Group items tagged

I have been spending quite a bit of time and energy learning the Moodle system,

It is ENGAGING

Blackboard

I’m really starting to get the hang of the expectations for posts

This course has been the most difficult course that I have ever taken

I was teetering between dropping the class

punishment

I am still under the impression that the interactions required of us in the discussion space are too numerous. 

I LOVE LOVE LOVED that Bill Pelz commented on our posts!  I felt like a celebrity walked into the room and his comments could be equated to getting an autograph. 

I have learned a lot this module, especially: NEVER give up (this has been especially resonant with me) Passion for teaching and learning go hand in hand, and are a must-have for online educators The best training tool for an online teacher is to be an online learner BE ORGANIZED MANAGE YOUR TIME Support your students and your faculty (whatever your role is) And last, but not least (yes, this was intentional) don’t procrastinate.

It took me almost two and a half hours just to set up a voicethread that didn’t crunch all of my text and pictures together!  Or get the right size and color font.  I realize that these are all things that cannot be explained to anyone, or if you did try and tell them, they wouldn’t understand how much work it is until they tried it themselves.

I think that embedding a youtube video or loading a podcast are in my future and I can’t wait! 

  I made all of my assignments turned in to me, privately,

This week, as we are supposed to have the course “done done” I am doubting myself.  Every time I log in to my course I change something, add wording, create new links to rubrics where there weren’t any, etc.  It just seems like I’m never satisfied.

I’ll have my master’s in December and I couldn’t be more proud. 

I feel like a late bloomer (I’ll be 26 in November

#1- I’m scared of the idea of  real live students actually taking my course #2- I’m really disappointed that real live students will never take my course

feedback

o there will likely never be online courses at Mildred Elley.

ETAP 680 (research seminar). 

quality with the traditional classroom in the public eye? 

prettying up

Better comprehension,

increased retention of material,

more comfortable learning environment

effective use of these strategies.

Humor has been defined as “the mental faculty of discovering, expressing or appreciating something that is comical, amusing, or absurdly incongruous” (Merriam-Webster, 2001, p.564)

The use of humor as a pedagogical tool has been shown to reduce classroom anxiety, create a more positive atmosphere, as well as facilitate the learning process (Berk, 1996, 1998; Garner, 2003, in press; Glenn, 2002; Hill, 1988; Pollio & Humphreys, 1996).

Garner (in press) found that participants who were exposed to a series of lectures containing course-specific humor demonstrated increased retention of the course-content information as compared to those who received the same material without the infusion of humor.

According to Glenn (2002), humor may physiologically help to connect left-brain activities with the right-brained creative side

teaching philosophies of highly-rated teachers finds the use of humor as an important component of their teaching strategies. Humor can increase (Civikly, 1986) and sustain (Dodge & Rossett, 1982) student interest in learning and provides a means to engage in divergent thinking. Instructors’ use of effective humor in the classroom can foster mutual respect (Kher, Molstad, & Donahue, 1999), provide commonalities and connections between the instructor and students (Pollio & Humphreys, 1996) and even increase class attendance (Devadoss & Foltz, 1996; Romer, 1993; White, 1992). According to Bergen (1992), “teachers who use strategies that promote the connection between humor and learning usually provide students with their best school experiences” (p.106).

Metaphor and analogy have historically been used as an effective teaching tool. Greek myths, religious texts, and fairytales all use metaphor, analogy, and parables to teach and help us learn expected conduct (Gorden, 1978). The use of metaphor and analogy is pervasive in society in both language and communication

According to the National Research Council (2000) the effective use of metaphors and analogies is an important educational strategy.

. In teaching, using either analogy or metaphor allows the instructor to relate a potentially unfamiliar idea with that which is familiar.

Pedagogical use of analogy and metaphor can enhance learning and retention, but they must have a high degree of resonance for the listene

be most effective, an analogy or metaphor must transfer ideas from a familiar concept to one that is less familiar or unknown. According to Bowers (1993) the metaphorical relationship must be clear and accurate—possessing face validity.

Williams (1986) suggests that vivid metaphors have the capability to teach in a way that is not always available with the use of words alone.

Experience is a way in which the self relates or connects emotionally to the world. Experiencing something involves a complex set of psychophysical processes: sensation, perception, apperception, cognition, affection, and sometimes conation. Added to this, is the interplay of psychosocial factors like expectations, attitudes, needs, desires, etc.

sheer absences of structural orientation cues

For elearning to be successful, it needs to be crafted for experience at all the above three levels

Creating experience is the art of emotional, behavioral and cognitive engagement with the consumer.

She discovered that people who felt good were more curious, better at learning, and were able to come up with creative solutions (Isen, A. M. 1993). The scope of design therefore, should extend beyond functionality to fulfill the need for experience.

a designer cannot control the development of expectations in the learners' minds

The designer can only control the product

Psychologist Alice Isen and her colleagues have shown that positive experiences are critical to learning, curiosity, and creative thought.

dded to this, is the confusing maze of open and closed spaces and a gloomy and rugged floor to traverse while finding your way out of the confusion.

ease and intuitive way of getting in, moving around and exiting are the experience factors. How do we bridge this gap between layout and experience? Four possible guidelines, which can help a designer ensure outcomes are experienced in an elearning product, are: Embrace experience as an outcome Create a shared language Narrow the gap from idea to outcome Drive constituent parts towards total experience

contribution as creating spaces that evoke desired experiences.

One needs to cultivate a method of detachment by distancing oneself from the idea in order to evaluate its validity.

Establishing geography lets the viewer get the bearings on the topography of the event.

Our intellectual skills are driven by passionate commitments which motivate discovery and validation.

Commitments lead innovators to risk their reputation by committing to a hypothesis. He gives the example of Copernicus, who declared, contrary to our experience, that the Earth revolves around the Sun. He claims that Copernicus first arrived at the truth of the Earth's true relation to the Sun not by following a method, but via "the greater intellectual satisfaction he derived from the celestial panorama as seen from the Sun instead of the Earth."[3] What saves this approach from the charge of relativism is his conviction that tacit knowing connects us with objective realities.

Knowing more than we can say helps to explain how knowledge can be passed on within a tradition by non-explicit means, via apprenticeship i.e. a pupil improves their skills by observing a master.

technologies are being described as 'cognitive tools', w

Situated cognition can be summarised as follows:

Learning is situated and contextualised in action and everyday situations;

Knowledge is acquired through active participation;

Learning is a process of social action and engagement involving ways of thinking, doing and communicating;

Learning can be assisted by experts or supportive others and through apprenticeship

Learning is a form of participation in social environments.

Is cultural pluralism possible in instructional design?

cultural variations in interpreting and communicating information are influenced by pedagogical and instructional design decisions, and the cultural dimensions of learning must be constantly problematised and not marginalised (Wild & Henderson, 1997).

the inverted curriculum approach which attempts to design an instructional component from the minority perspective but fails to provide the learners with educationally valid experiences as it does not admit them into the mainstream culture;

the culturally unidimensional approach which excludes or denies cultural diversity and assumes that educational experiences are the same for minority students as they are for others.

Establish flexible and responsive student roles and responsibilities.

instructional design model,

endorses multiple cultural realities or zones of development (

Ten design principles for culturally inclusive instructional design

Adopt an epistemology that is consistent with, and supportive of constructivist learning and multiple perspectives.

Design authentic learning activities.

Create flexible tasks and tools for knowledge sharing.

Ensure different forms of support, within and outside the community.

multiple cultural model of instructional design. T

Provide communication tools and social interaction for learners to co-construct knowledge.

Create tasks for self direction, ownership and collaboration.

Ensure flexible tutoring and mentoring roles that are responsive to learner needs.

Create access to varied resources to ensure multiple perspectives. This can be achieved by moving away from instructivist approaches where all texts are prescribed by the teacher to constructive approaches where learners actively add to the resources by posting new URL's, suggesting additional resources of interest and discussing alternatives through the bulletin boards. For indigenous learners the creation and inclusion of the indigenous perspectives is an important dimension and a means of recognising and integrating cultural knowledge.

Provide flexibility in learning goals, outcomes and modes of assessment.

Culturally inclusive Web based environments should provide learning activities, supportive contexts, and learning processes that allow for inclusivity and flexibility, while offering learners a scaffolded, structured learning environment. To achieve this balance, instructional designers need to move beyond the narrowly prescriptive boundaries of current instructional design models. It is proposed that a multiple cultural model of design that caters for diversity, flexibility and cultural inclusivity in the design process affirms the social and cultural dimensions of constructed meaning.

The flexible model proposed in this paper would allow informed choice by both students and academics, thereby resolving equity considerations and providing choices for academics, learners and learning

Professor Richard Johnson describes open learning as ‘an approach rather than a system or technique; it is based on the needs of individual learners, not the interests of the teacher or the institution; it gives students as much control as possible over what and when and where and how they learn; it commonly uses the delivery methods of distance education and the facilities of educational technology; it changes the role of teacher from a source of knowledge to a manager of learning and a facilitator. (pp. 7-8