Guoqin EDCI335

Hi Amelia, Mia, Xinh, Ariana and Hailey,

Thank you so much for providing your informative learning resource about “Stress” on google doc.

After reading your learning resource, I enjoyed this well-designed google doc for your straightforward design. Here are my feedbacks and some questions or suggestions for your learning resource.

1. All content is closely relevant to your topic “Stress”, I like how your group managed to introduce students to small topics as the start, then get into more intermediate information about stress.
2. Your activities are built up to help students understand your modules and relate their experiences with your learning content. This is also reflected in the Constructivism learning theory you indicate in your learning theory design section.
3. Your learning outcomes are very clear, and using verbs ensures the outcome can be easily assessed. I like how you include a learning outcome in your description of modules in the google doc, so learner knows what they are expected to learn from each module. Would you consider do the same thing in your google slide as well? I noticed you only put a list of learning outcomes in your slide at the beginning of your resource. However, a student might not learn the module at once; it might be good to add learning outcomes at the beginning of each module to enhance the learner’s memories.
4. I like how specific the learning group your team is targeting to, and you are covering for the student who is colour blind and English language learner. I like how you use consistent colours throughout your design and consider including speech-to-text and translation tool to help students in their learning process.
5. By reading through your design, I think your team is assuming this would be a face-to-face middle school class as most of your activities are worked on paper and pencil. Would you consider any alternative method for students who must learn through online classes? For example, if student get COVID-19 has to quarantine at home, can they learn this course online and still be able to engage with other classmates?
6. It is great to see that you have also considered your course topic within your assessment plan: you are providing different assessment formats to help students reduce their stress. However, I noticed your team didn’t include any grading information. Would these assessments be graded, or are they all non-grading assessments?
7. One last suggestion, I would put your slideshow presentation section before your module; in this way, when I read through your description of each module I can also review your slides for correspondence sections.

Overall, I think your team did a great job on the interactive learning resource by adding a lot face to face learning activities. I’ve also learned a lot from the content you have put for your learning modules. Thanks for sharing this exciting topic with us.

BLOG POST 4: INTERACTION

Hi MUSKAN,

I really enjoy reading your interactive design post. I like how you choose this short video for your students to learn. Personally I found it is very easy for me to focus on the short video, after I watched the entire video, I felt I could pass the quiz now. I fully agree on  interaction would help improve learner’s communication abilities. An interesting video would grab student’s attention. A short video would also help retain student’s attention. So they would learn knowledge more fun than just listening to the instructor or just reading through materials. I do have a quick question, since this is just a pure learning video that doesn’t need student to stop or answer question right away, how would you make sure you student would pay attention to the key information they need? Will you provide any guidance before they review this video so they know what they are expect to learn by watch this video?

Overall, this is a ver informative post. Thanks a lot for sharing it.

Guoqin

Blog Post #4: Interaction

Hi Ariana,

I really like the video you picked for your interaction learning resource. It used the anamiation to provide live example for student to understand how stress happened in peope’s body. I like how it uses alert sounds in between to help learning know the body is under stress. I agree with you that the natural of the video is not interactive but we as the course design could add more instructions to help student interactive with this video. In my resource design, I planned a live session which help require student to interact with lively. They will be response to the questions or provide their opinions about the learning content ( include video) during the live session. I think this is a great way for them to feel about get engaged with the class.

I also would apricated your thought about adding subtitles for the video. Less distraction to the video sometime might create distraction, as I am not sure where to focus on.

Overall, I think this is a great post.

Guoqin

Our topic for the final learning resource is the Chinese Culture and Chinese Festival. The question I am response to our final project is: “How would modernization impact the way Chinese people celebrate the traditional festival?”. When introducing the impact of modernization, one change is about the change for transportation. I included this YouTube video: 40 years for China’s Spring Festival travel rush as a learning resource for students to have a visual view of how it has changed.

• What kind of interaction would the video require from your students? Does it force them to respond in some way (inherent)?

For this video, we only require students to watch the video to understand how transportation has been shift in the last 40 years. The video itself doesn’t require them to respond in any format. However, we are going to discuss this change in the live session. Therefore, students will also have a chance to review this short video during the live session. For student who are not able to attend live session, they could provide their response in the Q&A section.

• In what way are they likely to respond to the video on their own, e.g. make notes, do an activity, think about the topic (learner-generated)?

During the live session, students are required to ask questions they have regards to the learning content. They will also be required to respond to one of the student’s questions either during the live session or after live session in their own post.

• How would students get feedback on the activity that you set? What medium or technology would they and/or you use for getting and giving feedback on their activity?

Students will get immediate feedback during the live session when they ask a question or answer to a content. Feedback might coming from me directly or the student in the class. If they cannot participate in the live session, I will also provide them feedback for their post.

• How much work for you would that activity cause? Would the work be both manageable and worthwhile? Could the activity be scaled for larger numbers of students?

The live session doesn’t take that much time for the instructor, I only need to organize the online meeting time and should be providing responses and feedback during the meeting since we are only expecting 15-20 members small class. Even if I need to provide feedback after class, I can still do it very fast. If we are managing larger numbers of students, we will need to require most student participants in the live class.

• How will you address any potential barriers for your learners in using this video to ensure an inclusive design?

The video I picked is short and easy to follow; the only thing needed for students are just the internet. Since it is a YouTube video, students can access it whenever they want. The only barriers could be that students might not always have internet access or only have their phones using their data. Thus the video we picked is very short to help them save some money

Post #3 Inclusive Design

Hi Yi Yuan,

Thank you for sharing your inclusive design thinking with us. I like how your team is trying to consider various groups of people and helping them to achieve success in your class. The colour blindness simulating tool you provide is very useful. When I was thinking about colour blindness, I only considered having a consistent colour theme so it won’t confuse the learner too much. But by using the tool you peovided, it would be much easier to avoid the barrier than just guessing what they need. It is also very considerable for you to record the ZOOM session for student who can not join the learning session. As an English as a second language student, sometimes I do feel a translation tool is very useful. Overall I really enjoy reading your post. I learned a lot about inclusive learning design tools.

Regards,

Guoqin

Post 3: Universal Design – Velcro As Inspiration for Inclusive Learning

Hi Braden,

Thank you so much for this fascinating topic. You’ve provided a different angle of inclusive learning design by introducing the appliance of “Velcro”. As a tool that inspired by burr stick on the socks. And it is now a very convenient tool wildly used in people’s everyday lives. I fully agree that we need to use these designs in education where we should always consider all people’s needs, not only small groups. Great post, but I wonder how your POD would apply inclusive design in your final interactive resource? Would you like to elaborate a bit about it?

Regards,

Guoqin

In this week’s inclusive design reading, we have discussed the importance of inclusive learning design. When designing classes, we should consider different students’ needs. When we talk about inclusion, I think it does not just refer to people with special needs. Everyone is unique and has a special way of learning; when designing classes, how we could make sure every student can meet their learning goal becomes a critical need.

In this week’s discussion, I would like to discuss the barriers in our blueprint learning activity and how we can overcome them:

One of our formative assessments in the blueprint is asking students to participate in a live session which time was voted by learners and might not work for all students. Also, there is a couple of different technologies involved. Students are required to use discord to participate in live discussions. During the live session, they also need to use Slido to join in live quizzes and polls. So there are many barriers to students’ success.

First of all, as an open learning resource, the instructor is not familiar with their learners. Thus, we wouldn’t know participants’ familiarity with the technology tool we require them to use. In order to reduce this barrier, we can send out a survey asking for students’ most familiar live meeting tools along with the survey for booking live time. Besides, we can provide step-by-step set up instructions to allow students to follow before they join. We will also leave some warmup time before the live session starts to allow students to join late due to technical difficulty.

Secondly, based on the Universal Design Model suggested: “unless specific media and materials are critical to the goal, it is important to provide alternative media for the expression”. A recording will be posted online for students who cannot participate in the live session on time. They will also allow them to participate in discussion in Slido even after the live session has ended. This activity is designed for our Question 4 learning module, which also has a full blog page about the content we will discuss in the live session.

Lastly, contributing to the group and live session discussion can be intimidating. Thus, in our design, we are engaging students to use Slido during the live session to participate in live quizzes during the conference. We won’t force students to speak up during the live session as it is not required. We’ve also required students to share one of their questions before joining the live session to ensure we have some content before we start. To create a relaxed learning environment and encourage students to participate in this class, students who participate and finish all required activities will get 100% of the grade for this section.

Mia’s Blog 2 post

Blog #2 Cooperative Learning

Hello Mia,

Thank you for your informative post about Cooperative learning. I have the same initial thought about this learning theory: getting students to work together in a group for an assignment. I am getting attracted by getting students to work interactively, and “students will encourage and help each other achieve their goal.” However, when I think about our group’s blueprint, I realized we didn’t have any active allow students to work as a group. We have a live session asking students to contribute to that one class, but they are all working towards the class goal but not their own goal. After reading your post, I think I will bring this to our group and see if we can add any cooperative learning theory to our final learning project. I think you did a great job of introducing this theory; I only have one small suggestion: throughout your resource, if you could provide the link for social interdependence theory as extended reading, that would be great. All in all, I learned a lot from your post and thanks for sharing.

Guoqin

Ariana’s Blog2 post:

Blog Post #2: Experiential Learning

Hi Ariana,

I enjoyed your website colour, and the image you chose is well aligned with your overall blog colour theme. It is also well explained about the ‘Experiential Learning’ cycle. After reading your post, I feel a lot of our EDCI 335 learning can reflect this learning theory experience. First, we will review and read resources, then start our blueprint design; later, we will provide reflection based on our readings for each topic. During this process, we are not only reflecting on what we are learning but also thinking about what we have learned. Lastly, we will apply what we learned in our final interactive resource. I am afraid I have to disagree with what you said. Our topic is not aligned fully with experiential learning. We don’t have to create the experience in the class, but while teaching, we can guide the student to relate to their past experience even though your target learning group is elementary students. I would imagine people of different groups would have their own experiences related to your topic “stress.” I agree that “everyone uses experiential learning when developing new skills and learning life lessons.” It is an everyday practice we will apply it since we were born.

By the way, I like the video you choose in your post as well; it is fun, short, and easy to follow.

Guoqin

For this week’s posts, I choose to learn more about the learning approach: Open Pedagogy. After researching, most resources like to break this approach into two different perspectives: Open and Pedagogy.

Open pedagogy, also known as open educational practices (OEP), is the use of open educational resources (OER) to support learning, or the open sharing of teaching practices with a goal of improving education and training at the institutional, professional, and individual level.

BCcampus

The word “open” in this learning approach usually refers to Open Learning Resources (OER), which UNESCO defines as “any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license” (“What is Open Pedagogy? – BCcampus OpenEd Resources”, n.d.).

According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of pedagogy is “the art, science, or profession of teaching.” This definition indicates that pedagogy is more focused on how we teach instead of what we teach.

The class uses OER would allow students to access learning material more efficiently and cost-effectively. As a learner-centred learning approach, getting students involved in the learning process is always the key. Students who participate in open pedagogy classes will also gain more ownership of the information they learned as they are encouraged to create learning material within the class.

Reflection on Blueprint

In our group’s blueprint, we have applied the Open Pedagogy learning approach in many ways. First of all, we will be creating a WordPress blog for our learning content. It is open to the public and accessible on the internet. We’ve also included different learning materials such as scholarly articles, journals, blogs, and YouTube Videos, which are also easy to access via the internet. Within our Blueprint design, we have incorporated the eight attributes of open pedagogy defined by Hegarty (2015); this approach will also be applied to our final interactive learning resource:

• Participatory technologies:  we will present our topic on a blog that everyone can access. Besides, we are also using different social media and technology tools to help organize learning
• People, openness and trust: we created various assessment activities to engage student’s participation in the learning process and interact with each other
• Innovation and creativity: unlike traditional learning, our learning resource will be present on an open blog site. Students will learn based on their own pace.
• Sharing ideas and resources:  we have designed activities to ask students to post their thoughts in their blogs regards to each topic they have learned
• Connected community: even though our initial design is an online class to allow students to learn independently. But we also designed one live session out of our five subtopics to provide a space where students can virtually meet each other and learn together
• Learner-generated: in our learning resource, learners will be learned all at their control, we would provide suggested due days to guide them, but it is not strict as traditional face to face class
• Reflective practice: self-assessment assignments will be provided to learners on our blog so they know how they learned.
• Peer review: There is a log assessment activities students need to finish, which includes reviewing and providing feedback on other people’s work

Overall, I think our blueprint and the thought of the final interactive resource fully reflect the Open Pedagogy learning approach.

Reference:

What is Open Pedagogy? – BCcampus OpenEd Resources. Open.bccampus.ca. Retrieved 29 May 2022, from https://open.bccampus.ca/what-is-open-education/what-is-open-pedagogy/#:~:text=Open%20pedagogy%2C%20also%20known%20as,%2C%20professional%2C%20and%20individual%20level.

Hegarty, B. (2015) Attributes of open pedagogy: a model for using open educational resources Educational Technology, July-August

Muskan Hans Blog Post:

Blog Post 1. Learning Theory

Hi Muskan,

Thank you so much for sharing your math learning experience with us. I like the picture you included in your post to help explain the math muscle that you mentioned in your learning process. I only took one math class throughout my university life, but I can still relate to the feeling you described in your post. I agree that math is still your muscle, and it is probably similar to how you ride a bike. Once you learn it, you know how to do it. We probably forgot how to do it for more advanced math, but we can quickly pick it up once the instructor reminds us.

I always feel it is more like a behavior learning experience during my limited math learning experience. We always have to do a lot of similar practice around the formula we learn, and eventually, when you go to the exam, you will be able to answer the question. Most of the time, math always has a certain answer which you know whether you are right or not. Your post mentioned that you” would go for cognitivism” for learning strategies. I wonder if you can tell me more about the cognitive learning theory applied in higher-level mathematics? Are there any different assignments compared to the traditional practice math homework?

Here is a YouTube video about how to learn math scientifically, I think it is helpful to relate the cognitivism learning to math teaching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH5Xq2Z7aQg

Overall, I really enjoy reading your post, it is fun and informative.

Thanks,

Guoqin

Joshua Hotchin’s Blog post:

Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism Discussion

Hi Joshua,

Thanks for sharing your opinion about the definition of learning. I fully agree that learning can not be simply concluded as just the enduring change in behaviour. Even though learning is also a result of practices or other forms of experience, the definition of the reading from this week is more focused on behaviour than other theories. Personally, I like constructivism more than the other two learning theories we learned during this week. I always feel I know better when I applied this knowledge to a real-life problem. And I always feel I have to understand why I am learning so I would pay more attention to learn. I feel myself is learning through various learning theories than just one of them.

Since you are an instructor and you have observed different learning needs from other student age groups. I wonder how you would design a course to make sure it fit most students’ needs? I have always been a student that wondered why I needed to learn this concept throughout my learning process. However, a lot of learning we have during elementary school are based on behaviourism learning design. It always bothers me because there is a lot of memorization needed. Is there any way to help include the special student need like me?

It’s been nice to “talk” to you in this virtual class. 😊 Thanks again for your great post. I want to add one more suggestion if you could include more media to help you explain your idea, that would be a great help.

Thanks,

Guoqin

How would the learning be designed differently by a behaviorist, a cognitivist, and a constructivist? Scenario: A high school social study teacher is planning a class on climate change.

Question From EDCI 335 Prompt 1 Instruction

Different learning theory has their unique key concepts in class design.

Course Design as Behaviorist

According to this week’s reading: “Learning and Instruction — Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism”, behaviorism learning theory usually focuses on the reaction and response to the stimulus from instruction. Arthur suggests that behaviorism believes a person can be trained to act/provide specific results under the same conditions (Ertmer & Newby, 2017). Therefore, the learning would be designed progressively from easy to hard, and only students who pass the exam can go on to the next level. As a high school social study teacher who is a behaviorist, I would design my course in this way:

1. Before the course start, student needs to answer a pre-assessment to determine which knowledge level they are at for the topic of climate change
2. Course content includes:
   1. Memorizing climate change related basic concepts
   1. Reading and memorizing why and how climate changes
3. Create a learning pattern so students would be able to follow and meet the requirement of that learning pattern. For example, a quiz is required for every sub-topic learned. Students need to meet the minimum pass grade of 50%. Otherwise, students need to retake this quiz to pass the entire course.
4. Quizzes and final tests are based on the information given in class. Therefore, all questions have only one correct answer or one standard format, which is also taught in class.

Nowadays, there aren’t many instructor only uses one single learning theory in their design. Here is an sample climate change education class designed by Stanford EARTH . They have included some behaviorism learning activities like pre-assessment, quizzes and traditional final exams.

Course Design as Cognitivist

Since cognitivism was developed from behaviorism, thus there are many similarities between these two learning theories. They both “emphasized the role that environmental conditions play in facilitating learning” (Ertmer & Newby, 2017). Instead of what instructors can offer students to learn, cognitivism is more focused on students’ interests in learning. Cognitivism would focus on students’ mental processing in learning (process and analysis knowledge learned from the instructor and use it as their own knowledge) (Bates, 2015). This process is similar as what Clarissa Sorenson-Unruh writes in her article blog about the process of building memories: encoding, consolidation, and retrieval.

As a cognitivist social study instructor, I would design my course in this way:

1. Course content includes:
   • Memorizing climate change-related basic concepts
   • Reading  related to why and how climate changes
   • Provide extended reading and resource for students to explore topic above what we covered
2. Create group work so students can work together, sharing their thoughts and understanding of what they learned in this class. Create self-learning activities to engage students and show their proactive attitude of learning.
3. Assessment of the learning outcomes will be based on how much students understand the topic instead of how much students memorize the learning content. This would include open questions to allow students to express their thoughts about climate change on why and how.

One good example of how cognitivism gets involved in the course design is  a Climate Change high school curriculum from the University of Washington. Their course design has included various student-drive assessments to help students transform what they learn into what they know.

Course Design as Constructivist

Unlike behaviorism and cognitivism, which most studies focus on understanding an existing object/issue with a sure definition/answer that students learn from specific environmental conditions. Constructivist believes “knowledge is essentially subjective in nature, constructed from our perceptions and mutually agreed upon conventions”(Bates, 2015). Constructivists would encourage students to find a problem, try to resolve it themselves and learn from their own unique experiences. Putting students in a simulated “real-world problem” and asking them to use the knowledge they already have and work with other people to define and resolve this problem.

Therefore, as a constructivist social study instructor, I would design my course in this way:

1. Provide students with a basic concept related to climate in the first couple of classes
2. Try to teach student about climate change by providing them examples, for example, a YouTube video about climate change experiments so student can understand the reason behind this change.
3. Throughout the whole semester, students would need to work in a group for their final project in their class. For this final project, they need to:
   • Create a plan to help improve social awareness of climate change
   • Do their own research
   • Present their finding by the end of the course
   • Provide feedback to other group’s work so they can learn each other

Reference:

Bates, A. T. (2015). Cognitivism. Teaching in a Digital Age – Second Edition. Vancouver, B.C.: Tony Bates Associates Ltd. Retrieved from https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/

Bates, A. T. (2015). Constructivism. Teaching in a Digital Age – Second Edition. Vancouver, B.C.: Tony Bates Associates Ltd. Retrieved from https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/

Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (2017). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism. Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology.

Smith, G. A. (2019). Blackboard Learn Video Warm-Up and Tutorial for Module 5.

Hi, I am Guiqin, a 4th-year Economics student. I took this course as an election and want to develop my skill in Education and technologies. During my spare time, I love to play basketball, video game and travel. I am excited to meet you all virtually and work with you through this class.

I came from Xi’an, a historical city in China. Thus, I’ve always been passionate about meeting new people and learn different cultures. Here is a short video about my hometown, hope you enjoy it!