Peersâ Names: Qirui Du, Susie Wang, Yizhou Zhang, Ziqi Wang
Interactive Learning Resource Topic: Economics in daily life
Identify components of the Interactive Learning Resource that might be missing (e.g., appropriate outcomes, alignment, interactivity, inclusivity, technology use and rationale, presentation, grammar, spelling, citations, etc.).
– I think that the introduction could be a bit more concise and act more as an overview of the whole resource. – It seems that the âdescriptionâ and âlearning theoryâ paragraphs are the same, which was likely a mistake. – I noticed some grammatical errors (mostly with the inclusion of quotes)
Provide a summary of The Interactive Learning Resourceâs strengths and weaknesses. Draw out specific examples from your peersâ work to justify your feedback.
Strengths: – Effective use of blooms taxonomy verbs for learning outcomes – I liked the layout of each topic as it seemed very organized and was consistent for every topic – I really liked the âplans to design for the inclusion of diverse learnersâ section and appreciated that there were examples of how it would be implemented. – The activities and assessments for each topic were all relevant and made sense in the context of the course material
Provide general, specific, and practical recommendations to your peers on how to improve their Interactive Learning Resource.
Overall, your Interactive Learning Resource was engaging and followed a well-structured layout for the subtopics. I think that you strongly applied the material that we have learned in this class to make the resource interactive and easily understandable for learners. My main recommendation to improve your ILR would be to create an overview of the course that strongly highlights the importance of each topic and how the resource will help learners to understand economics better.Â
How will your interactive learning resource specifically ensure that the needs of all your learners can be met?
Reducing barriers to learning is an essential task for instructors as they are responsible for providing an inclusive platform for a variety of students. This can include ensuring that all students have the same access to resources, providing a variety of learning styles and keeping physical and mental health in mind. It is important to create accessible interactive learning resources because it allows everyone, regardless of their abilities, to access the same content. This helps to promote a more equitable and inclusive learning environment. In addition, creating accessible interactive learning resources can benefit not only those who may require extra support but can also be beneficial for all learners. By making learning resources more accessible, it can allow for more effective learning and better understanding for all students. It can also help to encourage more creative and collaborative approaches to learning.
To ensure that our interactive learning resource is inclusive and can support all learners, we will provide a special effort to make sure that all of the following points are included:
Ensure that all audio and video resources provide alternative text and captions to adhere to those with any form of hearing impairment.
Provide audio file descriptions for any text or images that are used to make sure those with visual impairments are being included
Utilize accessible colours that have contrast to support learners who may have colour vision deficiency.
Incorporate clear fonts as well as keep a clear design layout for learners to follow easily.
Design the resource with assistive technology in mind.
By including all of these in our interactive learning resource, we will achieve a more inclusive and equitable learning experience that provides students with the opportunity to learn more effectively and efficiently. Removing any potential barriers to learning creates an environment where everyone has the same chance to succeed in their educational journey.Â
Open pedagogies is an educational approach that emphasizes student-centred and collaboration-based learning, as opposed to the traditional teacher-centred model. Below I have highlighted some key features that I believe to best characterize this approach to learning:
Student-centred: Open pedagogies prioritize student engagement and direction in the learning process. Students are encouraged to take an active role in their own education and are given opportunities to design and direct their own learning experiences.
Collaborative: Open pedagogies foster collaboration and interaction among students, teachers, and communities. This approach values the sharing of knowledge and expertise and encourages students to work together to solve problems and achieve shared goals.
Open and flexible: Open pedagogies embrace the idea that learning is a continuous process that occurs in many different environments and contexts, both inside and outside of the traditional classroom. This approach values openness, adaptability, and the ability to accommodate various learning styles and needs.
Technology-enabled: Open pedagogies often make use of technology to facilitate learning, collaboration, and communication. This includes tools like online platforms, social media, and mobile devices.
Community-focused: Open pedagogies prioritize the importance of community and place a strong emphasis on building connections between students, teachers, and the broader community. This approach seeks to promote learning that is relevant and meaningful to the experiences of students and their communities.
Open pedagogies align well with the idea of lifelong learning and the belief that education should be a collaborative, student-centred, and ongoing process. This approach encourages students to take ownership of their own learning and fosters a supportive and inclusive learning environment.
In the context of my group’s chosen topic of sustainability in Victoria, I would believe that open pedagogies would be a very effective approach to support learning. Our learning resource is targeted at people who have recently moved to Victoria, therefore the open pedagogies approach would be beneficial in at least one way, as it aims to engage students by prioritizing a focus on community which would directly apply to our studentsâ environment. Another reason why open pedagogies would align with our topic, is through the use of technology-based learning, as the course is not only set up online but also incorporates a variety of online tools and resources to support the learning process. Most importantly, open pedagogies prioritize student-centred learning, which aligns with our learning resource because we want to cater to our students by having them learn at their own pace, take on an active role in the learning process, share and reflect on their own experiences, and encourage them to find ways to make sustainable changes in their lives that work for them as an individual.Â
Share a story about your best learning experience (could be a formal course or something more personal) Why did you enjoy it?
Throughout my educational career, I have experienced a variety of classes and have noted many different learning styles provided by my instructors. The learning theory that I have noticed the most in classrooms seems to be behaviourism due to teacher-centred instruction and repetitive reinforcement. While this can be effective, I find that I learn best through a more constructivist approach that incorporates both aspects of behaviourism and cognitivism. One class in particular that I found fell under constructivism was my entrepreneurship class.
At the beginning of the semester, my professor paved the way for which the course will be set up by highlighting that each student will be creating a product individually and that she would act as a guide to ensure success with a more hands-on approach. Within the first two classes, we were taught some fundamental strategies of entrepreneurship along with being encouraged to participate in our personal hobbies on our own time to spark creativity when figuring out what product idea we wanted to create. By the third class, we had to hand in a relatively large assignment with a product idea we created. I remember being quite intimidated and nervous heading into this assignment as I didn’t expect to be able to conceptualize a product so early in the course, however with the professor’s advice to engage in our personal hobbies and interests, I was able to come up with many ideas. For instance, I have prior knowledge and interest in houseplant care, so I was able to use that to create a product idea. Following this assignment, we were provided feedback from the professor along with engaging with other students to share ideas and opinions to enhance our ideas. Throughout the course, the professor instructed our lessons in a way that had us actively working on our product ideas and applying the course material to our personal projects.
I really enjoyed this course due to the hands-on approach to learning and found that the professor made the class very learner-centred as she encouraged us to incorporate our previous knowledge and experiences. Overall I feel as though I have learned so much information from this course that will stick with me in both my educational and professional career.
Group Members: Michelle Mylrea, Sydney Barr, Sehee Park, & Justine Cook
Introduction to Lesson Plan
This lesson is designed to educate students on conscious spending with a limited budget. It is divided into 3 topics: spending on food, spending on educational tools and resources, and spending on lifestyle, and it is taught by using various forms of multimedia. The lesson also includes information about how 4 current university students are spending their money. To help support and encourage active learning, the students are asked to create their own budget at the end of the lesson.
Learning Objectives
In this lesson the audience will:
Gain insight into spending habits as a university student
Identify and reflect on the main purchase habits that are the most expensive.
Show student budgeting concepts and applications and practice how to reduce spending.
Create an optimal budget based on their personal values, needs, and wants.
Food
Food is an essential part of student budgeting. Students need to consider how fast their money can go when they are eating out or ordering food for their homes. Balance is always crucial when spending on food, but there are tricks to help students with tight budgets spend a little less. The screencast details four tips on how to save money on food better along with creating good decision-making habits when grocery shopping.
Watch Screencast:
Screencast created by Sydney
Education
Students face many expenses regarding their education; including tuition, student fees, textbooks, and supplies. While there are some educational expenses that are unavoidable, students are able to make alternative decisions on certain purchases as a way to save some money. Textbooks are often a required resource for university courses, however, they can come to be very expensive. According to Mark Brownâs article, What Canadian University Students can Expect to Pay for Books (2017), the average amount spent by students at the University of Victoria comes to $780.94 per school year. The infographic below outlines five alternative ways of acquiring textbooks to encourage students to be smart with their money.
Students can choose to spend their money on a variety of products and services, and this all depends on their individual values. Below is a mind map outlining examples of lifestyle purchases a person can make, and there is a sketchnote outlining a recommended process to decide whether or not an item is worth the purchase. A strong indicator of whether or not to make these purchases is to decide if the product or service is considered a âneedâ or a âwantâ. Begin the sketchnote at the first question on the far left.
Mind Map created by JustineSketchnote created by Justine
Student Opinions
In our podcast, we discussed the challenges, highlights and importance of student budgeting. The varying opinions we heard depict the similarities and differences in how we spend our money as students. It is important to recognize that every student has a different approach to spending and saving and some people may be better in one area, but require improvements in another. Click the picture below to listen.
This assignment is for the purpose of getting familiar with budgeting and tracking your spending. You will be creating a pie chart based on your personal monthly spending along with answering six short questions to which you will be reflecting on your personal budgeting strengths and weaknesses.
Graphic design is important for comprehension because it helps students to stay engaged with the topics at hand. Creating a piece of multimedia that is visually appealing is important for retention. We incorporated graphic design tools into our infographic, sketchnote, and screencast video. Both learning objects include tools such as colour, proximity, balance and contrast to improve the learning experience by keeping the design visually appealing and easy to follow.
Storytelling
Storytelling in multimedia is essential when trying to create relatable and engaging content. As it allows students to use their imagination and experience. It also helps to make the content more personal as individual experiences show a lot of depth. In the sketchnote, a story is created for the reader as they decide whether to buy the item or not. A narrative is created for the object that the person wishes to buy. Personal stories are also shared in both the podcast and the screencast – as this helps the narrative feel comfortable, engaging, and relatable.
Dual Coding Theory
Allan Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory highlights the difficulty of only having one form of delivering information. One being language and the other being image. Having both verbal and visual stimuli makes it easier to remember and process information. This theory supports a way of learning that many individuals prefer, which is used in a screen-casting format.
Cognitive Load
We have tried to reduce cognitive load by limiting the word count in each of the section introductions. Cognitive load theory has concluded that “Working memory capacity can be effectively increased, and learning improved, by using a dual-mode presentation” (Sweller, Ayres & Kalyuga, 2011). By creating media that includes dual coding theory, cognitive load is reduced.
Multimedia Design for Learning
It is essential to incorporate multimedia design into WordPress blogs because too much wording with too few breaks can be very overwhelming. Combining various types of media helps to make the content easier to digest and overall more engaging and interactive. This lesson plan accommodates both verbal and visual preferences for learning and includes opportunities for practicing budgeting too.
Accessibility
Recognizing different forms of diversity and learning needs is important for creating a better learning environment for everyone. The goal for future education should be to remove barriers that prevent people from accessing education. We followed the practical design choices such as using simple text, adding captions, creating audio files, and using visuals to explain concepts.
References
Brown, M. (2017, December 4). What Canadian university students can expect to pay for books.
Sweller, J., Ayres, P., Kalyuga, S. (2011). The Goal-Free Effect. In: Cognitive Load Theory. Explorations in the Learning Sciences, Instructional Systems and Performance Technologies, vol 1. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/10.1007/978-1-4419-8126-4_7
Have you used a tool like Khan Academy that creates a learning path for you? Did you find it to be useful or a hindrance to your learning?
I first started watching Khan Academy videos when I was in the seventh grade. Math was never my strong suit and I often needed help from others to explain certain concepts and solve problems. Usually, my mom or my brother would sit down with me and go over any problems I needed help with, however, it would often result in further frustrations. My mom eventually introduced Khan Academy to me, and I started watching the math problem-solving videos on a regular basis.
I found the Khan Academy videos to be extremely helpful, as the narrator, Salman Khan, was really good at explaining the exact steps to solving mathematical problems. These videos were certainly useful for my learning due to them being in a video format so that I could pause and rewind any time I needed to, along with Salman’s ability to break down certain concepts into simpler terms. I also liked how the website was set up, as the different grade curriculums were grouped together, making it easy to follow along with the videos as the following demonstrations would correspond to the next concept to be learned in my class’s material.
While the Khan Academy videos were helpful for the most part, I would sometimes find that certain explanations were not the same as what my teacher had been showing, which in some cases would hinder my learning and result in me feeling more confused.
Overall, I believe that Khan Academy is a great tool as a secondary resource for learning due to my personal experience, however, it is not a tool that I would strictly rely on for support.
Embedding interactive multimedia and design principles while creating a lesson is key to providing an effective approach to learning. As we have made it this far in the course, I feel as though I have learned a lot about the proper ways to create strong multimedia tools that can enhance the understanding of content for a learner. Reflecting through previous assignments that I have done for other courses, I have noticed that I have made multiple mistakes that could be adjusted to improve the effectiveness of presenting the content. The multimedia object that I have chosen to upgrade is a short lecture video that I created in EDCI 339 for a mini course assignment that I did about skincare. The lecture video was accompanied with a powerpoint presentation, which now looking back on it, I see that it could be harmful to a learner, as the design of the slides may increase the extraneous load.
As you can see in the video, the slides have way too much content on them and can make it hard to focus on any single point being made. The overall video violates the redundancy principle and signalling principle due to the poor design of the slides. The elements that I focussed on when creating the updated version of the lecture video include, reducing the cognitive load, implementing the signalling and coherence principle, and keeping one idea per slide.
In the upgraded video lecture, I believe that I was able to effectively present the lesson in a much clearer and more suitable way. Incorporating the design principles that I have learned in this class, along with the tips given in David JP Phillipsâ TedTalk, How to Avoid Death By PowerPoint, I was able to design the slides in a manner that could improve the learning for a student. By keeping one idea per slide and reducing the amount of text on a slide, I am able to reduce the cognitive load and make it easier for a learner to pay attention to the narration. This is an example of the redundancy principle. I also wanted to incorporate the signalling principle, so I decided to show the points on a slide one at a time, as to hold the focus on only one element with the narration. This reduces the cognitive load by giving learners a clear path to follow along while they are watching the lesson and to not be overwhelmed by there being too much information given all at once. I also added subtitles manually to make the lesson more inclusive by including proper grammar that matched with the narration perfectly. One of the elements that I kept the same was the background colour, as it is dark and provides a good contrast to viewers, especially those who may have impaired colour vision.
What storytelling techniques have you used instinctively and which ones require more work for you? Which techniques will you focus on moving forward?
I find that my personal strength in storytelling is my ability to engage audiences with a suspenseful plot. When I am telling a story to a friend, for example, I notice that I’ll instinctively begin directly from the start of the story, then I will discuss the events that lead to the climax. Following a well-structured and chronologically ordered story, makes people more engaged as they know the events that lead to the main point of the story. The events before the climax are ultimately the key to engaging the audience, as it gives them further insight into the storyteller/protagonist’s life and allows them to empathize with whoever’s story is being told.
While creating suspense in a story is what I would consider a strength for myself, I do however find that I share too much information when building up the plot. When I am telling my friends a story, I tend to dive too much into the details of a specific point or event in order to try and give them as much background knowledge as I can. While this can be good for adding to the suspense of a story, it can sometimes come across as me rambling. My friends have often told me to “get to the point”, due to me going on and on about a specific detail. Moving forward I want to try and tell stories in a way that can keep the leading events of the plot more concise and structured to effectively present a story that doesn’t stray too much from the plot.
Where do you see constructive alignment and backward design used in this course or another course you are taking/have taken?
Incorporating instructional design into course planning is key to keeping students engaged and on the right track. Setting learning outcomes early in the course can guide students to be prepared for what they will learn and give them insight into what is expected of them.
In most of my courses, the professors are generally very good at identifying the learning outcomes for the course or lesson early on, which helps me get an understanding of what is to come and how I approach the course or lesson at hand. I will often see this in the syllabus of the course or more commonly, in each lecture where the ‘learning goals’ are outlined for a specific lesson.
This week’s lesson reminded me of an assignment I did in my EDCi 339 class over the summer. I got to design and create a mini-course about any topic, where I would be designing the course layout and making my own lecture videos. One of the most essential parts of creating this mini-course was setting the learning outcomes early on to guide how we design the course and what we want to incorporate so that these learning outcomes are met. Here is a photo of the learning outcomes I made for my skincare 101 course:
Skincare 101 mini-course “Course Objectives”
Having these course objectives pre-established made creating the mini-course much easier for me, as I was able to use them as a guide to narrow down what information I needed to include and how I was going to assess the ‘students’. This mini-course assignment overall was really fun and definitely gave me insight into how instructors design courses.
Now having learned about Constructive Alignment and Backward Design, it was really interesting to look back at my mini-course and see how I incorporated them into it without knowing about these design principles. Instructional design is key to creating a strong framework for a course or lesson that benefits both students and instructors.
Here is the lesson plan I made that is based on my skincare course
Also, if you are interested, here is a link to my mini-course that I created with google slides:
What do you think the presentations in The Worldâs Worst Powerpoint Presentations have in common? Which design principles and which other principles (Mayerâs, Inclusive Design, UDL) are they missing?
The presentations in The World’s Worst Powerpoint Presentations were all very similar in that they do not follow the principles of Mayer’s Cognitive Load Theory. When I first looked at the Powerpoint slides that were shown in the article, my first thought was how the extraneous load was being maximized. At first glance, these presentations were very hard to read as they all seemed to have way too much on the slides and could not draw my eye to any certain point. Negative space is so important for keeping presentation slides coherent because it helps reduce the extraneous load, which aids the audience in not becoming overwhelmed.
Comparing a slide with no negative space and one with negative space. The slide with negative space is much easier to look at and comprehend the text.
One of the slides that were shown in the article had a very confusing diagram that lacked any visual coherence. This was partly due to the amount of text that was on the slide, however, the most significant contender to why this particular slide failed was the amount of colour and how it was used. The slide used about 10 colours, which paid no benefit in assisting the viewer to understand the given information and created no balance on the slide. Optimizing colour to support your design and the idea that you want to present can be very important and will help guide audiences to understand and break down ideas. This design principle helps to manage the intrinsic load in presentations, as it could help to segment ideas together.
I thought that this week’s topic was really interesting and fun. The design principle that I thought was one of the most important to note was the negative space principle. I think that using negative space in any design can prove to be very effective in ‘calming’ the eye and drawing it to focus on only one or more points, which results in reducing the extraneous load and managing the intrinsic load.
