Rationale for learning design:
Our learning design is a combination of direct instruction (where we provide the material for the students to read and watch), controlled and guided inquiry-based approach (where we pose questions and either tell students which resources to utilize or give them the freedom to select resources outside of the course), and cooperative learning (where students work in small groups to annotate course pages and reply to other groups’ annotations as a way to maintain conversation). Direct Instruction enables us to clearly identify what we want our learners to know for each topic in a structured manner. Inquiry-based learning is our way of encouraging students to think beyond the course and link the knowledge they have gained from it with their own lives. Cooperative learning is a huge component of this course. It is meant to bring together a variety of perspectives for collective and individual critical thinking development and to facilitate our learners’ connection with their classmates.
Rationale for technology choices:
Our resource is delivered entirely online, using an interactive blog that will contain our teaching material, spaces to annotate using hypothesis, as well as a short answer quiz as our summative assessment. We chose to use an online blog, firstly because it allows more accessibility for students who may be located in other areas or who cannot join in an in-person classroom. We decided upon a blog as it allows a more informal and interactive learning environment that we hope will be more engaging. Rather than just presenting the material as a lecture, learners can then take the course at their own pace and interact with the material through annotating or comment spaces on the blog itself. In terms of our learning materials, we chose a variety of short videos and academic articles, each of which will be captioned to accommodate all learners. Our material is publicly accessible and free, as a way to reduce barriers due to financial strain.
Rationale for the learning theory used in our design:
Our learning design uses a blend of the cognitivist and constructivist learning theories. Most of the material is transmitted from educator to learner through videos and documents. Learners are then asked to engage with what they have learned through discussion: through responses to prompts, and through their responses to other learners. The summative assessment will be a blend of multiple choice questions and short answers
We hope to encourage engagement, and for our learners to bring their own meaning to what they’ve learned with their reflection and conversation with other learners. Our own discussion of the material is incomplete, and can be enhanced through the insight and discussion offered by the learners.
Rationale for Peer Review:
https://jessicazhao.opened.ca/2021/11/21/peer-review-to-pod-1/
https://yuyublog335.opened.ca/
Our peer reviews were very positive and encouraging as they informed us that our design was clear, concise, incorporated all the correct elements, and was engaging. We hoped that learners would enjoy our learning resource, and from the feedback we received, it seems as though we were successful. For two of the reviews, there were very few suggestions for improvements, which negated opportunities to adjust and improve our design according to their feedback. The constructive criticism and suggestions we did receive mainly revolved around adding more visual resources, such as graphs as well as written versions of the text found in our videos. They also suggested that we add in more interactive questions pertaining to our longer videos as a way to increase interactivity and understanding for our learners. We chose not to include the written versions of our videos, as each video is accompanied by closed captioning, and we found that writing out the entire video would be time-consuming and may end up being confusing for learners to have the same information presented multiple times. We did take their suggestion to include more visual resources, such as images and infographics pertaining to our topics, as we agreed that many learners would benefit from having them to supplement the information. As well, we did not specifically include additional interactive activities to our videos, as we believe the use of hypothes.is would be effective enough in promoting learner interaction within the resource. However, we did choose to clearly identify how learners could use hypothes.is as a way to interact, discuss, and reflect on the ideas presented in each topic. Overall, our peer review feedback was very positive and while we did not incorporate every suggestion, we value and appreciate our peers’ ideas for improving our interactive learning resource.
Overview of the Assessment of Our Learning Design:
The formative assessments of our learning design will be through discussion in the comments following our topics. Learners are encouraged to respond to prompts and to respond to the comments left by other learners. These responses aren’t graded, but participation is required to meet expectations.
The summative assessment will be completed through a quiz. The questions will be a blend of multiple-choice questions and short answers. These responses will be graded, and learners will be expected to answer a minimum correctly to pass.
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