Author: yixi

I agree with the idea of Inquiry-based learning because it is an effective way of teaching. I really liked how you explained what involved in Inquiry-based learning and I am wondering if you can tell me more about how can it be applied in real life. However, it is still a good introduction of Inquiry-based learning.

Learning Design II-Huatian He

Post 2 – Inclusive Design

I really agree with your point of view of Designing for inclusivity is important in today’s open and distributed learning environment. Because Inclusive design focuses on providing products and services to a wider range of people, taking into account the needs of a wide range of people. Inclusive design is not an overall design, but takes into account the needs of people who cannot tolerate it. I hope you can put forward some specific examples of inclusive design in the post and talk about their advantages and disadvantages in detail.

Hi, Sandra, Xinyi, and Huatian,

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uYmu4oPqkbREK_uqST0SB828ckOSkZBWL3tYK1KhcKY/edit

• Overview: In this paragraph, you introduce the subject of the course, as well as the purpose of teaching this course, student groups, expectations of students, and the importance of the course. You also briefly introduce the multimedia tools and educational methods that the course needs to use. You cited academic materials when mentioning the importance of the course, which is convincing.
  
• The learning theory: Cognitivism. I think this is reasonable, because the group of students in this course are adults, and adults have better self-discipline. Five key components toward effective instruction cited in this paragraph are further explained and used in detail.
  
• Learning design: I think this part of the design is not complete enough. You only mentioned interactive learning in this paragraph. But you also mentioned that there are video lectures and exams in the above paragraph. How did you design this part of learning? What is the topic of group learning? How to score? And what are your expectations of students? I think the content of this paragraph can be richer.
  
• Learning context: Earlier, it was pointed out that the course is for adults’ leadership teaching, and this paragraph enriched the learning goals and problem thinking.
  
• Learning outcomes: I think activities can be used as learning design. I think the outcomes in this paragraph do not fully meet the learning goals of the previous paragraph, such as the first question “Define effective communication strategies in business context” and how to cultivate students’ “effective and formal business writing”. I think that outcomes and context should be echoed and consistent.
  
• Topic and activity: In activities, most of the learning is based on the interaction between students. How about the interaction between teachers and students?
  
• Diverse learners: I think the designed course is more in line with the situation of single parents, but not in line with the situation of ELL. First of all, the use of Google Translate in teaching materials does not guarantee the accuracy of the content, and YouTube may not have subtitles in other languages. Can ELL students communicate with team members normally?
  
• Technology: I think you can add social software for students to interact with each other, and blogs for sharing comment.

I agree with the idea of “the more information I have, the more confusion I have” because Aristotle said that “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” and Albert Einstein said that “As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.” So it’s very important to choose the correct method of education, and the best way to arouse students’ interest.

Motivation, Learning & Theory

I really enjoy Yixing’s post on his video. Through this video, I notice that he shared some content about Interactive Learning Research. The video and post also detailed the process of whipping cream. I really like how you explained that in the learning process of Whipping cream, how to fully mobilize the students’ interest to learn deeply. This post also gave me a lot of knowledge about whipping cream.

Post #4

Watching educational videos is a learner-generated media interaction, which is a learner-materials interaction. It does not force learners to respond in inherent way. Since the educational video is a learning emotion spontaneous by the learner, learners may take notes, comment at the bottom of the video, and search for information related to the video content to respond.

After the learners watch the video, I would recommend them to read academic materials related to the content of the video. Reading related materials can cultivate learners’ critical thinking and help learners see the duality of things, and it is also helpful for writing. Reading academics materials can be carried out from the Internet, or learners can borrow related materials from the library in the traditional way.

The feedback I envisioned with the learners comes from two points. One is face-to-face interaction in the classroom, allowing learners to show their own videos/ppt/infographics to explain their views, and then teachers and other learners will make evaluations, and the other method can be carried out online, blogging, so that learners and teachers can evaluate each other’s idea.

I think this will bring a lot of work to teachers. This is the spontaneous learning passion of learners. Teachers have to comment on the different viewpoints of each learner, and the reading materials will increase, and it will be difficult for teachers to control the quality of learners’ learning. But this work is easy to manage because the feedback mode of the learners is uniform. It is worth because each learner will have different ideas. But I think that if there are many learners in the same class, they can only interact in the form of online blogs. It takes a lot of time for each learner to take turns to talk about their ideas in the class.

In the face of unexpected event, such as coronavirus pneumonia epidemic has brought huge challenges to the education field. However, school education has not been stopped. Although face-to-face teaching cannot be carried out in schools, multimedia teaching gives students and teachers the opportunity to continue learning and teaching.

With the achievements of teaching management informatization and teaching model of various website system platforms, schools have developed the main form and main environment of online education. But the first problem of online teaching is real-time monitoring of students’ conditions, such as homework completion, knowledge understanding, and test integrity. Before teachers design the curriculum, what should be considered is how attract the attention of the students and how to better observe the students’ learning status. It is recommended to use real-time meeting for course teaching, because current real-time meeting software such as Zoom and Google Meet can perform functions such as video recording, voice recording, screen recording, and file sharing. On the one hand, students can be required to turn on the camera to observe the their listening status. On the other hand, teachers can use their familiar teaching mode like in the classroom, whether it is using slides or video playback, it can be implemented in real-time conference software, and the attendance rate of students can be intuitively observed. Teachers can upload homework and quiz on the school website to check the students’ learning level of knowledge. When exams come, integrity issues should be taken seriously, cheating that is difficult to prevent in offline classrooms, and how to reduce cheating in online classrooms. In the article by Stephanie Smith Budhai, PhD, 14 ways to reduce cheating on online exams are introduced (Budhai, 2020).

Fourteen Simple Strategies to Reduce Cheating on Online Examinations

They are

1. Create questions that require higher order thinking.

2. Use varied question types.

3. Creatively remind students of academic integrity policies.

4. Require students to sign an academic integrity contract.

5. Restrict testing window.

6. Set-up the exam to show one question at a time.

7. Prohibit backtracking.

8. Change test question sequence.

9. Offer different versions of the same test.

10. Allow for only taking the test once.

11. Plan for “technical issues.”

12. Delay score availability.

13. Refrain from using publisher test banks verbatim.

14. Protect test question answers.

These are ideal online classroom suggestions. There are still many problems in actual operation. The main problem is that some teachers who are accustomed to using only blackboard chalk for teaching in actual classrooms. They seldom come into contact with multi-media teaching. Therefore, there are problems in the operation of computers and technology, which requires teachers to study and train.

Bibliography:

Budhai, S. (2020). Fourteen Simple Strategies to Reduce Cheating on Online Examinations | Faculty Focus. Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning. Retrieved 8 June 2021, from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/educational-assessment/fourteen-simple-strategies-to-reduce-cheating-on-online-examinations/.

Cooperative Learning refers to the procedure of dividing a class of learners into tiny groups so that together they can unearth a new idea and help teach each other. This is no doubt a strong and efficient teaching technique. However, questions have been posed as to why it has not been employed in education. Cooperative learning is basically based on group work but may cover much beyond that (Johnson, 1994). The main feature of this type of learning is to display the positive impacts of group work while emphasizing the significance of individual responsibility. This takes place automatically in this learning process as learners work together, but at the end, each learner has a distinct role to fulfill or idea to expound.

This system allows the students to socialize as they work. This could be a benefit or even a downfall to the teacher depending on the nature of the learners. The encounter of working interactively can also equip learners with soft skills which is a great advantage in cooperative learning.

It is always the choice of the teacher to decide how he or she can incorporate cooperative learning into the classroom. It is always not advisable to start a class session with cooperative learning. This is because learners need to familiarize themselves with the class topic before they are able to concentrate when they divide into groups. However, concentration and lack of focus is the main challenge to cooperative learning (Slavin, 1991). The teacher may not be able to know whether the discussions are relevant to the topic presented or not. Some learners may choose to extend friendly talks from the hall to class, thus losing focus on the aim of the discussions. Thus, the teacher should maintain close supervision of the learners during these sessions. this would ensure minimum or no diversions at all from the topic of discussion.

Reference

Johnson, D. W. (1994). Cooperative learning in the classroom. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1250 N. Pitt St., Alexandria, VA 22314.

Slavin, R. E. (1991). Synthesis of research of cooperative learning. Educational leadership, 48(5), 71-82.

The main idea in videos that I mainly disagree with is the point that main characters make it to the end of the video. The reason I disagree with the idea is that even more strong characters have to die in the course of the video. Contrary, the main character or the star of the video even with severe injuries makes it to end.

Prolonged introduction concept that inclines to be lengthy and can have a tedious attitude making the readings or videos seems boring. Consequently, I utilize self-management skill that helps me to copy with the concept. This skill helps me regulate and control my actions, feelings and thoughts keeping me in still to progress with the reading or video.

The main learning challenge is encounter in readings and videos are attention difficulties. Ideally, I experience great challenge is focusing my attention for more than 20 minutes consecutively. Nonetheless, to overcome attention difficulties in learning, I leverage interests and sometimes allow movement up and down within the room or take a break to refresh my mind.

My best learning experience was during the intern period. I was able to exercise my future career and had time to socialize with workers and understand office ethics. The reason I enjoyed it is that it was more practical and applicable from the theory we I have being going through in lectures.

In the behaviorist approach, the teachers has to ensure that learners have direct interaction with present environmental areas that have likely of experiencing climate change. Besides, with cognitivist approach, the teachers has to create time within his lesson plan and ask the learners questions related to climate change to confirm if they are understanding and able to remember the topic (Pourfarhad, 149). Nonetheless, in the constructivist approach of learning, the teacher as to provide time for the learner to make their own reflects in climate change rather than taking them through the whole concept.

In my career development, I have significantly experienced learning through all the three learning approaches. For instance, I have encountered behaviorism learning approach during practical period when the instructors gives us time to do practicals. Additionally, cognitivism learning has continued to happen in my daily basis as the instructor asks us questions related to previous lesson enabling me to have high memory to remember and think. Constructionism learning approach has being by path to learn more from study content as I keep research on my career to ensure I have more knowledge in future.

I consider my current instruction constructivist. This is because I have the freedom to research and work on my own to increase my experience and knowledge. For example, I have made more research on my course and gone extend of solving hard tasks within the course on my own.

Reference

Pourfarhad, Minoo, et al. “Translation Strategies Used in Behaviourist, Cognitive, and Constructivist Approaches to Translation Instruction.” International Journal of Instruction 11.4 (2018): 139-158.