Author Archives: patrick conlan

ETEC565A Synthesis

My original flight path was geared towards discovery and exposure to new or unused tools that I hadn’t had an opportunity to work with before. I was really interested in using Blackboard connect since I only had experience using Moodle. Social media tools for education were also something that I was interested in learning more about. I am not a big social media user so the idea of using those communication tools seems very foreign to me. Although my flight path was a little light on details, I was really open to hearing and learning about all the new ways in which we are going to be learning in the future. Mobile and online learning seem like such a huge world that hasn’t quite been taken advantage of in the realm of education and I think we have a long way to go to utilize the capacity of those tools to their fullest extent. Not having a clear agenda going into the course left me with a somewhat weak flight path but it wasn’t due to a lack of interest or motivation for learning, mainly that I didn’t have a clear expectation on what I wanted to learn. Since I am more excited by the use of technology for education than pedagogy, I really wasn’t sure what to expect for this course or for the MET program itself. It has been a good experience so far though.

My experience with the course has been very positive and I actually had quite a few assignments and readings that connected with me. I really enjoyed getting a chance to work in Blackboard. I have been around it for quite a while but everything I had ever set up had been Moodle based, so it was neat to force myself to get to know that system a little bit. Although after having spent more time in Blackboard, I can now see why Spiro (2014) wrote an article on the death of the LMS. Both Blackboard and Moodle seem like systems that are a response to a transition in learning as opposed to a revolutionary platform for expanding the learning potential. It was nice to read a little bit about MOOCs as well from Bates (2014) since I am a firm supporter of that online model of education. However, I’m not sure that the MOOC format is going to stay the same over the next 5-10 years. It seems that there is room for growth and maturity there that will serve future learners.

Overall, the course has been a great experience for me. I came into the course with expectations to learn more about LMSs and I met those expectations but I also was pleasantly surprised by a few other areas within the course; mainly the readings of Ciampa (2013) on student motivation, the analysis of asynchonous/synchronous communication tools, and the information on how assessments support student learning by Gibbs & Simpson (2005). All three sections of the course made me think about new and interesting ways to connect with students within the online learning environment. I am all about online learning since I feel that being untethered from the classroom is important for future education and these topics really addressed issues that I hadn’t quite thought about and definitely make online learning much more complicated than just putting information on the internet. I think this is going to allow me to be much more accepting of contrary views of online learning and how we can eventually build online platforms that will really facilitate learning as much as possible without sacrificing availability over quality.

The only area of the course I was a little disappointed on was the topic of social media and education. I had hoped that we would dive a little deeper into the world of social media learning but it was much more of a surface exposure. I think this is due to the fact that I am still very hesitant as to the validity of using these communication tools for learning. It would have been nice to have become a convert for social media for education but unfortunately I am still on the fence. It doesn’t mean that I won’t eventually make that transition but within this course I just missed that connection.

I felt that all of the assignments were really well designed and helped expand my knowledge of how to implement an LMS and online learning environments. My experience as an educational technologist has always been evaluating technology for usability, effectiveness, and cost savings although I had never been able to quantify how exactly I came to my decisions. Both the evaluation rubric and the pros & cons of communication methods really made me focus on the research methods involved in evaluating a technology. I also had the same experience with reading Siemens’ (2003) article about media evaluation. Having a masters in multimedia, I have just gotten comfortable knowing which media is the right and wrong thing to use at certain times but I realized through those two assignments that there are times when you need to be able to break down decisions into quantifiable pieces.

Both the introduction module and the content module were really fun projects to work on since I had never built out an online course before. I have helped others get parts of their courses into an online form through Moodle but I never had an opportunity to develop something from scratch. Since I am someone who loves to build structure to things, it was enjoyable to start with a generalized idea of a fictional course and plan out how that course would work over the course of 12-13 weeks. I think Andersons’ (2008) article on the theory of online learning helped put me into the mental context to design a course that takes advantage of the capabilities of online learning. It is definitely a different experience than classroom instruction and I hadn’t quite realized how much so until I needed to build a course of my own. Tying in the ideas from Spiro and Gibbs & Simpson really challenged me to create something that wasn’t just a plain old real life course that exists online but something that takes full advantage of the features of the online medium. I think I was far from making something ground breaking but at least I have those ideas in my head now going forward and I hope to eventually try and push the boundaries of what online learning can do in the future.

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, T. (2014). MOOCs. In Teaching in digital age.

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.

Siemens, G. (2003). Evaluating media characteristics: Using multimedia to achieve learning outcomes. Elearnspace.

Spiro, K. (2014). 5 elearning trends leading to the end of the Learning Management Systems.

Assignment 3 Reflection

I had a really interesting time working on Assignment 3 along with the digital story. Since my course subject matter is so heavily multimedia focused, I found it very topically relevant to read some of the readings for this course at the time that I was creating the course content. The two readings that stood out for me the most were Ciampa (2013) and Siemens (2003).

I knew going into Assignment 2 that I was going to try and make the course easily accessible and hopefully fun. There are so many After Effects videos and tutorials on the Internet that I wanted to create some structure that would work better for people that weren’t as organized or proactive. Despite what Spiro (2014) claims about the self-directedness of learners now, I know that having too much information can be just as troublesome when trying to learn something. So I decided to provide content for directed learning.

Ciampa’s (2013) writings on the motivation of students really struck home with me and I tried to include those reflections into creating the content module for this course. That was primarily the reasoning for the topic of my digital story. I wanted to create an educational video that would hopefully motivate them to stick with the course and give them a positive starting point. Since all professionals started with no skills or knowledge, I felt that the digital story could parallel their own learning path throughout the course.

While I was building out the content I really took notice at what information I was trying to deliver to the students and the best possible media to use for that. Through reading Siemen’s piece on media characteristics I spent quite a while thinking about how else I could deliver this information about my course content. The subject revolves around video, so that is what I went with but I had a fun time trying to think about unique ways I might be able to teach people about after effects. I think if I had more time and energy I could have come up with something fairly unique.

Ciampa, K. (2013). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82–96. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcal.12036/epdf

Siemens, G. (2003). Evaluating media characteristics: Using multimedia to achieve learning outcomes. Elearnspace. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/mediacharacteristics.htm

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

Welcome, to the world of tomorrow!

Ever since I first heard about MOOCs a few years ago I have been fascinated by the concept of widely available and on-demand education. I find it really interesting that so many educators and educational technologists feel that MOOCs are going to be a big component of education in the future. Since I don’t spend much time in the classroom, I am definitely more curious about the technologies that are up and coming. The two that pique my interest are probably virtual/augmented reality and machine learning/artificial intelligence. The idea that students will be able to experience learning in a virtual environment is going to open so many doors for unique engagement opportunities. I definitely think that the level of understanding is going to increase with VR learning. Machine learning and AI are also going to make the learning process look vastly different than it appears today. I would not be surprised to see intelligent computer-based tutors and trainers within the next 10 years. While both of these technologies are amazing in their capabilities, they also foster a more individualized learning environment. So I hope that some form of social component is developed or a ground breaking tool is created to advocate the social aspect of learning. One thing that I worry about as an educational technologist is where we are actually going to fit in the structure of learning. It has been an interesting 15 years with the transition from basic computing and communicating to cloud-based platforms and hyper-connectedness. In another 10 years are roles like ours going to be needed for educational institutions once instructors are properly trained, teachers are employed who have grown up with advanced technology, and once systems become more user friendly and easily accessible. As a career choice I hope there will always be some aspect of technology that will outpace the comfort level of instructors and administrators.

A History Of VFX In Cinema

https://youtu.be/KyWGPi55BAs

For my digital story I created a montage that shows some of the historically significant visual effects scenes and processes throughout the history of cinema. I felt like this story would be a good way to get students creatively motivated about the subject matter of using After Effects. Even though students will start off with very basic concepts, they will eventually get better and more professional. My goal was to show them that we all have to start somewhere and even films 100 years ago used visual effects that we would laugh at today.

The Wonderful World of Disney

As a former teacher in multimedia, I have remained very aware about copyright issues. Adding to that, moving from the United States to Canada has given me an interesting perspective on two similar but varying copyright laws. Personally I am very torn on modern copyright and think that those people who are in power have abused the original purpose of copyright. So it is definitely an issue that I am conflicted about when teaching. On the one hand, I do not want to tell my students to break the law, however, if you feel a law is unjust, it is our duty to challenge it. Hence why I like to bring up the issues of copyright in my classroom. As teachers, we have a unique opportunity to use copyrighted works for educational purposes and I think that we need to push that as much as we can. I would regularly show a documentary called Good Copy, Bad Copy in my class that touches upon the various copyright laws around the world. It was an excellent discussion starter because it challenged the commonly held belief that without copyright, artists would never make any money. It has made me very upset that with the recent Trans Pacific Partnership, copyright laws that are vastly different than those in North America are being forced upon their citizens without the proper discussions. Unfortunately for our students they will be finding themselves in a world where the idea of public domain is a fantasy. There will always be a corporation that chooses to profit from someone’s old work than to let people enjoy it without restriction. I seriously wonder how these laws are going to affect artists in the future and I think we need to bring these issues to light within our classrooms.

Usability

Since my context isn’t as a teacher, I am most concerned with how to launch or implement new assessment technologies for instructors. I think that usability of the assessment tools is a really major issue. Having had some minor experience creating assessments, it can be really difficult and time consuming to create something that work well. This is besides all the time spent developing the questions and answers. If teachers struggle to input their assessments, they may decide to cut corners and not provide the kind of depth that students need in their assessments. So I think that there is a great opportunity for an assessment tool that a strong usability and interactivity to all parties involved in the technology.

Assignment 2 Reflection

Intro Module Reflection
Assignment 2 was a really engaging and challenging assignment for me. Having never developed an online course, it was interesting to plan how I would disseminate information to students and what an online course would look like under my instruction. I have taken only a few online courses in the MET program, so my perspective is fairly narrow and most likely skewed towards how MET courses are designed. As much as I used MET courses as a template, my course subject matter didn’t translate as easily as I had hoped. I also tried to take into account topics from Spiro’s (2014) article on trends in LMS that we should try and avoid. I quickly realized that there would be no reading assignments and instead opted for video tutorials. The visual nature of the software and the necessity for asynchronous delivery of the curriculum lead me to design the course content as Youtube hosted videos that I will create. Creating these videos will be time intensive but the benefit of having customized videos specifically for this course will benefit the students as opposed to using the numerous videos available on the Internet. Hopefully these curated videos will aid in student motivation as Ciampa (2013) addressed. Using a sychronous lecture method like a live screencast was not something that would be viable for the students. I also decided that for communication, that I would try and keep options fairly simple. Messages to and from myself would be okay using standard email and the internal Connect messaging tool. While I know that there are other mediums available, from the research we have done, it seems to be a good choice of balance. I do advocate to the students that if a question arises that deals with a topic in After Effects that they should search online first. There are many people out there who produce videos and provide training and part of the academic skillset that I am trying to impart on these students are research methodologies. When they are working as professionals with this software they will become used to finding solutions online. Lastly, for the assessment model, it was tricky figuring out the best way to assess their work. Since the course is designed as skill based versus knowledge based, I chose to do more projects than normal quiz/test assessments. However, the quiz component of the assignment fit perfectly as a supplement to a small skills project. I am able to use the quiz as a knowledge formative assessment along with the skilled project. Later on in the course does not seem appropriate for another quiz because they will have spent enough time in the software to be familiar with the tools. Overall, it was a good experience developing the introduction module and as I thought about the structure of the course I tried to refer back to aspects of Anderson’s (2008) article about the four types of learning. Learner-centred was especially crucial since I believe that online courses can be difficult for some students to use.

Assessment Reflection
I enjoyed working on the assessment for my online course. It gave me an opportunity to reflect upon what information I would need to know as a student at that point in time for the class. I decided to use the internal Connect test method due to its ease of use and accessibility. I didn’t think the other tools would provide that much more value to the student or myself. Having an assessment with instant feedback is a huge plus for this subject matter since it will replicate the experience working in the software. When working in video applications there is usually continuous feedback on if things work or not. Obviously for the essay questions I will need to go back and grade them but it will give me the opportunity to give the students some positive and meaningful critique about their design decisions. I chose a formative assessment since project assessments will be the primary assessment type through the course and having a formative quiz early on will be beneficial for the students to see if their knowledge foundation is solid enough. The Gibbs and Simpson (2005) article was helpful in giving me an idea of how to create questions that actually contribute to student learning versus a simple regurgitation of information over the course of the module. This course builds upon so many skills and tools that being very comfortable knowing them is essential to success in the course.

Spiro, K. (2014). 5 elearning trends leading to the end of the Learning Management Systems.

Ciampa, K. (2013). Learning in a mobile age: An investigation of student motivation. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 30(1), 82–96.

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.

Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31.

Good Luck Boris

I can definitely see where Boris would have a problem with students knowing the periodic table. Having a science undergraduate background, it is very difficult to stay on top of all the material if the core foundation of knowledge isn’t already understood. I have been there before as a student many times. It is a neat situation that with educational/media technologies where they are today, Boris has a lot more options now than he had a decade ago. If he really spends the time to create a useful review tool for his students, it could be something he uses regularly in his class. Or perhaps something he could post on the Internet for others to utilize. I can’t imagine being in Boris’ situation where you know that your students need time for review and feedback but the curriculum doesn’t provide that resource that they need. I wonder where the failure in the learning process is happening? The course curriculum, the school schedule, Boris’ organizational methods, student engagement? There are lots of possible issues that could lead towards the gap in learning for his students. I think it is admirable that Boris wants to try and fix the problem with a review tool. I know many teachers that would just kind of give up because they don’t think they could fix the issue. It will be interesting to see what kind of tool Boris comes up with and if there are a subset of students that it does not work for. Reading through Gibbs & Simpson (2005) it does appear as if there is quite the variety of ways to implement assessments and that there are varying degrees of success with the assessments based on their structure and intent.

Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31.

Learning Types For Everyone

My experience with the four centred learning types vary quite distinctly. I have never taught an online course, so my perspective is only from the four courses that I have participated in within the MET program.

Learner: I feel that this is one trickier aspects of the four types that Anderson brings up. It is all about accessibility, flexibility, and making sure the learner is given the opportunity for success, whatever that may entail. So while I feel that online learning allows learner-centred learning it doesn’t necessarily deliver learner-centred learning for everyone. Mainly because not every student has the same needs and desires for their learning environment. Personally, I find online a difficult platform for myself due to my expectations for my learner-centred learning.

Knowledge: For online learning, this seems pretty standard and well supported. Not only does multimedia allow us the capabilities of delivering the engaging presentation styles of master teachers but the Internet has proven to be a great source of knowledge. It is fantastic to be able to consolidate all this relevant information into an online resource that is structured for learning about appropriate topics. It always reminds me of the days in undergrad when we had to buy an entire science textbook for only half the chapters. With my experiences in online programs, we rarely have to deal with excessive information.

Assessment: My experiences with assessments within the MET program have been positive. However, they are almost all project-based or written responses. There doesn’t seem to be the more common types of assessments that would occur in other types of programs. Since the MET program is fairly unique in its educational direction, the assessments of our knowledge seem appropriate for the subject matter. I personally like working on multimedia projects and think they are engaging as well as challenging. I do worry that some people that prefer different types of assessments would have a difficult time with the kind we get in MET.

Community: I have had a challenging time with this learning focus in an online platform. There’s just something about building community online that just doesn’t quite resonate with me. I think there is tremendous room for improvement for online learning communities and that we are really just at the beginning of those those communities will allow us to interact with one another. So while I struggle with building/contributing to a community, I have hope that some tool or form is going to connect with me in the future.

The thing I got most out of Anderson’s article was that I was reminded on how different learners can be. All of the points he brings up can vary in importance from learner to learner and especially teachers. We are at a great time right now, what with the ubiquity of online learning, multimedia development tools, social platforms, mobile technology, etc. and I think meaningful interactions are happening and maturing all the time in the online environment. The one tool that really excites me beyond what we are currently used to is virtual reality. VR is going to give us an immersion that is going to blow people away. For some learners this is going to change everything for them. I could definitely see myself being one of those people.