Erin’s Educational Technology Journey

This is a posting reflecting on the activities in module 3, unit 2. I had to explore Moodle communication tools and decide which tools to add to my course. This is not part of my “official” assignment on selecting tools, but this activity prepared me for it. I am looking forward to any feedback before I submit my official “case”. Feel free to comment. I will reflect on this activity at the end of module 3 to show how much I’ve learned!

Setting: Grade 4 blended learning environment with English Language Learners (70%) and native English speakers (30%) were class population=15.  Moodle has been chosen to provide all students with educational technology experience, to enhance the existing learning program and to provide ELL students with more opportunities to practice English communication skills. Science classes will be taught in a blended-learning format.

Communication Tools

Asynchronous 2-way communication: Moodle blog & discussion forum

Synchronous 2-way communication: Moodle chat function

Activity

I created a science unit on dinosaurs based in Moodle and this will be the first time students will use Moodle. In a blended-delivery course, it is possible to lecture about the learning management system, but a class is necessary to explore and orient to the Moodle environment. The instructional goal in this activity is to provide an orientation of the Moodle space, begin to foster an online learning community and to familiarize students with use of the dinosaur unit Splash Page navigation. For the purposes of this posting, I will focus on the rationale of the communication tools.

A “Start Here” activity in the Introductory Module was created. Through the activity, students learn that the class will be using various communication tools during future group and individual work. The activity is designed to give students experience using the tools in to maximize time-on-task during future modules.

Discussion Forum: Students write a brief introduction and answer basic questions about dinosaurs and the unit. I created an introduction about myself to promote the principle of faculty-student contact and a sense of trust and safety (Anderson, 2008; Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996). In addition, this sets a personalized tone for the course and gives students the opportunity to see my own interest in dinosaurs (Anderson, 2008). I wanted to ensure the course began by providing a “social presence” opportunity so students would feel supported and open to sharing ideas as they develop a collaborative community (Anderson, 2008). The student introduction activity was selected based on the principle of fostering reciprocity and cooperation among students (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996). In addition, discussions are an active learning technique that engage students and stimulate constructive learning (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996). Being asynchronous, the discussion forum provides ELL students time to formulate ideas and structure their arguments. To track posts, I can use the “reports” section or the “activity reports” section to see who has been active in posting. I’m learning about this, as it is not fool-proof and there are work-arounds to track quality posts requiring more time (See “Track student forum participation” in the Using Moodle forum at http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=5). My concern is some students may “lurk” and participate infrequently in the longer term. Also, some students may dominate the future discussions. I tried to initiate discussions in the introduction to model the importance of everyone participating.

 A final note: In the future I want to develop student-led discussions and I thought initial discussions should be modeled (See Anderson, 2008, p.351).

Chat Forum: Students are instructed to introduce themselves and to respond to the chat introductions of others. Again, this supports the principles of student-faculty contact and student-student cooperation and functions as an active learning technique (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996). This also supports a social presence, the establishment of trust and (in the future) engagement with cognitive presence (Anderson, 2008). Synchronous text communication may be more challenging for ELL students but I want to provide them with the opportunity to practice and improve their skills. I included the message that spelling and grammar were not concerns in chat to ease anxieties. Of course, beyond language anxieties, my concern is also time-on-task. Chat is used in this activity to aid orientation but keeping students on-task in chat may prove to be difficult or challenging. To track chats, I know I can go to the “participants” link and see which chats each students has been engaged in.

Moodle Blog: Students are instructed to reflect on their introductory module and to set their privacy settings to “members of this class”. As Anderson (2008) notes, blog discourse renewed reflective writing .  As an active learning technique, this tool requires students to reflect and engage in the material (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996). As an asynchronous tool, it supports the principle of respecting diverse talents and ways of learning because it is the student’s personal reflective space (Chickering & Ehrmann, 1996). They can add to it as they wish in addition to posting required content. All students can take their time to formulate ideas and structure their own understanding through self-reflection. In addition, the comment feature allows for asynchronous exchange and peer feedback. Survey research on ELL students and blogging by Wu (2005; 2006) found ELL students felt more motivated and confident writing in English when blogging was added to their face-to-face English writing class. My biggest concern is privacy, and I’ve selected the “make my blog visible to classmates only” in my design. In addition, as a teacher I want to facilitate blogging through peer-feedback (comments) but some students may not respond well or want to comment on the blogs of others. As an instructor, I plan on commenting on blogs and tracking blog posts through the “participants” tab.

The introductory module does instruct students to visit the class wiki for orientation, but students are not instructed to post. This will be a follow-up activity in Module 1.

Does anyone have any better Moodle ideas/tips for tracking discussions/chats/blog posts within a class Moodle? I searched the Moodle forums and some of the “tech talk” was beyond me. Any tips or work-arounds to suggest?

References

Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an Online Learning Content. In: Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Athabasca University. Accessed online June 14, 2009, from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008_Anderson-DeliveryQualitySupport.pdf

Chickering, A.W., & Ehrmann, S.C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. Retrieved May 6, 2009,f rom http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples.htm

Moodle. Using moodle forum. Available on June 15, 2009, from http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=5

Wu, W. S. (2005). Using blogs in an EFL writing class. Proceedings of 2005 International   Conference and Workshop on TEFL & Applied Linguistics, Taiwan, 426-432. Retrieved              May 18, 2009 from http://www.chu.edu.tw/~wswu/publications/papers/conferences/05.pdf

Wu, W. S. (2006). The effect of blog peer review and teacher feedback on the revisions of EFL   writers. Journal of Education and Foreign Languages and Literature, 3, 125-139.     Retrieved May 18, 2009 from http://www.chu.edu.tw/~wswu/publications/ papers/journals/04.pdf

I spent today re-reading some posts from past modules. I felt motivated to do so because I’m getting “deeper” into my LMS Moodle course design, and I can see all of the pieces fitting together. In our Module 2 discussion, we had to give advice to a community educator who was responding to the needs for an ESL population concerned with diabetes prevention and care. The community educator wants to create a DVD to help members of the population because their understanding of spoken English is great, but they find it difficult to recall important information from workshops.

My initial reaction was not to suggest a DVD due to the time, the cost and the lack of flexibility the format affords. However, through participating in discussion threads (I admit, I lurk more than I post) I realized that the population would benefit from a DVD. Simply because we have the Internet doesn’t mean it is the best choice. I overlooked the fact that a DVD covers all of the basic needs. It delivers the workshop in spoken English, subtitles could be added and it could be repeated several times to clarify understanding. In addition, if members had questions, they could note the time and segment of the DVD (depending on design) and reference it to the community educator. Just because there are bells and whistles with presentation software and formats doesn’t mean we need to use them! This reminded me of  Bates & Poole’s (2003) SECTIONS, where student needs and ease of use are emphasised as part of a framework for selecting educational technology tools.

Below is my original post. You can see how far I’ve come!

Anju’s need: To create a learning material that ESL students with fluent oral understanding and poor written understanding can use to help memorize one-hour workshop material.

Discussion:

I would not recommend a DVD for Anju. I would have suggested that Anju use PowerPoint (PP) presentations on a blog/website (or a similar OS application) instead of investing in a video camera and laptop to produce DVDs.  See Annette Smith’s post (May 31) on taping lectures, which inspired my thinking.

 This way, students could access the presentations online, and choose the ones that relate to their concerns without the risk or cost of losing or damaging a DVD. Anju could link her site to other resources on diabetes management, online dictionaries and to diabetes information in other languages. I am assuming Anju is not trained in media design or instructional design. Creating a simple website/blog would allow the community to access her materials and Anju would not need a great deal of “catch-up” in a WYSIWYG editor. Michael Haworth has posted four reasons to avoid creating a DVD in this case: time management, video creation issues, inflexibility of DVDs and being locked into a platform for the duration of her project. See his  June 1 post for details.

If Anju asked me for advice, I would suggest that she create a series of short (10 minute) clips that incorporate the main aspects of a given topic related to the overall workshop into a simple viewing program (powerpoint,for one). If the topic of a workshop was on daily exercise, 10 minutes about why exercise is important, followed by 10 minutes on how to do key exercises and 10 minutes on issues one may come across when exercising (elevated heart rate, excessive thirst…etc). This is to keep students interested and to lessen the risk of overwhelming them with new vocabulary and information. I assume Anju knows her audience, but a preliminary survey may be required to meet student needs and assess unique ESL issues (simplified vocabulary).

I have never authored a DVD, and I ventured into the 565 Toolkit for help with this activity. To create a DVD, Anju would need her lesson plan (divided into 10 minute sections),  her multimedia organized, her multimedia fully produced, her information in a folder hierarchy and DVD-R- because DVD+R may not work on older players (ETEC 565 Toolkit, DVD). She will need to learn her video camera’s functions, and how to upload her video for editing in her DVD authoring program. Whew!

According to ww.signvideo.com, she would have to author the video and audio into a structure like menus and chapters, and then burn her DVD. She would then have to know how many copies in total, and burn that number of DVDs. Her total number may be very high, rising the project’s cost,  and the entire process sounds time consuming!  She is also assuming that students would have a DVD player or access to one. This is a large assumption, and she should have surveyed students before purchasing a video camera and taking this route!

Estimated time:  I have never attempted to create a DVD as a learning resource. Including the time it would take to learn to use the video camera, laptop DVD program and design the materials, my best guess is two months for an amateur/beginner’s effort. I came up with this answer assuming that she would spend 3 weeks planning the learning materials for a unit (based on my teaching experience), 1 week recording various data, and the remainder of the time mastering her DVD authoring tool.

Resources:

Hudson, B. (2002). DVD authoring part 1. Retrieved June 1, 2009, from http://www.signvideo.com/d-athr_pt1.htm

ETEC 565 Learning Toolkit: DVD. Retrieved June 1, 2009, from https://www.vista.ubc.ca/webct/urw/lc5116011.tp0/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct

ETEC 565 Diabetes DVD Discussion Thread

Wikipedia (2009). DVD authoring. Retrieved June 1, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_authoring

The framework of “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education” by Chickering & Gamson (1987) and Chickering & Ehrmann’s (1996) “Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as a Lever” are written in a “common sense” style which camouflages the complex pedagogical principles and effective classroom management skills required to conduct “good practice” in an academic setting of any level. Bates and Poole (2003) read more academic, but the SECTIONS framework is deceivingly simple sounding. I found myself nodding my head in agreement with SECTIONS and the Seven Principles (1987, 1996) based on my personal experience. However, “Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as a Lever” (1996) now seems slightly dated when one reads the examples of technology use, but the principles hold.

Chickering & Ehrmann’s (1996) 3rd principle of Good Practices Uses Active Learning Techniques and Bates & Poole’s (2003) T:Teaching and Learning resonated with me as being complementary and meaningful. I’m an ESL elementary teacher and I apply the SECTIONS “T” : Identifying what kind of learning to facilitate and make meaningful to meet my students’ diverse needs is a key reason I select learning technologies. I feel this technique is complemented by Chickering & Ehrmann’s (1996) 3^rd principle because a thoughtful identification of technology should enhance and support active learning and result in the selection of active learning technologies. For example, an English language wiki project is selected over MS Power Point to encourage ESL students to collaborate using English. I have identified the skill of collaboration using English and I’ve selected an application that requires students to construct knowledge actively.

To keep my post reasonable length, I will briefly state that SECTIONS’ Costs and Ease of Use & Reliability are two areas of ed-tech I feel very strongly about. The principle of prompt feedback is another. I look forward to discussing these with others. Erin

References

Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77-105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.

For more information on Bate’s publications, visit his site! http://www.tonybates.ca/tag/poole/

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.
http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm
Chickering, A.W. and Ehrmann, S.C. (1996).  “Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever,” American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), p. 3-6.
http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples.htm