5130 - IMD Final Reflection

Joni asked us to post a final reflection in the eCollege course shell, but I wanted to post it here as well. Great course and learning experience. I'm psyched about Instructional Design (never thought I would say that).

Here are Joni's questions and my responses.

1. Revisit your original "In My Life" post (where you shared an instructional message from your home or work). Please make three recommendations to the designer that will enhance her or his instructional message.

Seems like the diagram could benefit from some major refinement.

a. “Consider what occurs when the individual ideas are coalesced around a central character – the client.” Or the student, in this case. Check out Duarte, p. 60 – 61.

b. The diagram is boring. Create a diagram and/or images that move people. With feeling. Show influence or impact.

c. Replace most, if not all of the text, with visuals. If some text is necessary, use the “headline” approach. See Duarte, p. 151.

d. Final recommendation – read Duarte’s book.

2. What aspects of the course helped you feel connected to your course colleagues? To me?

Twitter was a big part of my connected-ness, with course colleagues and with you. Even though I didn’t post a lot of tweets, I watched the Twitter dialogue. It made the connections stronger and helped me learn more about folks in the course and you. And, Twitter led me to some great resources. Thanks, Joni, for being such a responsive Twitter-er.

The discussions and peer reviews were helpful as well.

3. How has this course contributed to your instructional design skills?

I have learned more about ID in this course than any other. The things I learned in this course would have really helped me when creating the EdWeb in the certificate program! The readings, I thought, were really good. I especially like John Medina’s work, and felt that I learned quite a bit from his rules. The skills learned in this course are directly applicable to my work, which made this course especially powerful for me.

4. What was the most important and intriguing thing(s) that you learned?

For me, writing the design scripts was most important. I had to really understand the reading and apply it. I have never had to do this before, and I learned a lot from it. I also really liked the “We’ll Show You, Tufte” assignment. It was challenging to find just the right images for the speech, and the assignment did a nice job of preparing us for the culminating project. I also enjoyed becoming more adept at using presentation tools (other than PowerPoint).

Great course – thanks!

5130 - My rocky relationship with Flash

I decided that completing the final project with Movie Maker is not going to work. The problem with Movie Maker is its lack of functionality for working with text.

I really don't want to use PowerPoint because of the audio component, which I've never been able to get to work right. I tried Camtasia for the Tufte project, but abandoned it about mid-way through the project. So I'm not inclined to try that for this project.

Which leads me to Flash. For a competent Flash programmer, it would be the perfect solution. And then, there's me. My relationship with Flash has been rocky at best. This might be a good opportunity to give it another shot. At the same time, it scares me.

I will give it my best try and abandon if I need to. Am I crazy?

5130 - What to do?

I finally have a start on my instructional package with a purpose! And I'm excited about it. My draft script is written. Now I need to put it all together.

So I'm trying to decide what tools to use. After comparing some of the available technologies, I initially decided to go with Microsoft Movie Maker. I used this for the "We'll Show You, Tufte" project, and really liked how easy it is to use. I already practiced my audio in Movie Maker - worked like a charm.

But as I think about adding text to the images, Movie Maker doesn't seem like the best tool to use. I can add text, but have no control over the placement of the text. Also as far as I can tell, the image becomes the entire slide - another background isn't possible. This may be fine for the project, but I'm not sure yet.

I may need to create the images with text in another program, like Fireworks. In the end, it's probably not that much different.

I may try working with Jing to create screen shots. And I love playing with Wordl. Wordl provides a fun and artistic approach to playing with Words. In fact, I may try doing my definition of SCUBA with Wordl.

5130 - Ideas for a Culminating Project

I am struggling a bit with ideas, and I am not feeling creative. So I am trying the strategy of brainstorming suggested in the readings. And Joni suggested using the blog as a place for ideas. So I will give it a try.

Here are the things I've thought about:

1. 21st century learning - a big broad topic
2. Site Coordinators - specific to my work context
3. I saw a restaurant called "Dessert First" on last week's road trip. Catchy title, I thought. How could I use it for a presentation?
4. I wonder...? - this could be the foundation of the presentation.
5. Foreign adoption - near to my heart and will be nearer yet in the next year.

I think my presentation will be based on big questions that probably don't have clear answers. My goal will be more about getting people to say, "hmmmm...I hadn't thought about that before" than to offer solutions. I'm not sure yet about the call to action mentioned in the reading. Might be easiest to do this with a site coordinator presentation.

I have some meetings next week that may move my thinking forward. Still feeling stuck...

5650 - Thoughts on Bottom-up Design of Online Programs

This week's reading is from an article by faculty at the University of Florida (UF). I was especially interested in this article because I am working with Richard Ferdig and Cathy Cavanaugh of UF on writing a book chapter that they are publishing through NACOL. The book focuses on high school implementation of online courses. I will be meeting Richard Ferdig at the end of October at the NACOL VSS in Phoenix.

Although the article is about online programs at the university level, I tried to make some connections to my work at the high school level. First, I noticed that the rationale for offering online courses is much the same between the two levels. "University globalization, new pedagogical opportunities and strategies, research in online education, increasing student numbers, reaching diverse audiences and meeting students at their own time and place were all reasons the need for an online program could no longer be ignored" (Ferdig and Dawson, p. 28).

Marketing is another topic in the article that resonates with me. The idea of marketing online courses is a bit of a new idea to me. I have been thinking about it a lot over the past week as I just returned from a week-long road trip of face to face marketing with the schools we serve. In education, marketing is a bit of a foreign concept. As a teacher, I don't remember ever marketing my courses. I have never formally learned about marketing. It certainly wasn't a course requirement or focus of a degree in education. So I'm finding this to be a challenging, but critical component of the work I do. Just as the authors say, the "'build it and they will come' model will not work" (p. 31). Our organizational approach right now is to exhibit at key conferences, to present at these conferences when appropriate, and to make road trips and personal visits with key school personnel. We are also in the process of facilitating regional workshops on online teaching and learning throughout the state. Stay tuned to see if they help us.

Wiki Introduction (for Team A)

Team, Here is an introduction to the WetPaint wiki that I created as an example of what we might do with a wiki.

5650 - Historical Timeline

For the Historical Timeline assignment, I chose to find out a bit more about Open Educational Resources (OER). It is so interesting to me that 10 years ago, this didn't exist! Makes me wonder what 10 years from now will bring - what is just an idea right now that will become a common practice or movement in 2018? I'm sure there is more than one.

And I wonder how OERs will evolve and change the face of online learning. One thing I didn't include in the timeline was OpenSource Learning Management Systems, like Moodle and Sakai. I am very curious as to how these LMS's will change the landscape of the current LMS market, like eCollege and Blackboard. How will the market adjust and will it make financial sense to convert courses over to the OpenSource systems?

I also see a connection between OER and PLE's, our group's topic for the Trend Analysis project. How do OERs already influence our own personal learning, whether formal or informal? How might companies and industries maximize these resources and opportunities for learning?

A New Thought

I am working on integrating some content from the National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) into our College Physics course. This content is high quality multimedia - I think Mayer would call it a cognitive aid based on knowledge construction rather than information delivery.

This content was probably designed using a model similar to that described by Khan in the P3 Model. This is content that far exceeds what a small organization like I work for could create. Side note - this is Open Source content available online for anyone to view. We license the content from NROC so that we can embed it directly into our courses. So the Physics instructor has viewed all of the content and decided where and how to integrate it into his course. This is a great role for the instructor/course designer to play. He doesn't need to spend energy creating the content, but rather organizing it in a way that guides and supports student learning through the course management system. This support includes navigational instruction, threaded discussions, and assessment.

For some reason, this is a big "aha" moment for me. I hadn't made the connection between the instructional design of the NROC content and the role of the instructor in designing a course to lead students through the content until just now.

5650 - The eLearning P-3 Model

P-3 is the People-Process-Product Continuum. My first thought is that this will work well for large-scale eLearning development and requires lots of dollars.

One thing that strikes me about this model is the absence of the instructor in the development process. In my world of K-12 online learning, the instructor is a key person in the process. With varying levels of technical and design support, our instructors create the online course content.

We have engaged in organizational conversations about this approach, as it is quite different from our full-time, fully-funded counterparts in K-12. We have found that when we give instructors ownership over the content and design of their courses, they respond very positively, which spills over into teaching and learning effectiveness. We believe that when teachers are actively engaged in the process, students benefit.

I have taught courses designed by others, and found it very challenging. Perhaps it was due to a difference in teaching and learning philosophy. On the other hand, when I started teaching online, it was necessary to have a model to work from. Our courses have evolved over time and our instructors have experience and expertise in teaching and learning online. And we design courses on a small scale. Perhaps this is why our instructor-as-designer model works for us.

5130 - Cognitive Processes video - notes

1. Remembering, deciding, planning, problem solving, and communicating ideas - the study of these mental processes is Cognitive Psychology, or thinking about thinking.

2. Being able to categorize (what's the same, what's different) is an important mental process. The categories we form in our mind are concepts, mental representations of related things.

3. We tend to have "prototypes" to help us categorize concepts (e.g., bird, chair).

4. A "violation of your expectations" is detected by the brain prior to even consciously being aware of it (taking a sip from a cup, or a computer). We all work from "schema" (mental maps) regarding how things should work.

5. When actions become automatic, it frees memory to pay attention to sense, meaning, structure.

6. A lot of research is being done on explanation and how experienced teachers get students to think. Glaser says that the more we understand about the human mind, the more we increase intelligence. He thinks of intelligence as the cognitive ability to learn and problem solve - it is a cognitive skill. Thus individuals can be taught to learn at higher proficiency levels and performance, and to teach themselves.

5130 - Remembering and Forgetting video - notes

1. Memory can be affected by how much you concentrate, how much you rehearse, your level of motivation, physical state and biological condition. Also affected by the context in which you learn something and the context in which it is recalled. Interference from other experiences can impact memory.

2. Discovering meaning, order, and organization are some of the most powerful strategies of the mind.

3. Long-term memory is unlimited. In theory, any experiences stored in long-term memory are available for recall. Long-term memory is passive, not active.

4. Short-term memory is the second memory system, characterized by active memories - all information currently in use.

5. Short term memory has two limitations. It can only hold a small amount of information (5 - 9 items), and the time the memory is held is short (30 seconds). When our attention is diverted somewhere else, new information replaces the old.

6. "Chunking" - grouping items by pattern or familiarity - enables us to hold onto items longer.

7. New material is learned by relating it to old material.

8. Peg word pneumonics - associating a list of peg words with the new items to remember: one-bun, two-show, three-tree, four-door, five-hive.

9. "Who and what you remember is determined by who you are and what you already know."

10. Remembering something results in a physical change in the brain (structure and functioning).

11. Procedural and declarative (what you know) memories are different sets of connections. Episodic memory (diary of personal experiences) is another set of engrams (sp?)

5650 - Reflections from the Introduction of Blogs and RSS Feeds...

As a former K-12 teacher, I completely agree that reflection and professional development are key components to a teacher's professional growth and their effectiveness with students. When I was in the classroon, blogs and RSS feeds were not part of our everyday routine as they are today. In my current role, one of my goals is to build our online teachers' capacity to use these tools in order to foster greater student learning and understanding.

The struggles associated with using blogs and RSS feeds with students for the first time are not surprising to me. I like how this article discusses some of the presumptions that were initially made, and the lessons learned from implementation the first time around (the authors modeling reflection!).

To summarize, here is a list of the lessons learned that resonate strongly with me:

1. Prepare for the semester by determining the purpose for using any new technologies (p. 57). Will blogs be used for reflection, professional development, and/or collaboration?

2. Provide more structure early on and then gradually decrease structure to allow for individuality (p. 58).

3. Minimize the number of websites students need to visit to gather information. Keeping these simple will keep the task manageable for students. (p. 58)

4. "It is important for instructors to model effective blogging for students so they can understand how the tools all tie together" (p. 59). Additionally, students might benefit from instructors' thoughtful reflection and responses to student blogs. A successful technique used was to post a couple of student blog entries on the instructor's blog for additional comment and highlighting.

5. As with anything, "adjustments will need to be made continually as the tools for communicating in the read/write internet continue to evolve almost every month - or even every day" (p. 60).

5650 - Blog and Website Resources

My focus for the Blog and Website Resources is 21st century learning - with a K-12 and non-profit emphasis. These resources support my work in online education as I strive to push my own thinking about learning forward. The ideas presented in these blogs and websites help me keep my thinking fresh, challenge my ideas with different views, and provide me with resources to share with online teachers and learners.

1. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

This website is important to me because one of my goals in online education is to engage learners with content that is meaningful and relevant to them. This means creating learning experiences that require learners to think creatively and flexibly, manage information, communicate in a variety of ways, and lead initiatives. The Framework for 21st Century Learning is especially useful.

2. The Council on 21st Century Learning

The Council on 21st Century Learning is a local organization that is "supporting systemic change that transforms schooling into powerful learning that serves the needs of all people." The Resources section of this site is especially helpful to me, and provides great food for thought.

3. Will Richardson's Blog

I began reading this blog when my group and I worked on the Web Conference in the eLearning certificate courses. Our "session" was on Web 2.0. Reading Will Richardson's blog is a great way for me to stay informed on Web 2.0 applications in education.

4. Church of the Customer Blog

This blog attracted my attention after hearing Jackie Huba speak at the NACOL Virtual School Symposium in November 2007. The blog is interesting to me, not so much from an educational point of view, but rather from that of an entrepreneurial approach to business. The focus of the blog is on "word of mouth" as a marketing approach, and how to maintain customer loyalty. This focus is very important for our small, non-profit organization. Plus I need all the help I can get when it comes to thinking about and implementing marketing strategies.

5130 - Sensation and Perception video - notes

1. The brain adapts to changes in perception (football player with vision changed by 20 degrees), and then requires new data to re-adjust when the perception is changed again.

2. Our perception is greatly influenced by its context. We see what we expect to see. We see with our minds as well as our eyes.

3. What we perceive the world as is subject to a number of influences - some will lead us astray. Previous experience, expectations, interests, and biases constantly impact our perceptions.

4. Old woman/young woman drawing, and rat/old man drawing illustrate how our perception is influenced by our mindset prior to seeing the drawing.

5. Perception has to work fast - if we relied on gathering all information, we would react too slowly.

Feeling Inspired

Just listened to Obama's speech on the final day of the Democratic National Convention. Watching this in our own backyard has been exciting, entertaining, and motivating.

Here are my thoughts. Task-based online learning gives me hope. As the quote below says, learning requires deliberate action - on the part of the learner and the instructor. Learning must be filled with purpose - purpose for reading, listening, and acting. It isn't about the content. It's about what is done with the content. This is the nature of good teaching, whether face-to-face or online.

Learning should be authentic and relevant - interesting how this comes up when talking about designing learning experiences and instructional messages. Problem-solving and collaboration are also mentioned. Sounds like our "common values" from the past year.

The idea of supporting self-regulation and metacognition in online learning also resonates with me. And the "social construction of knowledge" is a strong interest of mine.

My thoughts and questions revolve around my own experiences with creating learning experiences in the K-12 environment, whether face-to-face or online. How can we do it better? How do students "learn" in the 21st century? What needs to be done with content to prepare today's youth for the world in 10, 20, 50 years? What happens to students when their administrators don't believe in email, let alone online learning? How do we provide safe online learning opportunities without blocking and filtering the content students need to engage in authentic experiences?

5650 - I like this quote

In contemporary settings, the pitfalls and inefficiencies of content-based approaches are now widely recognised. The alternative approach which characterises contemporary teaching and learning is based not on learning about content, but about how to use it. The content itself is not the important part of the learning. Being able to use it meaningfully is the goal and aim of the learning setting.

(Teaching and Learning Online, p. 26)

This is a quote I can use!

Playing with Wordle...

...and didn't want to lose the image (yes, I skipped ahead a few weeks and this is exactly what I needed to find).

Thinking about Tufte

Read the first part of Tufte's essay last night, and can't stop thinking about it.

I really don't like "presenting" using PowerPoint - listing bullets, etc. But, I have done it. In my ideal world (prior to reading the essay), my "presentations" were more about guided activities, and the slides were used to give directions.

But, I've been faced with giving a couple of "stand and deliver" types of presentations over the past year or so -not much time to really engage participants in an activity, and the goal of the presentation was more about sharing information.

I have a couple more presentations like this coming up in the fall. I am wondering what to do and if "telling a story" would make the presentation more interesting?

Tufte just made my presentations more challenging, but much more likely to engage the audience and me. I will never look at a PowerPoint slide the same again.

Sharing the Play List

I took a bit of a risk today. Today was my day to send out a welcome message to our teachers. This time next year, I hope my view of a welcome message is entirely different - today's went out in boring, traditional email format.

However, my thinking is already evolving from the work I did last night in the IMD course. The playlist in Songza was on my mind. So I decided to share it with the teachers in the hopes that they might start to think in new ways about "traditional" messages.

I was a bit scared to send it out - this is putting something personal about me out there to people that I know and work with on a regular basis - typically a "professional" relationship. My colleagues encouraged me to go with it. And I'm so glad that I did. The responses have been limited, but positive.

Sharing with them has opened a new door for them to share back with me. In the course of a couple of hours, I have learned new things about two of our instructors and made wonderful personal connections that will last forever. I am grateful for the opportunity to make these connections and must remember to take the risk to get there.

First Impressions

This is the first week of two new courses in the ILT program. My first thoughts are on Instructional Message Design.

This could be a challenging course, but I'm excited about it because I need help in this area. I'm really good at bullet points on PowerPoint slides! I'm not so good at thinking creatively about changing up presentations to make them more effective. I seem to get really stuck in the routine of doing what everyone else does. PowerPoint is a tool I like to use to help me organize my thinking - but this doesn't mean it is an effective way to engage learners.

I look forward to re-thinking how to design effective "messages" for learners - I hope the creative juices flow this semester.