The following is the video overview of my Community Connections learning unit, and the link to the corresponding google site. Its a culmination of all the learning principles, multimedia, and design principles I've learned over the semester. What an experience!
Google Sites: Community Connections
The goal of learning multimedia tools was so that the lessons learned would be sustained over the future. I designed a hybrid technology unit that will help high school juniors and seniors better understand the benefits of integrating civic engagement, critical thinking, and media literacy. The target audiences that will facilitate this course are civics teachers, media skills teachers, youth development program coordinators, or community enrichment program coordinators.
Based on the mini-art school projects and my experience in the public sector, I saw the benefits of integrating media tools into research projects. However, the concepts of research and digital literacy can be executed in a variety of methods (e.g. qualitative and quantitative approaches). Also, there are innumerable social media and Web 2.0 tools available (Knobel and Lanksear, 2010). I was initially concerned about developing a unit that introduced new concepts that were complex. I strove to develop methods that helped students and instructors remain optimistic and creative.
Cognitive Processes
The guidance from Mayer’s learning principles was helpful in that they articulated clearly the different stages or excitement and confusion one might feel as they are trying to learn through media (Mayer, 2001, 2014). The concepts that I found most helpful were as follows:
- pre-training principle: introduce concepts in a blended-learning format where instructor introduces concepts prior to viewing videos;
- segmenting principle: course components segregate learning concepts from the practical application; and the
- personalization principle: leveraged tutorial videos that were less formal tone and kid-friendly.
The cognitive overload concept helped me to conduct routine self- assessments throughout the course to ensure that I was thinking about the student experience as much as meetings my instructional goals. To manage the risk of cognitive overload, I created reference materials to support planning and organization activities were developed. The templates I created for brainstorming and outlining research results helped students understanding the context of the information they accumulated during their research. This supported the cognitive process of organizing. Also, the sooner the students understood the data, the more time they had for creative prototyping.
Hands-on Learning
I understood that it was important to instruct students on how to move through setbacks. An image, event, or site originating from their community that has value to the student could hopefully motivate them to persevere during the frustrating portions of the course. The peer review process also generated ideas for the course’s multimedia tools. I understood better that people are stimulated differently, so tools with different types of graphics, animation features, and media output were needed. The peer review process was also a good way to apply the ADDIE Model concept of Implementation (Hodell, 2011). I didn’t have a classroom to prototype the course, so the peer feedback was essential for the revision process.
Based on the questions and feedback from peers, I created different types of formative assessments throughout the course. To reduce the risk that course discussion prompts might be irrelevant, I developed a pre-course survey to gauge students’ prior experience with tools and research. I used close-ended questions to efficiently identify the frequency of use or interest. However, subsequent assessments during the course contained a mix of open-ended questions and ranking questions to gauge the effectiveness of the lessons.
Human Connection in Tech
There were some psychological aspects of teaching technology that was significant. For example, I hoped the peer review process would help students with their communication skills, empathy, and self-esteem. Students struggled with technology could still add value by providing constructive criticism to teammates. Students that were more proficient with prototyping tools could develop as leaders by helping peers and the instructor with troubleshooting providing creative advice. The variety in which students could support authentic connectedness.
In addition, focusing on personal connections in one’s community to execute an academic course helps students identify the benefits of learning and cognitive processes. (Wise, et. al, 2009). It also supported the cognitive process of integrating the new skills and reflections in the future.
For future projects, I would like to develop courses where students experiment with Mayer’s cognitive learning theory using different combinations of words and images, and audio (Mayer, 2014). The students will continue to be exposed to a variety of content formats as they progress through their college and professional careers. I think helping students explicitly identify the content elements allows them to have more awareness and practice in critical thinking. Also, as the student understand why people might respond to the same content differently, they could be more receptive to participating in collaboration and team-building activities.
References
Hodell, Chuck. (2011). Chapter 3: Instructional systems development and the ADDIE
model. In ISD From the Ground Up: A No-Nonsense Approach to Instructional
Design (3rd ed.). American Society for Training and Development: Alexandria,
VA.
Knobel, Michele, and Lanksear, Colin. (2010). DIY Media: Creating, Sharing and Learning
with New Technologies. Lang Publishing, New York.
Mayer, Richard. (2014). Research-based principles for multimedia learning. Harvard
Initiative for Teaching and Learning. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/AJ3wSf-ccXo
on October 22, 2017.
Wise, Kevin, Bolls, Paul, Myers, Justin and Sternadori, Miglena (2009) 'When Words
Collide Online: How Writing Style and Video Intensity Affect Cognitive Processing of
Online News', Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 53: 4, 532 — 546
