Assignment:
Report back to me on the learning activities you created and experienced. How hard is it to spur critical thinking? Were there any issues in terms of say, wanting there to be one correct answer? Post a link to this blog post in Activity 2.
Besides what it asks for the blog, I want you to think about all the components of the technology challenges the communication work, social negotiation, and technology affordances you experienced with the activity. Also, think about how you would explain how you learned from the experience and what you learned during the process that may not have been intended.
Response:
The discussion/exercise was interesting, yet demanding to meet the time limits. After introducing ourselves we started to ask each other about what we would do to address the assignment. Since we couldn’t identify a topic, I suggested creating an instruction design related to how someone would jump-start a dead battery since several of us had recently experienced this issue.
We discussed how we would go about creating the design and learning outcomes of the course for this assignment. Each of us gave our inputs and as a team we were able to address each of the five elements of the assignment. It was beneficial in that each of us had experienced this situation or were exposed to this issue in our lives. I thought the course subject matter was applicable because of the current weather issues and we are going from Fall to Winter this semester. I must confess that when I was teaching electronics courses at a local college, I taught the proper way to jump start a car with a dead battery. I taught this process so that when one of my students encountered this situation, they could safely perform this this process without hurting themselves or the car.
We determined that the theoretical framework for this instructional design was constructivist theory. This theory has the learner subjectively constructs their own representations of their objective reality. They take the current new information and link it to what they already know “thus mental representations are subjective” (David, 2015, p. 1). So the learner is constantly comparing and constructing the current presented information with what they already know.
The amount of information and subjective constructed is dependent on the learner’s internal assessment of the interest and need of the information. If the learner does not own a car and is not interested in knowing about or wanting a car, their subjective construction will be very low. However, most individuals drive or ride in cars so this topic will elicit some interests. The interest would increase when the learner is not certain about the proper process of jump starting a car’s dead battery.
Once we agreed on this topic we were able to construct the learning goals and set of instruction for the learner. The set of instructions are listed in a linear format to provide a step-by-step process for the learner. This linear instruction reduces the confusion of this process by focusing one element of the task at a time. The course content provides a linear process that the learner can have access to a copy in the event they may need to perform this task.
The recommendations for the use of technologies for the learner would be to use the many resources for this subject on YouTube. This course instruction can include a short YouTube video link as part of the course content. The post-instruction assessment would consist of having the learner perform this process in front of the instructor via F2F or using FaceTime.
The technology challenges for this course design would be low in that the instructional designer can create a video that can be uploaded to YouTube for the learner. The video can contain additional hints and content, providing more in-depth information, that would not be included in the linear text instruction. This activity afforded our group the opportunity to exchange information that identified additional ideas to improve the course content that would not have been possible if this task was preformed by just one of us.
Reference
David, L., (2015) Constructivism. Learning Theories. Retrieved from: https://www.learning-theories.com/constructivism.html
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