After selecting Moodle as my LMS of choice, I found that determining a topic or focus area for the course was challenging, as I intended to create modules that would be as interactive and engaging as possible for students at the Grade 5 and 6 level. I was aiming to create a course that would be challenging, interactive and collaborative for students, without a heavy focus on reading materials or passive acquisition of information. Basically, I intended to have the students designing, creating and guiding their own learning, while working to support the learning of their peers. With gaming being such a prevalent focus in the lives of our students, I eventually selected the Scratch 2.0 programming language as a focus area that would engage students with opportunities to design and create multimedia projects, such as video games, while connecting with cross curricular subject areas for students to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding.
Scratch 2.0 is a visual programming language that provides students of all ages with an opportunity to create interactive stories, projects, games and animations. Scratch 2.0 was developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT, and is a free web based programming language that supports students in learning to work with code in a user friendly, visual educational environment. Users program in Scratch 2.0 by working with blocks of code and attaching them together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle in order to create programs called scripts. Through designing and building with blocks of code, the students participate in “Drag and Drop Programming,” and the online environment of Scratch 2.0 allows for collaborating and sharing ideas and projects amongst users across the Scratch community.
Inspired by constructivist approaches to learning, programming using Scratch 2.0 emphasizes the concepts of designing, creating, personalizing, collaborating, sharing and reflecting. Within the context of the modules of the LMS, my students will have an opportunity to familiarize themselves with Scratch 2.0 by creating their own personal accounts, which allows for collaboration amongst Scratch users, as well sharing projects and ideas while learning from each other. By completing the 8-week series of learning modules, students will learn the basics of Scratch programming through the use of discussions, resources, and video tutorials. This work forms the foundation of programming skills in Scratch 2.0, and will support the students in completing the design challenge and multimedia project, which allows for exploration of more complex programming concepts through the design and creation of an original project linked to the Grade 5 and 6 Language Arts curriculum.
According to the Bates SECTIONS framework (2014), the first step in selecting technology is to know your students, their similarities and differences, what technologies they already have access to, and what digital skills they already possess or lack. Students have extensive interest and experience in playing video games, and through immersion in the design and creation of games and multimedia projects, students will be able to engage in opportunities within stimulating and challenging learning situations that support and reward their knowledge acquisition and skill development. Immersion further provides students with affordances for creativity and independence to learn within the environment of the Scratch 2.0 programming language while being encouraged to develop skills quickly through design and play. The reality is that if students are able to engage in tasks that enable their attention to be fully engrossed and absorbed in the activity, the end result will be significant learning through knowledge and skill development.
With these considerations forming the basis of the planning and design for the Scratch 2.0 coursework, I worked within the Moodle LMS to begin to create modules with the following goals and learning opportunities in mind:
- provide opportunities for students to engage in self-directed, independent learning
- promote a collaborative, supportive learning environment whereby students are able to teach and learn from each other
- reinforce the importance of skills in designing, planning, creating, problem solving, sharing and evaluating
- develop student understanding and application when working with programming tools for designing and creating multimedia projects
- enhance student knowledge and awareness of emerging standards and practices in media creation
- support students with opportunities to reflect and evaluate throughout the project while providing actionable feedback through formative assessment
- provide opportunities for students to apply planning and problem solving strategies to authentic learning opportunities in order to attain fundamental skills and experiences necessary for 21st century learning environments
According to Anderson (2008), the affordances of the web can be leveraged to enhance generalized learning contexts, and collaboration and reflection play an important role in creating these contexts. Through the student discussions in the LMS, as well as through interacting within the confines of the Scratch 2.0 website and wiki, the students enrolled in the course will be exposed to ideas and opinions of their peers and will be challenged and motivated to demonstrate their learning through creative outlets in the Scratch 2.0 environment. As part of the culminating assignment in the final weeks of the course, students will share and discuss their original project work with their peers, and they will provide independent reflective feedback on the design process that they engaged in throughout the project work. The modules will present the students with a variety of different project and assessment opportunities, including reflective, metacognitive assignments that enable them to track and critique their own learning processes.
As the course layout and design becomes crucial in creating adaptive content to meet changing needs and learning objectives (Spiro, 2014), the assessment opportunities for students must also be adaptive to these diverse and changing needs. By providing varied assessment opportunities that allow students to demonstrate their learning in personalized and creative ways, students are presented with opportunities to develop essential skills. Through engaging in tasks and projects that allow for meaningful, collaborative problem solving and the demonstration of creativity in developing a solution, students are assessed in situations where their learning experiences can positively and meaningfully impact the experiences of their peers. According to Ciampa (2013), students enjoy having their efforts and achievements recognized by others, and in order to make this learning visible, an environment must be created that allows for the engagement of motivation through recognition. In order for an environment to engage the motivation for recognition, the results of the individual’s activities must be visible to other people, and the work of the students enrolled in the Scratch 2.0 course will be shared and discussed amongst all members of the learning community, not just through interactions with myself as the course teacher.
Bates’ SECTIONS framework (2014) states that assessment should also be influenced by the knowledge and skills that students need in a digital age, which means focusing as much on assessing skills as knowledge of content. In turn, this encourages the development of authentic skills that require understanding of content, knowledge management, problem solving, collaborative learning, evaluation, creativity and practical outcomes. Through the inclusion of relevant and practical project work in the Scratch 2.0 course, students will have opportunities to demonstrate a high level of skill and imagination. According to Gibbs (2005), students need to understand criteria in order to orient themselves appropriately to the assignment, and assessment must perform a role in conveying the standard that students have to aspire to. The final design project includes a rubric that students will be able to reference throughout the course in order to determine where they would situate themselves in the assessment categories. By making these categories visible and explicit to the students, they are provided with opportunities to engage in formative, self-reflective assessment throughout the 8-week course timeframe, while ultimately being held accountable for their own efforts and engagement in their learning. When Bates argues that “nothing is likely to drive student learning more than the method of assessment (2014),” it seems that this statement holds significant truth in terms of how assessment can both positively and negatively impact the learning experiences of our students.
References
Anderson, T. (2008a). Towards a theory of online learning. In T. Anderson & F. Elloumi (Eds.), Theory and practice of online learning. Edmonton AB: Athabasca University.
Bates, J. (2014). Teaching in a digital age. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/
Ciampa, K. (2013). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82–96.
Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31.
Spiro, K. (2014). 5 elearning trends leading to the end of the learning management systems. Retrieved from http://elearningindustry.com/5-elearning-trends-leading-to-the-end-of-the-learning-management-system