout the course I have been challenged to confront my prior conceptions and explore the tools and features that can be used to provide rich and authentic learning environments for my students.
In an attempt to blend a professional interest with the journey of this course, I set a goal to further understand the Arduino prototyping system. At the beginning of the course, it appeared that the curricular objectives would make it difficult to achieve this particular goal; however, I was able to focus my own LMS course site and quiz projects with content relating to the Arduino system.
Drawing from the Literature
Throughout this course, I have found it useful to learn from a mixture of sources including academic journals, online essays, books, blog posts, videos, comments, forums. There were certain literature references that I found had a profound influence on my understanding of educational design. The concepts explored by Bates and Poole (2003) and the ISTE (2008) emerged repeatedly throughout the course illustrating how valuable they are to the field.
Bates and Poole (2003) have provided the educational community a valuable tool in the SECTIONS model. I believe their genius, and the fact that they are so memorable, is due to their elegant simplicity. Understanding that technological jargon can intimidate and cause disinterest among practitioners, Bates and Poole created the acronym which functions as a memorable mnemonic device to recall the framework used to evaluate educational technologies: students, ease of use, costs, teaching and learning, interactivity, organizational issues, novelty, and speed.
The concept of evaluating and choosing educational technologies is of particular importance in the present time as educational communities search to expand their digital tool set. Schools are going through the growing pains and transitioning from “how it was always done” to a new paradigm that includes new tools. Some community members are embracing the new tools and the affordances they offer, while others are being dragged into the technological revolution and will scrutinize the changes. This critical analysis, along with the desire to improve student learning, makes the task of evaluating and selecting the most appropriate educational technology crucial. The SECTIONS model is a tool to select tools, a meta-tool that I am thankful to have been exposed to.
Another set of tools that are indispensable from educational technology instructional design are the NETS (National Educational Technology Standards). These indicators, developed by the ISTE (International Society of Technology Education), layout objectives relating to technology education for students, teachers, and administrators. I have found this to be a great resource to help guide my thinking in regards to how I will effectively develop educational technology into my own learning environment. The ISTE has also developed standards for Technology Coaches, Directors of Technology and Computer Science Educators and I plan to refer to these tools as I continue to advocate for technology integration into our education system.
Goal Setting
One of the elements of a constructivist design is to evaluate the unique background knowledge and prior experiences that each learner brings to the course (Anderson, 2008). The Flight Plan assignment combined the useful act of goal setting with the opportunity for learners to express themselves and share some of their background with the instructors. It allowed learners to reflect on their own strengths and weaknesses and to explicitly set goals to take control of their own learning. This task not only has benefits for the goal setter, but also the instructors gain some background information on the needs of students.
One of my goals was to become familiar with a varity of learning management systems (LMSs) as well as build a deeper competency with Moodle. Although I do not believe that the metaphorical bucket of understanding can ever become full, my bucket collecting information relating to Moodle felt like it was splashing out and sometimes leaking from the bottom (believing I knew more than I did). I am proud to say that I have traded up to a new bucket (or dropped the bucket metaphor all together) that allows me the ability to hold new information I have learned in this course and also grounds me in a more realistic perspective on my own understanding on the world of Moodle.
Another goal was to become more familiar with the array of LMSs available to the educational community. In our group project we created a rubric to evaluate various tools. This task was very applicable to the real world scenarios as educational communities look to incorporate LMSs into their tool sets. These system wide changes can be best managed when we develop an understanding and appreciation for the complexity of various systems. In doing so, we will be able to provide the best suited tools to improve student learning.
Another assignment that I felt harnessed real world applicability was the LMS online course site proposal. For this project I chose to write a project proposal to my district’s Director of Technology with the goal of convincing him of the need to introduce a Moodle server to our toolkit. This task helps fulfill a communication goal I set when I wrote my Flightplan. In this goal, I stated my desire to become a strong advocate for integrating technology into learning environments and in order to do this effectively, I would have to become aware and knowledgeable of the tools available and present articulate arguments for their integration. This assignment allowed me to exercise a convincing tone and blend together supporting literature with the pragmatic understanding and experiences of a practitioner.
Moodle Experience
For my Moodle quiz design, I chose to expand on my previous experiences and challenge my understanding of html coding. As I searched for inspiration, I stumbled upon a great layout of matching questions paired with pictures arranged in html tables posted by Jen Deyenberg (2010), a Canadian educator living in Scotland and the author of trailsoptional.com. In her post she laid out insights and hints from the project. These hints were helpful, but getting the final project to turn out smooth and publishable was a struggle. I was challenged in the undertaking but felt satisfied and proud with the results.
Creating the Moodle course modules allowed me to satisfy other goals developed in my Flight Plan. I have always been fascinated with electronics and the ability to automate, control, sense, and respond with the use of an artificial device. I have used the Lego NXT systems with my students and enjoy their simplified complexity but would like to begin using a device known as the Arduino. This open source project has been expanding its community around the world and I wanted to bring this excitement and energy to my students through a Moodle course designed as An Introduction to Arduino. I developed 4 modules covering the concepts of data collection, sensory systems and control and automation. The course is designed to build interest in the subject and draws heavily on components of group collaboration with the goal of developing supportive social networks that will help students persevere through the challenges and frustrations of programming electronics.
eLearning Toolkit Experience
These self contained elearning toolkits were packaged modules covering topics that had applicability to world of instructional design. Periodically throughout the course I would check in and browse various topics, often pulling from them tips and links to other useful resources around the web.
The elearning toolkit had strengths of being a quick go-to resource to explore in a self paced environment. The pages were current and concise and often functioned as a “just in time” source for information. They had excellent content, but they lacked multimedia features such as pictures or video. I would have found it very useful to watch a short tutorial video highlighting the basics of Amaya and NVU in the webpage and html section. Such tutorials, with narration from the context of our course, would be captivating and provide deeper insight into the tools and concepts covered in the modules than text alone.
Future Flights: Next steps in continuing the pursuit of lifelong learning.
It would be inaccurate to believe that a course, or even an entire program could prepare me for all the educational design challenges I will face in the future. As a result, I will need to continue learning. Our educational communities are at the beginning of one of the most massive periods of change due to technological advances. I want to contribute to help improve and grow the educational community as we move through unprecedented paradigm shift. In order to be a competent leader in this task, I will need to ensure that I continue to learn.
Some of my post-course goals include:
– Furthering my understanding of Moodle’s Workshop feature
– Bring the Arduino system to students
– Contributing to larger community of Moodle (build tutorial videos to help other educators)
– Develop project based learning modules incorporating real time data collection/integration with social media tools (Displaying real time data of an experiment on Facebook may inspire some students)
This course has provided me both practical real world skills and deepened my understanding of educational design and the process of learning. I am grateful to have read and been influenced by great minds and ideas of the literature, the facilitators, and my own colleagues in the class. There are many skills that I have developed as a result of the workload of this course and the practical working knowledge of Moodle and the skills of instructional design, html programming, and assessment development will be immediately put to use. It has been humbling to work with the many talented designers in this course and I have learned so much from our interactions.
Thank you,
David Evans
References:
Anderson, T. (2008). Towards a Theory of Online Learning. In: T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.127.7339&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Bates A. W. & Poole, G. (2003). A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In A.W. Bates & G. Poole, Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education (pp. 75-108).San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 4.
Chickering, A.W. and Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), p. 3-7. Retrieved from http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm
Deyenberg, Jen. 2010. A Picture Quiz in Moodle. trailsoptional.com. Retrieved from http://www.trailsoptional.com/2010/02/a-picture-quiz-in-moodle/
ISTE. 2007. NETS Standards. International Society for Technology in Education. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards.aspx
Locke, Edwin A. Latham, G. 2002. Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation. American Psychologist. Setpember 2002. pp. 707-708. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.126.9922&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Perkins, M. Pfaffman, J. 2006. Using a Course Management System to Improve Classroom Communicaiton. The Science Teacher. October 2006, p.36