Assignment+Requirements

=Assignment Requirements=

I've hit some snags. I was hoping it would flush out when I went through this but I'm still confused. How much of our design proposal are we going to re-use, and how much is going to be edited? We have quite a few things noted down below, other than Key Concepts. As it stands, I would guess that what we have noted here is maybe a 25% change. Do you agree with my estimate, and does this sound right or acceptable? I've found a few new references but for the most part will our references be the same as the proposal? I really don't know what Diane is expecting. Her word count is far off too (I sent out an Vista email about this). **I reply to that email, now that I think about it, maybe we should ask for clarification first.** **Looking at her response to our proposal, she states we"need to keep the next work focused on digging deeper into some of the questions asked of the proposal in order to create a stronger foundation for your ideas.......you need to think of rationales for it from a teaching and learning perspective (literature) as well as a technology perspective"**
 * Thursday July 21 midnight **
 * I'm trying to carefully read through the assignment again - do we even need to write up another paper? These points below - I think this WAS just the proposal write-up; maybe we don't need a formal paper, other than reflections? I sometimes find the course instructions (all MET classes) quite confusing! . . . Never mind, found it. I will add part of the blurb below from the assignment (see below the line); I think the Key Frameworks, Intentions, etc. are all the same for both proposal & final project.
 * I agree with you about word count Doug. I'm confused.I see a lot of overlap between our original proposal & the final, but maybe we could go into a little more depth of some of the specifics we tried to accomplish, e.g. how did we try to specifically incorporate design ideas for (1) adolescent students in an (2) online environment. Maybe we should stress this aspect? Much of the literature focuses on adult learners, and there are significant differences. Also, in our learning readings/frameworks we often come across the importance of interactions: student-content, student-teacher, student-student being the main 3. Maybe we could focus, too, on how we tried to incorporate those ideas. Assessment for learning comes into play here (and we could work on this more, within the project) - students need to get regular feedback on how they are progressing; the teacher, too. I perhaps need to make this more clear, but in the Mendel & PS sections I have some bits about students posting their work & sending links to the teacher - so the teacher could check & give feedback. As indicated in the lessons (which have been updated), these parts the students create will then form part of their final group project. So perhaps in our write-up we just need to be quite clear on some of the specific things we are trying to do - how does our actual practice fit into the theory?
 * Oh, and that very good misconceptions section works in well. You have the theory behind that Doug. Is it correct to say that it helps establish the baseline knowledge of the students, so that Vygotsky's ZPD can be established? Or is that stretching things?

**Can we post the final proposal here so I can take a quick look at it and put in addition research if needed?**


 * From the Assignment: **
 * Due Date: July 31 **

You will prepare a Final Project report for your technology-supported educational design. The deliverable for the proposal assignment is a word-processed document of about 4,000 words + Objects  (interactivities, animations, online materials, etc.). Anything over 6,500 words will not be marked. Please keep in mind that some of the work you completed in your Design Project Proposal will be useful to you when you are completing the document that accompanies your Objects. You do not need to author entirely new material when providing the rationale and analysis of your project context; you should be able to draw upon some of the work you completed in your Design Project Proposal, though you will need to update things based upon your experience during the design process.

I've jotted down some points; many may be in the wrong place but can easily be moved. The notes I've included are far too repetative, but just wanted to get some thoughts down. >>
 * 1) ** Key Frameworks ** – What is the focus of your design project? How are you situating your design activities in the academic literature? What/Whose ideas about learning and learning environments are relevant? What/Whose theoretical insights and perspectives frame your thinking about the particular group of learners your project targets? How are you framing the primary educational activities? How are you framing the use of educational media? (approx. 2 pages/approx. 600 words)
 * 2) Semi-problem solving method to learn basic Mendelian genetic principles, but guided-discovery with a webquest-based approach also used.
 * 3) Design principals have largely been based on guidelines suggested by SREB, iNACOL, Sloan-C, and keeping special regard for adolescent learners (much of the research regarding online learners relates to adult learners, but there are significant differences).
 * I think this is already in our proposal; yes, so the key for our final paper I think is how well did we address it?
 * 1) Attempts at addressing various learning modalities. For example providing both auditory guides to introduce topics, as well as written transcripts (using Voki, but short recorded video of the course teacher would be a better option), and providing students with links to both video and textual references. As the unit was designed to be a problem-based learning scenario, but with some strong guidance (because we know that today's typical high school online student is likely to struggle with this)
 * I would move this to Key Concepts
 * 1) Active learning - several online simulations (e.g. Punnett Square & other labs) to engage the student in active learning; assignments that accompanied these activities were included to encourage the students to actually perform the simulations;
 * I would move this to key Concepts
 * 1) Social learning - the problem-based learning scenario, in addition to several group activities, were presented to encourage collaborative learning.
 * 2) Technology skills - the students were introduced to several Web 2.0 tools, several of which were selecting to encourage collaborative work - Google Docs and wikis. A desire to not overwhelm the students with too many (potentially) new too.s during this relatively short module.
 * 3) It might be useful in our report to mention some alternative approaches to what we have done. For example, we have a variety of links to YouTube and other videos, and short animated voki clips to introduce some of the lessons. These could easily be replaced by videos created by the course teacher.
 * 4) A key reference from the SREB - [[file:SREB_Standards_quality_online_courses[1].pdf]]
 * 5) SECTIONS was used to evaluate our LMS - But I would add we didn't do this; our LMS was pretty much pre-determined by our institution, which would most often be the case with selecting the LMS to use. Not often a choice that teachers or developers would often get to actually make. But this would be a good point to mention.
 * 6) Using Dick and Carey and backwards design to maintain focus of design
 * 7) Papert: give the students a choice of tool and let them create - wiki and storyboard concept as collaboration. The design gives a flow to assignments where scaffolding is utilized and the media is used extend learning from knowledge to synthesis and analysis.
 * 8) I like sticking to the knowledge building theme too
 * 1) ** Intentions and Positions ** – What do you intend to accomplish by means of this design? What does scholarship in Education have to say about placing value on this particular cluster of goals? What might be a counter-argument to placing value on this particular set of outcomes? How do the stated goals of your project fit, or not, with larger sets of goals (e.g., globalization, a School District position paper, and so on…)? (approx. 3 pages/approx. 900 words)
 * 2) Our lesson is part of a major unit on genetics, common to all Canadian high school courses in biology.
 * 3) We had several noteworthy challenges. One was to present the unit as an asynchronous online unit of study but moving beyond the mere posting of an online textbook. Major additional challenges included incorporating problem-based learning strategies in order to facilitate a more learner-centered approach, where the teacher serves much more a facilitator role than the subject expert.
 * 4) A social constructivist approach was also employed, and this may be particularly difficult in a high school context, especially if the teacher designates groups where students are geographically isolated. Another option would be for the teacher to designate groups where students are taking the class from the same school. This would produce quite a different situation,
 * 5) Importance of distance education, now often delivered online which commonly means via the Internet.
 * 6) Trying to use meaningful assessment tools that may be foreign to students. MC with feedback (Jenkins, Gibbs & Simpson)
 * 7) Not focusing on standardized testing (I think?), which may be at odds of School District postion?
 * 8) Would like to accomplish: students learn the material not by memorization for the purpose of recitation, but instead more meaningful learning (Ausubel) - very much so; can you tie this back to the boring lectures you wrote about in the proposal?
 * 9) It can be argued that a more expository and explanatory collaborative approach to learning should be focused upon, at the expense of PBL (Coleman, Brown, Rivkin)
 * 10) PBL can also lead to ambiguities, particularly if little experience and few theories are brought to it from past experience (Parton and Bailey). PBL should not be adopted lightlty (Pawson et al.).
 * 11) ** Key Concepts and Contexts ** – What is the knowledge (both conceptual “know that”, and procedural “know how”, that is the focus of your design project? What academic scholarship is relevant to thinking about this particular knowledge focus? What is the context for your design project? What academic scholarship is relevant to thinking about this particular context? (approx. 2 pages/approx. 600 words)
 * 12) ** InterActivities ** – Create dynamic objects for carrying out your designs in a specific context. The possibilities are endless, and include: website, podcast, animation, simulation, game, unit plan, layout for media lab, workshop plan and activities etc… Create the objects and/or the design specifications for the environment that are clear enough that your design could be implemented by someone else. (Page length isn’t the right metric for this section, where the deliverable could take the form of one or more website pages, modules for an online course, images, Flash animations, unit plans, podcasts, and so on…)
 * 13) This will be our Moodle module. Most of the actual content is links to other web resources, either for gaining knowledge or to provide collaboration space. A problem with this approach is "link rot" - links to learning resources often become unavailable, so it is necessary to regularly check all resources.
 * 14) ** Verifications ** – Designs themselves need to be assessed. What kind of verification activity would tell you if your designed educational environment was working in the manner that you originally anticipated? How will you know if your design allows participants to accomplish the goals that you have laid out? (approx. 1 page/approx. 300 words)
 * 15) Aside from doing a formal study of comparing results from a F2F class with an online class, there are other ways to examine the effectiveness of this approach. One approach is to use a blended approach - have a F2F class complete the module while the teacher provides no direct instruction, only facilitates as they would with a group of online students. This allows the teacher to identify specific topics, exercises, etc. that students have difficulty with; those sections could then be modified and examined again for student usefulness.
 * 16) Student satisfaction survey at the end of the course
 * 17) For online students, formal survey and/or informal discussion with local facilitators (school staff designated to assist online learners). These facilitators are often really to share great details about the student experiences with their online courses
 * 18) A useful reference I just came across, from US Dept of Ed, No Child Left Behind - Evaluating Online Learning - download from http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/academic/evalonline/evalonline.pdf . A note about this reference - sounds ideal for us:
 * The evaluations highlighted in this guide represent a broad spectrum of online options, from programs that provide online courses to Web sites that feature education resources. The evaluations themselves range from internal assessments to external, scientific research studies. All demonstrate how program leaders and evaluators have been able to implement strong evaluation practices despite some challenges inherent to examining learning in an online environment. Innovations in Education, prepared by WestEd for the U. S. Department of Education, 2008.
 * 1) Another good reference for evaluating online courses, from the SREB - [[file:SREB_Checklist_for_Evaluating-Online-Courses[1].pdf]]
 * 2) Use a standardized test instrument such as the Genetics Concept Assessment (Smith et al.). - would you test both students in a traditional F2F classroom vs those who take the online module?
 * 3) ** Reflections and Connections ** – What have you learned by engaging in this particular set of design activities? Keep track of your inquiries. Create a Group Reflection, and also an Individual Reflection. Provide the links that connect private with public knowledge. (1 page Group Reflection + 1 page Individual Reflection)
 * 4) I'm not sure what that last sentence means - provide the links that connect private with public knowledge?
 * 5) I've developed some course web-based materials before, but in the pre Web 2.0 days. It's very exciting to be able to incorporate these active tools into lessons! Before, web content could only be absorbed by students - read this, watch that. While we still incorporated that into these lessons, we tried to build in several activities that allowed students to interact, with each other & the contents, and create and collaborate. I think it may still be difficult to get some online students to collaborate with peers that they've never met F2F. I think it would be very important to design some community-building activities during that 1st critical week of the course. That would also be a good time to introduce students to some of the web 2.0 tools we would like them to use - Google docs, wikis, other digital storytelling tools. Our genetics module is actually long enough, time-wise (perhaps too long) - if students need to spend much time also learning the tech tools at that time that would not be optimal.
 * 6) It might not have been a bad idea to do a more thorough job of sketching out our entire lesson plan at the start.
 * Key Framework || 600 words, 2 pages ||
 * Intentions & Postions || 900 words, 3 pages ||
 * Key Concepts 7 Contexts || 600 words, 2 pages ||
 * Interactivities || (the objects) ||
 * Verifications || 300 words, 1 page ||
 * Reflections & Connections || 300 words, 1 page x 2 ||
 * Reflections & Connections || 300 words, 1 page x 2 ||