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Designing Quality Instruction Deborah Monroy

April 11, 2013

OnlineLearning

+Why am I taking up your time?

Experience learning online

Instructional design

Increasing experience teaching online

Luxury of time

QM

Leigh Hall seminars and webinars

eMerge conference in Cleveland

Fascination – bottom line!

+Online learning is here…

Example: NCVPS

- second largest virtual school in the Nation – 800 teachers

- supplemental program :- receive their diplomas from the public school in which

they are enrolled- offers many course options that students may not

otherwise have access to- accelerated path/credit recovery

North Carolina Department of Public Instruction ruling

Increasingly, students arriving at U of A will have already taken an Online course…

+This “digital generation” is entering higher education…

Don Tapscott: “Growing up Digital”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qujFJuj1S6I

Is this all bad? All good???

+So the question is …

How can we “embrace the good stuff” and use it to enhance education? :

- Razor-like focus

- Social network

- Interest and access to technology

- Ability to collaborate

- Blurring of the distinction of “learning” and “fun”

+Need to balance needs:

The needs of Akron students

- Need for foreign languages

- Relevant FL courses

- Interesting/”fun”

- Keep down textbook costs?

Instructor needs

- Maintain quality of instruction

- Maintain high standards

- Maintain/increase course enrollment

+Online learning – can this do the job? Flexible access for student and for instructor

Control of content

Seamless embedding of multimedia/primary sources

Learning styles and accommodations

Learning extending outside the classroom

BUT….

What about quality/standards?

What about building a classroom community?

What about productive language skills?

+We’re looking good at the U. of A.

Good instructors

Springboard

Access to other tools: Collaborate/Panopto/StudyMate/Dropboxes

Technological backup (for students and instructors)

Ongoing instruction available through computer services and Leigh Hall

If a course is a good as its design and the instructor, DESIGN is very important

+Online courses and design

Online courses (or hybrids) require very careful design

From the ADDIE point of view: Importance of going through the different steps of ADDIE…..

( “a colloquial label for a systematic approach to instructional development” )

Morrison, Gary R.. Designing effective instruction. 6th ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011. Print.

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Analyze: Define the needs and constraints

Design: Specify learning activities, assessment and choose methods and media

Develop: Begin production, formative evaluation, and revise

Implement: Put the plan into action

Evaluate: Evaluate the plan from all levels for next implementation

http://edweb.sdsu.edu/Courses/EDTEC700/ETP/addie.htm

+From the QM point of view…

Course Overview and Introduction

Learning Objectives (Competencies)

Assessment and Measurement

Instructional Materials

Learner Interaction and Engagement

Course Technology

Learner Support

Accessibility

http://www.qmprogram.org/

+An online course with QM certification…

Dr. Cheryl Ward/ Introduction to Instructional Technology/ University of Akron

+Those all-important objectives…

Part of the organization of any course and any lesson is the objectives

They make sure that everyone knows where they are heading

They make sure that everyone can tell if they have arrived… or not!

Objectives – unsurprisingly – were discussed during the eMerge conference I attended on 13 March.

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Finding Your Inner Learning Objectives: E. (Litsa) Varonis

Course description: “tells you something about the content and procedures of a course (Mager, 1984, p.11)

Learning Objectives

- Course objectives: describe “a desired outcome of a course” (Mager, 1984, p.11) and focus on broad skills students are expected to achieve (think of listing on a résumé)

- Module objectives: the small steps that students take to achieve the larger course objectives

Objectives must be measurable and specific and are the foundation for the whole of the rest of the course. This is very clear in the Quality Matters program where the course and module objectives must feed into one another clearly.

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Types of objective:

Four domains of objectives: cognitive/psychomotor/affective/interpersonal

Heinrich et al and the ABCD model. These are things that you should be able to identify and label (although the last three are not always ALL present)

- Audience

- Behaviors (performance – described with a verb!)

- Conditions (for the performance)

- Degree of mastery (criteria – speed/accuracy/quality etc)

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Problem of learning objectives not being expressed -– they are underlying goals.

A gap between internalized objectives of the instructor and those expressed to the students.

Thinking clearly about objectives helps the articulation of the whole course.

+How do students interact in online courses?

Again, discussed at eMerge

Particularly important for us as language teachers because students need to be producing language in our courses

+The Many Facets of Online Discussion: Dr. Jill Phipps (UofA) Discussions provide a place where messages can be

posted to the whole class.

The discussion is asynchronous

Can be used in many different ways:

- icebreaker

- follow-up to information presented.

- like a journal… no binders/bad handwriting!

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Uses continued:

- Post questions and work if class is cancelled

- Social gathering place (virtual Coffee Shop)

- Build a course resource library

- Students post opinions about a reading

- Can lead to thought-provoking discussions

- Scenarios/role plays

- Group activities

- Jigsaw strategy where each student brings different piece of

the puzzle to the discussion

- Peer reviews

- Student to student/ student to facilitator/ student to content interactions

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Presentation included discussion on how to make different prompts using Blooms taxonomy

Evaluation Synthesis:e.g. formulate

Analysis : e.g. illustrate

Application : e.g. predict

Comprehension e.g.summarize

Knowledge / Factual e.g. recall

+New way of looking at Bloom..

http://www.schrockguide.net/bloomin-apps.html

+And thinking about it in digital terms..

Andrew Churches - http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+-+Introduction

+Other web 2.0 tools – creative, real-world tasks

Google Drive – docs, hangout

VoiceThread

Jing/Snagit

Glogster

Wikis

Websites and blogs

Pinterest

Audacity

+Collaborate

+Avoid a major pitfall…

Technology serves rather than dictates objectives!

Reproduced by permission of the publisher, © 2012 by tpack.org”

+To summarize – We’re in a period of intense change Disruptive innovation : the process by which a sector

that has previously served only a limited few because its products and services were complicated, expensive, and inaccessible, is transformed into one whose products and services are simple, affordable, and convenient and serves many no matter their wealth or expertise

Key elements

- a technology enabler

- a business model innovation

… which leaves us feeling challenged and even attacked…

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Keynote speaker: Brenda Boyd

So, how does learning theory deal with all this? Where are we heading in education?

Connectivism is a “learning theory for the digital age” (…) Connectivism theory views knowledge as a social function residing in a “diversity of opinions” rather than as something which can be held completely in the mind of a single individual. Knowledge results from the interactions between individual learners and their personal and organizational networks. (Siemens, 2004)

My perspective: Education has to embrace a number of approaches. Behaviorism has a place … still… constructivism has a place…. still…. Connectivism can enrich and not replace!

(Quality Matters Director of Professional Development & Consulting)

+Build your network… and help students build theirs

Image by Paul Butler 2010 https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/visualizing-friendships/469716398919

Image by Paul Butler 2010 https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/visualizing-friendships/469716398919

+and… hang on for dear life. Have a blast!!