ETEC 565 e-portfolio

Please see my Synthesis Reflection Page for my assignment.

Think about an example of how multimedia have been used effectively to enhance your learning. Feel free to reflect on your MET experiences, or any other.

I’ve found my experiences with multimedia in the courses to be very informative and fun; to date I have taken five MET courses (including this course). Within the MET Program, I’ve had the opportunity to use a wide variety of tools, such as wikis, blogs, cmaps, delicious, Voicethread, Google documents, Vista Chat Room, Vista Live Classroom, Wimba, Moodle, Audacity, E-portfolios, Video streaming, One True Media, Windows Movie Maker, and Elluminate.

I’ll reflect on a few of these as opposed to touching upon all of them:

Cmaps – This tool provided me with the ability to think about connections and dependencies. It allowed me to visually represent concepts and to be creative in my layout. It provided me with an alternative way to express myself other than in written paragraph form.

Windows Movie Maker – This tool has allowed me to create my own digital story….an exercise, which was totally foreign to me prior to taking this course. I found the experience to be extremely fun and the final product was very satisfying. It allowed consider how visual and audio can be incorporated to present content in an alterative format. It also allowed me to consider what would be the most effective way to do so (e.g.: clear concise text, clear crisp graphics).

VoiceThread – This tool was used to complete a group assignment in another MET course. The tool allowed my team to work collaboratively across geographic barriers. We all contributed to the final piece and were able to include audio, visual, text and video into the final VoiceThread piece. The main thing I learned with this was the power of collaborative efforts and the positive impact it can have on the final product. By each of the team members contributing, we each brought our strengths to the project and our own unique interpretations and flare to the project. It allowed me to play off the strengths of others and to learn from fellow team members as well as to share my expertise and ideas. Our fellow classmates, also shared there opinions by commenting on our voicethread production, which added to the collaborative learning experience.

Vista ChatRoom – This tool has allowed me to chat with group members on group projects throughout my MET courses. This has allowed me to connect despite geographical barriers of place (if only it could eliminate time zones as well for chat sessions!). It allowed me to share my knowledge and express my thoughts to team members and to hear their views/opinions as well. The tool allowed for saving of the chat notes for future review/reference.

Overall, I feel my learning experience has been greatly enhanced due to the multimedia I have been exposed to in the MET Program. In comparison with my undergraduate studies and a distance education diploma program, both of which relied mainly on lecture and text books, I found that the incorporation of multimedia in MET courses has raised my interest level and kept it. In addition, this exposure has allowed me to consider ways in which I can then apply and use these multimedia tools in the workplace training I deliver. The sheer variety of the multimedia tools is also what has enhanced my learning experience. While not all of the tools may have been easy to use nor to my liking, I have been exposed to them and now have a broader range of multimedia tools that I am familiar. When I started the MET program I was a novice when it came to educational technology, as I complete each course I see my confidence level and knowledge increasing. Despite some initial fears and apprehension to learning how to use these tools, these experiences have in the end been truly rewarding and satisfying experiences.  

There is a bit of a delay between my completing the Multimedia and Authoring Toolkit and my posting on my reflection. I completed the toolkit on July 21, 2009; however due to being busy last week with my Multimedia Inventory and my LMS online course I hadn’t had a chance to post my reflection before today. As part of my multimedia inventory, I knew I wanted to add a audio piece. I followed the steps in the Multimedia and Authoring Tools Toolkit and will reflect on my first experience using Audacity. To be honest, I was a bit worried as to whether or not I would be able to use the tool in time to create a short audio piece to include in time for my Multimedia Inventory, especially since I has procrastinated in term so purchasing a multimedia headset with microphone, which was needed for this toolkit. I was quite surprised at how easy it was to create a recording. I chose to record a welcome message to my online course. The purpose behind wanting to add an audio piece was to welcome the learners to the course. It was also to add a human element to the course through the inclusion of a real voice. One thing that I did find interesting was the how uncomfortable I was with the way my voice sounded in the mp3 recording. I guess you are your harhest critic. I must have recorded and listened to my recording and than re-recorded it several times before I got a recording that I felt was “worthy” of placing on the site. By and by, this was the most labour intensive part. It is also funny how many times I just purely stumbled on the words I wanted to say, even when reading from a script. I also noted that adding inflection into my tone of voice was necessary to add to real “welcoming” feeling I was aiming for. From a technology standpoint, I found audacity extremely easy to use. What really surprised me was how apprehensive I was about completing this toolkit in comparison to how easy it was and how satisifying it was to create my first ever mp3 recording with Audacity.

Click on the link to listen to my recording welcome-caa-sco-orientation-and-product-training

To review my Digital Story along with my Rationale and Reflection, please see the Digital Story Page of my e-portfolio.

Thanks,

Cathy

Based on this week’s collaborative wiki activity, I found there to be both advantages and challenges. Some of which come from this experience in using a wiki in this course ETEC 565 as well as those I experienced in my last course ETEC 510. The advantages and challenges are outlined in the bulleted list below

Advantages of wikis for collaboration

 – Each user’s id is attached to work

 – History of edits is provided

 – Ability to compare current and previous versions

 – Discussion page to comment, discuss and share ideas

 – Collaboration allows for a larger pool of authors and more experience/knowledge sharing

 – No geographical boundaries for collaboration, all done online

Challenges of wikis for collaboration

 – Workload distribution, fair participation by all

 – Timeliness of participation of all collaborators

 – Dissatisfaction with someone’s edits to your entry. Editing wars between collaborators

 – Maintaining flow within the document, potential for it to be disjointed/disorganized

After reading Checklist 1, I was feeling pretty low. I have to hang my head in shame and admit…my website sucks! A few of the items I reluctantly checked off included:

– We say “Welcome to…” on our home page

– We have too much/too little text on a page

– Our site uses cheap clip art instead of high-quality web graphics

I hesitated; did I have the stomach to even look at Checklist 2?  No, call me chicken. I decided instead to review the “What do I do now” section. I think that the checklist is a great tool and addressing the issues here can definitely be a complicated and time consuming process, particularly for a novice like me!

The idea of storyboarding is a great concept. It allows you to plan ahead. It allows you think about things such as content, graphics, navigation and organization. Having this shell provides perspective, particularly in terms of identifying workload and effort required. Time spent on a storyboard is time well spent.

To review my rationale for the Assessment Tool, please see the Assessment Page of my e-portfolio.

For this assignment I created an exam that is to be completed at the end of the course, once all modules have been worked through. I was very pleased to find the quiz function in Moodle easy to use. It was very user-friendly. The preview option allowed you to “see” what you were doing and make changes as you went along. I also relied upon the instructions for constructing quizzes found in the book Using Moodle Teaching with the Popular Open Source Course Management System, which is authored by Jason Cole. Overall, I’d rate my experience with Moodle as very good. The toughest part of the assignment was to conduct an exam which covered off the main content of all seven modules, while keeping the length of the exam down.

In terms of the content, the main area I focused on was on was the instructions for the exam. This is particularly important to the audience, the employees, as this is their first exposure to an online exam and LMS system; therefore it is vital that there are clear instructions. It is important that the employees are clear of the expectations.  The time limit of one hour imposed was important to note, along with the fact that there were no penalties for incorrect responses. Other details such as a running clock, the mark value for each question and the passing grade were also included. The automatic grading of responses along with the feedback is something else that I really like about Moodle. Not only does it cut down significantly on the marking time, but it also gives the employee some immediate feedback on the correct or incorrect response. It definitely allows for timely and effective feedback, a crucial feature to engage and promote learning amongst employees.

Cole, J. (2005). Using moodle: Teaching with the popular course management system. Sebastopol: CA. O’Reilly Media Inc.

In completing the Communication Tools assignment, I was considered how the audience would take react to the communication tools used. As the LMS is a new tool to the workplace learning, the employees would still be on a learning curve and undoubtedly nervous and even anxious about what the LMS offers and how it will differ from the traditional classroom instructor led training they are used to. As such, I chose to utilize two very basic forms of communication tools, the discussion forum and chat room. These two tools would not be too far of a technological stretch for a “non-techie” group of employees to learn to use rapidly. The discussion forum for posts is very similar to typing in a Word document or email and the chat feature is widely used forums such msn messenger. My thoughts are that to ease the employees into the adopting and using the LMS. If you bombard them with all the features for asynchronous and synchronous communication within one course, this would be too much. My approach is to offer it is small doses, starting off with the easiest-to-use tools. In the subsequent courses offered on the LMS, my intention would then be to expose the employees to another form, such as the wiki function for collaboration.

I found this toolkit activity to be quite straight forward. The instructions provided were step-by-step. What I found to be most challenging and what surprised me the most was that Moodle did not have a preview option. You had to save to see what you had done and then make changes if you were not satisified with the result. For instance, under course settings, you were unable to get a preview of what each theme looked like. You had to select one, save it and then change it if you didn’t like it. Similarly, to view whether bold or colour font looked better you had to try it, save and then edit if you didn’t like it. I found I spent quite a bit of time experimenting with what I liked in terms of asthetics. In comparison, WordPress has a preview feature, which I find to be very helpful as it allows you to see what it will look  like before committing to it.