Month: October 2022

Instructions from Instructor: Go to YouTube, Vimeo, Youku, Tencent Video or hosted video service provider of your choice, and type in your Interactive Learning Design subject area into the ‘search’ box. Choose a video from the list that comes up that you might use with your learners and write a post that addresses 4-5  of the prompts below.

The Youtube video is linked here

Prompt 1) What kind of interaction would the video require from your students? Does it force them to respond in some way (inherent)?

This video would require three types of interactions from the students: student-content interaction, student-teacher interaction, and student-student interaction (Anderson, 2003). However, unless the teacher poses activities and questions based on the video, there is no inherent or required response from the students to the video directly. The teacher-student interaction would be required to create that inherent response from students (Bates, 2019). Active participation is not guaranteed with just the video alone, so the teacher-student and student-student interactions would push for that participation and inherent response. Students would be talking to each other to generate ideas, and the teacher would supply the prompts for the students based on the video.

Prompt 2) In what way are they likely to respond to the video on their own, e.g. make notes, do an activity, think about the topic (learner-generated)?

On their own, the students will have a little-to-no response to it. It is not a great strategy to put on the video and just walk away. However, if an activity is created and given to the students to do either alongside the video or after watching it, the response and learning from students will increase drastically. Even if the video is paused throughout to give students time to think, reflect, and talk to an elbow partner about what has just happened in the video, their overall engagement and response to the video will definitely increase. I know this from personal experience, and it is a strategy that works any almost any age. However, because it would be a good choice to have the teacher be involved in the student engagement with the video, the response to the video would not be learner-generated (Bates, 2019).

Prompt 3) What activity could you suggest that they do, after they have watched the video (designed)? What type of knowledge or skill would that activity help develop? What medium or technology would students use to do the activity?

An activity that I would use for my students to create positive engagement with the video would be something relatively simple in terms of preparation for the teacher. The activity I thought would be an activity where students get into groups (3-4 students per group), and work together to draw and create a mindmap to summarize what they learned from the video. Each group would get a handful of markers and a big piece of paper. After 25-30 minutes, groups would present and show their mindmap to the rest of the class. This is a great activity for students to engage in cooperative and collaborative group work. Practicing fair work distribution, communication (taking turns to talk, listening to others, respecting all ideas), staying on task and on topic, and other practices involved in group work is a very necessary group of skills in every student’s life, so it is handy to have students collaborate frequently. Every student needs to make sure that they contributed to the mindmap in some way to ensure equal participation and fairness.

Prompt 4) How much work for you would that activity cause? Would the work be both manageable and worthwhile? Could the activity be scaled for larger numbers of students?

As I mentioned above, the activity involves minimal preparation from the teacher, and minimal materials as well. It is nothing revolutionary or special, but these kinds of collaborative activities are extremely effective for interaction and learning for the students. Both of these aspects make this activity very manageable, and worthwhile. This activity could be done with as many students as you want. The group sizes would stay the same, there would just be more groups in total, which is fine. It would result in more posters and mindmaps, but I do not see that being an issue at all.

Prompt 5) How could the video have been designed to generate more or better activity from viewers or students?

This video is strictly for informative purposes. However, a relatively easy way to increase engagement and participation from students would be to turn the youtube video into an EdPuzzle Resource. EdPuzzle is a software that allows the creator to have a video play, and then it pauses after some time and quizzes the viewer on what they have just watched. Typically the questions are not skippable until answered, so it would become an activity that creates inherent responses and engagement from the viewer (Bates, 2019).

References:

Anderson, T. (2003). Getting the mix right again: An updated and theoretical rationale for interaction. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 4(2), 1–14.

Bates, A. W. (2019, October 10). Chapter 9.6: Interaction. Teaching in a Digital Age Second Edition. Retrieved October 26, 2022, from https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/part/9-pedagogical-differences-between-media/

Prompt: Choose one (or more) of your planned learning activities from your Blueprint and identify any barriers to student success. How can you alter or adjust your current plan to reduce those barriers?

I plan to look at two different activities in my group’s blueprint for our Interactive Learning Resource; an activity involving labelling a complete water cycle diagram, and an online quiz tool that asks students questions via a video, and passes along the way to have students answer those questions based on what they have just watched or heard.

The first activity is going to be rather basic in nature. After learning all of the parts of the water cycle, students will be required to label a water cycle diagram by themselves as a way of checking for student understanding. This activity is great and simple but also presents some barriers for students. To make this activity more inclusive, I would make it more accessible to all students. For example, the activity could mainly be done on a worksheet with a pencil or pen, but I would also make it available to be done on a computer or some other digital format to include students who may struggle with writing or have motor skill issues. The online version could also have an audio component to make it even more inclusive with its design. This type of inclusive change would fall under the sections of “Providing multiple means of representation” in the Universal Design for Learning Guidelines (Meyer, et al., 2014). This is because the redesigned activity can be represented in multiple ways so that it comes available to all students, and provides equity within their learning, even if that change is just on a small activity like this.

The second activity can be changed to not only include the auditory component of the video, but include the voice of someone reading out the questions orally, and also include subtitles along with all audio. The small adaptations and changes made to this activity fall under the same designation on the UDL Guidelines as the first activity I spoke about above, but it specifically provides multiple means of perception, as it provides a visual and auditory way of perceiving the activity (Meyer, et al., 2014). Offering alternatives to the original format of this activity helps make this activity accessible to more students than it would have been without these adaptations and barriers being removed. Subtitles have always been something that teachers need to consider when playing anything with audio, as it is beneficial for hard-of-hearing of deaf students, but also for EAL (English-additional language) learners so that they can hear and read the audio to enhance their comprehension.

Meyer, Anne, et al. Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice. CAST Professional Publishing, an Imprint of CAST, Inc., 2014, UDL Theory Practice, retrieved from: udltheorypractice.cast.org/

Inquiry and Research into Direct Instruction as a Method of Teaching

I chose to take a closer look at the teaching method of explicit and direct instruction. This, in my opinion, has always been a standard method of teaching, and is what most people think of when they think of education; a teacher standing up at the front of the class lecturing and talking while students sit at desks and face the front. That is a very narrow version of direct instruction, but as I have learned, direct and explicit instruction can look different in many situations in education.

A common example of direct and explicit teaching is teaching through examples and demonstrations (Boxer, 2019). This is a way of direct instruction that I have used not only in teaching but in many other scenarios where I have to teach someone a new skill. I recently re-taught my partner how to do long division, as he had forgotten from his elementary school years. I showed him how to do it by walking through multiple examples with him. I gave him explanations and reasons while using an example to teach him how to do long division.

Direct instruction comes from the concept of how learning works, and it creates a sequence where the c communication during teaching is clear and faultless (Boxer, 2019). Considering how people learn, direct instruction takes into account two important beliefs about learners: learners have the capacity to learn through examples, and learners have the capacity to generalize new information based on the sameness in the quality of previous examples (Engelmann & Carnine, 1982). These are both very important beliefs that teachers should have when applying direct instructional methods, as they instill that students are capable of learning.

I find it interesting that it took me so long to realize that explicit and direct instruction included teaching by example and leading with demonstrations. I never associated the two, but as I am learning about direct instruction more, I understand now that providing examples and giving demonstrations is a form of direct instruction. I always thought that it was just the typical stereotype of the teacher lecturing at the front to a group of silent and listening students. This brief inquiry has helped me to better understand direct instruction, and how it can be beneficial as a teaching method, but does not need to always be the only teaching method.

Resources:

Boxer, A. (Ed.). (2019). The researched guide to explicit and direct instruction: An evidence-informed guide for teachers. John Catt Educational, Limited.

Englemann, S, & Carnine. (1982). Theory of institution: principles and applications. Eugene, OR: NIFDI Press.