My Digital Story

It is the first time for me using Moodle to create a course. It is a great experience as I am building a lighter version of an LMS. I found the UX of Moodle very challenging and it is sometime difficult to predict/image the outcomes of your design. In this course I used the below steps to evaluate the media I intend to use within my course (Siemens, 2003):

1.Outcomes: The learning outcomes within my content module are clearly stated in the introduction of the unit. Yet I need to use those outcomes to select the media that better represent the different outcomes. I used video to give short explanation to the term Entrepreneurship. Videos are a very effective delivery mechanize yet it should not be abused. Videos need to be short when used in education in order not to lose the attention of the viewer. Moreover, I used a PDF journal covering most of the important details of entrepreneurship as an industry and an environment to give a deep understanding of the entrepreneur, the environment & eco system, and the challenges along with real-life examples. I also used the digital story to connect with my learners and share my own experience while highlighting the “Lean” methodology that will be introduced in the next unit.

2.Rate my outcomes: In this unit the aim is to establish both the cognitive & affective domains (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, and Krathwohl, 1956). The activities did not involve the learner with a practical experience of entrepreneurship yet the learner improved analytical skills in what can be a successful startup. Furthermore, learners felt the emotions found within an entrepreneur journey for success. The challenges and the different cased shared with learners throughout the media allowed for those feeling to mature.

3.Media characteristics: Text is used for deep learning. The format is in PDF to allow for offline reading. Videos are used to deliver short explanations. Digital storytelling allowed me to connect and share a personal story with my learner. I used my own voice in the digital story to make it more personal. Discussion groups as tools helped learners to engage in peer-to-peer learning.

4.Media selection: I selected media using a criteria of time, cost, and message effectiveness. Go Animate as a tool for my digital story gave me a free trial and excellent delivery method. Moodle as a platform costs learners only the bandwidth to access the website. All content used is under Creative Common making it free to share.
I believe Moodle as a platform is excellent because it is robust yet it needs some work on the UI & UX. As a first user to the system I found it difficult to understand even though I am sure Moodle is pre-setup to me via a professional administrator. Which means there is even more complexity to installing a Moodle environment.

More about the digital story part

Go Animate is a tool using flash with predesigned objects and themes to simplify the process of creating a full digital story. The tool allows the designer to include different audio & video files to the digital story. This was the first time I use this tool and I was not sure if it is the right tool to deliver the story. Yet I believe it is an excellent tool that saves time and effort. As a tool Go Animate is as good as the content and the design instructed by the author. Go Animate runs on any browser which makes it easy to access. Yet using Flash may be a limitation as Flash support is not available and will become an obsolete technology soon.
I selected Go Animate because it allows for both visual and audio delivery of the digital story, which accommodate for different learning styles (Valley, 2011). The fact that the digital story is recorded this allows the learner to pause, rewind, and forward. This also allows the learner to watch the digital story on her/his own time. Telling a story is a good way to deliver a message, yet it is even better to bring your learners closer to you and to open-up and share their own experiences and concerns. The fact that an online course is a culture on its own means that all learners are new to this culture and need a motivation to start sharing and collaborating together (Benedikt, 1991).

I started building the digital story with a learner-centric design (Anderson, 2008a). The learner is a startup company or a person trying to build one. The digital story offered a simple and effective way to share my experience with my learners and to illustrate how the method I am offering in my course was applied by me during my carrier. This modeling approach requires the educator to fully understand the learner and to have a learner-centric design. The digital story explained how the LeanStartupMachine tool is used. This makes the design Knowledge-centric. Furthermore, The LeanStartupMachine methodology was applied to an existing company throughout the digital story. This delivers the message that this tool can be applied at any point of time a new product or idea is proposed.

The Go Animate digital story offers a modeling approach for the educator to share her/his own experience with learners. The digital story allowed me to engage with the content “teacher content” and to share the content with the learner “learner content” and opened a possibility for learners to communicate with me “learner teacher” (Anderson, 2003). I also opened discussion within the same unit in order to achieve a hybrid approach for synchronous and asynchronous communication (Richardson, 2000).

My digital story explains my journey as an entrepreneur which relates to the learners as they consider themselves entrepreneurs and wish to succeed in a specific domain. The digital story is a fun and engaging method and it is a powerful teaching tool offering personal narratives, music & audio, images & animations that create unique snapshots intro the learner’s experience (Matthews, 2014).

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. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/02_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

Anderson, T. (2008b). Teaching in an online learning context. In Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F.Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca University. Retrieved fromhttp://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

Anderson, T. (2003). Getting the mix right: An updated and theoretical rational for interaction. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 4(2). Retrieved August 27, 2007, from http://www. irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/149/230

Bloom, B.S. (Ed.). Engelhart, M.D., Furst, E.J., Hill, W.H., Krathwohl, D.R. (1956).Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: The Cognitive Domain. New 

Benedikt, M. (1991). Cyberspace: Some proposals. In M. Benedikt (Ed.), Cyberspace: First steps (pp. 119–224). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Matthews, J. (2014). Voices from the heart: The use of digital storytelling in education. Community Practitioner, 87(1), 28.

Richardson, J. (2000). Researching student learning: Approaches to studying in campus-based and distance education. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.

Valley, K. (2011). Learning styles and courseware design. Research in Learning Technology,5(2)
Siemens, G. (2003). Evaluating media characteristics: Using multimedia to achieve learning outcomes. Elearnspace. Retrieved fromhttp://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/mediacharacteristics.htmUBC Copyright requirements. Retrieved from http://copyright.ubc.ca/requirements/

This was the first time I use Moodle to build a course. An LMS is:

“Learning management systems (LMSs) are software that enable instructors and students to log in and work within a password protected online learning environment” Bates, 2014

This assignment is an excellent experience to use one of the most popular LMS in the market “Moodle”. The process was not as easy as expected. It took me a long time to build the quiz. For assessment I divided the total grade on participation and assignments. I built one quiz that is not assigned a grade (I had to add the quiz because my assignment required a quiz to be present in the course). The assignments are practical applications. The learner can apply the knowledge to his/her own startup or idea. Discussions are targeted to engage learners in a peer-to-peer learning environment.

The assessment is explained in the rubric and the purpose of the assessment is to clearly communicate the expected learning outcomes and the level of knowledge achieved after a module is finished (Anderson 2008). Assessment is also useful to me “the instructor” in order to know the level of understanding each learner achieved after each module. It can be very helpful to keep improving the course design. Even though students are found to get higher grades on assignment when compared to exams I still want learners to apply their knowledge so assignments are my preferred method of assessment (Gibbs & Simpson 2005).

Communication between the instructor and the students is found in one form at the intro module. This way all students have one place to go for help. They also will be able to see questions previously asked by their peers and answers on them. Feedback on assignments will be provided via moodle feedback tool per assignment.

Throughout my course design I tried to facilitate and inspire students learning and creativity (ISTE 2008) through the discussion tool addressing unit topics to create a peer-to-peer learning environment in which ideas are challenged. I also used digital content to build and design a digital age learning experiences. One resource I used was slideshare. An online presentation resource filled with free presentations on different topics. Moreover, I managed to model digital citizenship and responsibility by using CC licensed content and also by posting questions covering the CC license.

I can apply the SECTIONS framework to my course (Bates & Poole 2003). The below can explain how each component of SECTION applies to my course:

– Student: In the introduction section of my course I requested each student to write a bio. This bio will help me as an instructor to understand my learner
– Ease of use and reliability: Using moodle can be frustrating for both the teacher and the student. In order to make things easy for my students I used a repated pattern in each unit and a standard naming for each activity (i.e. Reading, Assignment…etc). I also made a one stop-shop for Q&A which is a discussion board. No emails are accepted and this will help students learn from their peers questions
– Costs: I made the course of CC licensed content which make it free for learners to access and share. Moodle is also free and open-source so the cost on the instructor or the educational instate is minimal
– Teaching functions and media selection: What I am trying to get out of my learners at the end of this course is to create a perfect pitch after they validate their idea. The technologies used throughout the course all can be reused by my learners to create their pitch (i.e. slideshare)
– Interaction: moodle offers different types of interactions between the instructor, the content, and the learner. Quiz and quiz feedback is one tool, discussion forms and assignments are another.
– Organizational issues: Using moodle as a professional training may not have any complexity to the organization as I am doing this on a personal level and I make my own policies. Yet I need to clearly state to the learner that technology is the delivery mechanism and basic knowledge of computer and internet access are required.
– Networking: I managed to design one unit “Learn Startup Machine” in a social networking style. The website “Leanstartupmachine” offers a network of resources and startups, mentors, and events for my learners to connect to and attend beyond the course space.
– Security and privacy: Content used by me in this course are all under the CC license but the content created by the learner needs to have the option of being shared with peers or private with the instructor. I also must include an NDA not to expose or use the learners’ ideas or content and to keep it private.

References:
Anderson, T. (2008b). Teaching in an online learning context. In Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F.Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca University. Retrieved fromhttp://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

Bates. T. (2014). Teaching in a digital age. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/chapter/5-8-assessment-of-learning/ (Appendix 1. A8)
Bates, T., & Poole, G. (2003).Effective teaching with technology in higher education: Foundations for success (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf

International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). (2008). Standards for teachers. Retrieved from  http://www.iste.org/standards/standards-for-teachers

Working with groups without having a face-to-face experience is not easy. It was a challenge to know if I was providing what was expected form me. I enjoyed the task, as LMS is my main concern these days, and I wanted to know what is relevant and important when people evaluate an LMS. The case was a special one and not a regular LMS would solve the problem. Therefor the rubric needs to address those challenges.

My IT background made me suggest that the LMS must support the BYOD approach (Bring Your Own Device), which means that LMS must be cloud and support multi platforms while runing on mobile phones & tablets. I also knowing the challenges of integration and migration of different softwares so I suggested that the LMS must comply with the Ed-Fi standard which offers a standard for developers who build educational software and allow seamless integration and communication between such softwares. Security and privacy are now a major concern. SSL encryption and the Student Privacy Pledge can help in guaranteeing a level of security to the system.

Cavoukian, A. (2013). BYOD: (bring your own device) is your organization ready? Retrieved from: https://www.ipc.on.ca/site_documents/pbd-byod.pdf.

Ed-Fi Alliance. (2012). Ed-fi-powered student information system vendors poised for new ed-tech market opportunities and growth. Retrieved from: http://www.ed-fi.org/news/2012/08/ed-fi-powered-student-information-system-vendors-poised-ed-tech-market-opportunities-growth/.

Hope, J. (2015). Obama pledges student privacy protection in state of the union address. Enrollment Management Report, 18(12), 8-8. DOI: 10.1002/tsr.30038

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!