Where are we going with educational technology? Twitter is awash with articles describing upcoming ed tech trends. If you have the patience to push through the click-bait, Rhea Kelly’s (2016) article 9 Trends to Watch in 2016 describes trends in higher ed such as Makerspaces, Competency Based Education, Virtual Reality (VR), Data Analytics and Machine Learning, Accessibility, Mobile First, Wearables, Video, and Wireless Infrastructure as up and coming. From a business perspective, the eLearning Industry describes eLearning Trends and Predictions for 2017. Many of these trends are related through the technology of data and analytics and, most notably, represent a shift in thinking about education delivery. Going back to the articles on Twitter, most articles about these trends describe their use in K-12 education with less focus on adult education. Interesting, though, that pedagogy for K-12 seems to be changing with ed tech. Throughout this EdTech course, and while working through the process of selecting ed tech, we've been cautious to avoid letting technology drive the pedagogy for our courses, but in the grand scheme of things, why wouldn't pedagogy change with the affordances that ed tech has to offer? We do what we can with what we have. So, when what we have changes, we can do more (and differently) with it. During my entire CACE experience, I have been thinking about the pedagogy I experienced in in my early education (Hooked on phonics worked for me!) and beyond. Things have changed significantly. I didn't even understand how to respond in a learner centered course at first! But it's not just the difference between pedagogy and andragogy. Delivery methods have changed, as evidenced not only by the articles on Twitter, but by Twitter itself. As we strive to effectively implement emerging technology in teaching and training, technology is also driving change in teaching and training. Module 11: Looking Forward
0 Comments
Looking back in summary of the educational technology selection process, there seems to be a logical and natural progression working through the elements. The elements as I've experienced them in this context: Define - The raison d'être. - What are the learning outcomes/learner needs? Explore - What is out there that could potentially meet the need? Evaluate - Match tools to pedagogy. - What are the best options (SECTIONS/CSAM analysis)? Engage - What are the impacts to learner engagement? - How can engagement be maximized? Maintain – What are the requirements to assess, update, maintain, replace? Propose – The right fit. – Why is it the best choice? This feels familiar to me; similar to the preliminary steps of project initiation or Mor’s (2013) Design Inquiry of Learning process outlined in his learning design studio framework for educational design. As such, there is still work to be done integrating the technology and ensuring its use and value for the learners. Each situation will bring its own challenges and restrictions. Working through the evaluation process from a position of inquiry ensures a multi-faceted approach to technology selection that increases the potential for maximizing the benefit of technology. For example, the elements of SECTIONS are a checklist to ensure key factors are not overlooked. Is anything missing from this list? Experience will facilitate the addition or subtraction of questions to be asked while evaluating technology and the impacts on learner engagement. Assessment and maintenance plans complete the iterative cycle to ensure best fit. From a stakeholder perspective, understanding aspects of perceived usefulness (cost, ease of implementation, likelihood of adoption, etc.) and a forward-thinking approach adds rigor to the solution proposal. Of course, this is a best case scenario, text book approach. An element of flexibility is imperative to address the previously mentioned challenges and restrictions. However, I would suggest, having a solid understanding of the selection process facilitates flexibility as well as confidence/justification in the investment of time and resources required to develop proposed enhancements. Module 5: Educational Technology Planning Canva is a graphic-design tool website that provides tools for both web and print media design and graphics. With an easy to use drag-and-drop interface and access to over a million photographs, graphics, and fonts, it can be used by non-designers as well as professionals. For this non-designer, the tool is simple to use and offers templates, graphics, fonts, and settings to manage them easily. There are a number of features available with a free account with more advanced features available with a paid plan. As a first time project in Canva, I selected an inspiring template as a starting point and personalized my design with uploaded images and adjustments to the colour scheme. Although the template provides it’s own colour palette, it can be customized using hex colour codes. Templates also provide font suggestions that can be interchanged with others available within the tool (uploading personal fonts is available with a paid plan). That being said, without using a template to begin, a variety of frames are available to begin with a blank document. There was a little negotiating with the tool to figure out how to make it do what I wanted at times. Canva doesn’t quite suit the purpose of creating the academic poster I required, but I was able to produce a reasonable facsimile (see post EdTech Enhancement Proposal). It took some time to learn how to use the images within the framed areas. Capturing and moving multiple elements around was a breeze if they are directly on the background, but if they are within other elements, it was a one-at-time process. However, the snap-to feature and guidelines were helpful in laying out elements. If all else fails, there tutorials and design tips are available within the tool. Sharing the finished product is easy. It can be shared within Canva and, once it is made “public”, there are options such as sharing with specific people, sharing with a link, sharing to Twitter or Facebook, code to embed within a site, or download options such as as a pdf or image. With more to explore, I’m sure there are other features I have to look forward to. Having used mainly Microsoft Publisher for this type of work, I may be a Canva convert for its sheer simplicity alone.
Learning outcomes, learner needs, and tool evaluations have been assessed. Based on systematic review of alternative educational technology resources, nQuire-it was selected as the recommended application for enhancement to delivery of the nutrition label reading course under review.
A briefing note will be submitted to stakeholders for consideration of the proposed enhancement. The following conference poster summarizes the brief. (PDF version available below)
PowToon is a web-based animation software program that allows users to create animated presentations by manipulating pre-created objects, imported images, provided music and user created voice-overs. Although an account is required to use the program, there are free and paid options, each of which offers different levels of use and resource availability. Once a PowToon creation is complete, it can be shared within PowToon itself or published to YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia or Slideshare (Slideshare is only available with a paid account). I chose PowToon because I was looking for an interesting way to create and deliver a presentation in a purely asynchronous environment. The presentation was to be posted to a discussion board within the LMS. Having already completed number of written submissions for the course, I was also looking for a unique way to synthesize and compile information. PowerPoint was an obvious option, but I wanted something the viewers could experience that was more unique; shake things up a little. Did I mention I had never used PowToon before? I found the tool fairly intuitive. It walked me through a series of steps to begin my presentation and I was able to manage without using the available tutorials. Given the option to use a template or blank presentation, I decided to start with a template. The program guided me through setting up an outline of my scenes before I started creating anything. It served as a storyboarding process before development and encouraged me to check my content to understand how I wanted to present it; good standard practice for development. My process was completely "learn as you go". I’ll admit, unexpected things happened and they forced me to sleuth my way through some elements. Once I figured out how to use the timeline to manage the animations, things moved along quickly. I had control of all elements of creating scenes with the help of the library and settings features. Also, along with templated scenes the program provides pre-built scenes that can be inserted and manipulated as required. I appreciated that the program automatically added a piece of royalty free music from its library to my presentation. Although, I didn’t realize until it was complete that the library existed, or that I could have changed the music. Regardless, I was happy with the result. From beginning to end, including writing and organizing my content, the process totaled four hours. Of that, about 2.5 hours was learning and building with PowToon. The final step was to publish my PowToon to YouTube and then embed it into the LMS for my peers to view. I think it was a hit: Loved, loved your presentation! I'm such a visual person that this was fun to watch and learn from! I enjoyed your presentation immensely This was awesome! Great idea! That was great information, think I need to go on one of those excursions soon Cognitive load (CL) refers to the amount of mental effort learners exert to process new information in their working memory. The amount of load affects the learner’s ability to transfer the information from working memory to long-term memory i.e. Store the material to be learned. We have been exploring how technology might enhance or detract from the overall educational experience. Cognitive Load Theory would suggest, when not used well, technology itself becomes part of the extraneous load learners must manage. Christopher Pappas (2014) does a nice job describing Cognitive Load Theory and Instructional Design. Beyond course design, I’ve been contemplating cognitive load from a holistic perspective; specifically whether CL has an impact outside one course. I'm thinking in the context of stress, resilience, and burnout now. Does CL affect aspects of mental capacity outside of one course? Resiliency is the ability to bounce back from a stressor. The number and intensity of stressors affect the ability to bounce back. Like stress, if learners experience an intense CL, does it extend into other areas of their learning? For example, a course I completed last term had an intense extraneous load. Not only was it distracting from that course, but it affected my ability to focus on another course I was taking at the same time. The time and mental effort I invested in Course A distracted me from other aspects of my life, and not just Course B. In addition, the effects seem to have seeped into this term. I am again taking two courses and I seem to have reached my capacity for cognitive load. It's not because either course has a particularly intense load, I think it's because my resilience to that load has decreased and I haven't fully bounced back from the previous term. Is balancing cognitive load important in broader sense? I fully admit that I may have "worked too hard" and extended myself beyond capacity. How much of the responsibility is on the learner to also manage the load by understanding the requirements and balancing the load for themselves as well? How does a learner acquire this skill? I'm not sure the instructional designer/facilitator can mitigate all of the load for learners' circumstances (how could they possibly know the big picture for every learner?). From a holistic perspective, it becomes even more important to consider CL when planning course delivery and technology selection. The design challenge becomes mitigating cognitive load while balancing autonomy, interaction and structure (see Maximizing Learner Engagement) to develop effective educational experiences. Module 4: Driving Engagement There is a danger in technology-mediated teaching of separation between the learners and the community in which they are learning. The distance learners feel in blended or distributed learning has potential to negatively affect the overall educational experience. Balancing the three elements, Social Presence, Cognitive Presence, and Teaching Presence, is critical in establishing a Community of Inquiry (Garrison et al, 2000) and creating an ideal educational experience for learners. A real world example demonstrating the effects of perceived imbalance of these elements recently occurred within the discussion forum of this EdTech course before we explored the concepts of this module. One of the learners commented on her perception that a social element was missing from the online discussions. Most discussion threads focused heavily on cognitive presence and lacked the social interaction required to enhance learning beyond “intersecting monologues”.
Enter the Teaching Presence and his ability to recognize the imbalance between Cognitive and Social Presence and its negative affect on Supporting Discourse. He was able to reset the climate by recommending a different approach to responding to discussion threads. The content selection was relevant to the learning outcomes, but interacting with it became less about reading to answer specific questions and more about discussing application of concepts to the learners’ contexts. The focus shifted from reiterating content to exploring its meaning. These concepts are not exclusive to Community of Inquiry. They are also reflected in recommendations made by Transactional Distance Theory (Murphy & Rodriguez-Manaznares, 2008) in creating ideal blended or distributed learning environments. Physical and perceived distances between learners, their peers, and instructors affect the learning experience. Bringing it back to technology, although physical distance cannot be controlled, it is important to consider how technology impacts the balance between interaction, autonomy, and structure. Does technology enhance or detract from the overall educational experience? Does the technology selected support the learning outcomes? How will technology be used to mitigate the potential distances learners may experience? All important considerations when selecting technology for teaching and training. Module 4: Driving Engagement The first time I opened Doodle was to select a meeting time in a poll created by the instructor of the EdTech course. My initial thought was, “Is this ALL it does?” I wasn’t even sure it warranted an EdTech Exploration. Over the course of this online course, I have recognized Doodle’s infinite value.
Taken directly from the Doodle Support Center, “Doodle is an online scheduling tool that can be used quickly and easily to find a date and time to meet with multiple people. First you suggest dates and times for your event participants to choose from, then Doodle creates a polling calendar that can be sent to participants for feedback. As each participant selects the dates and times from the polling calendar that he or she is free, Doodle aggregates the responses and tells you which option works best for everyone.” In short, “herding cats gets 2x faster”. Part of Doodle’s value is in its simplicity. A (free) account is required to create a poll, but not required to participate. Respondents can be invited directly through email or using a link to the poll. Further, polls are not limited to scheduling events. Polls can also be used to vote on any number of decisions. Our team used it to select a topic for our group project and then set up a time for a synchronous meeting online. What more is there to say? Doodle events are easy to set up in four simple steps. There are not a lot of options for formatting or rule enforcement (e.g. if the poll requests selection of only 3 of 8 options, there is nothing stopping the respondents from selecting all 8 options), however that doesn’t seem to be a significant detractor. Most importantly, Doodle eliminates the need for multiple emails and discussion threads to negotiate meeting times and topics. That alone makes the tool invaluable. |
What's this about?Documenting my exploration of Ed Tech and how it applies to the field of Adult Education. These are my Ang-ventures. ...see more Archives
April 2017
Categories |