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Learning Resource Peer Review

November 27, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Learning Pod: #6

Peersā€™ Names: Zhihao, Jin, QiaoyangĀ (Peter), ChuyiĀ (Shirley)

Interactive Learning Resource Topic: Personal Finance (Management)

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.).

Here are components that I think that might be missing or need some adjusting in the Interactive Learning Resource:

  • The learning outcomes section seems to be a chunk of texts and I think it would be better to make it into a list of “students will be able to accomplish ….” It would also be good to set the outcomes more practically available and link them with the assessment.
  • The learning theory is not very clear and I think you may want to use key words such as behaviorism or cognitivism that we have learned in this course as the subjects of your descriptions and associate these theories with your resource contents.
  • In the section of design for inclusion, maybe write briefly about the rationales on your choosing these two groups of people. Why are they likely to be the target audience for your resource?

Provide a summary of The Interactive Learning Resourceā€™s strengths and weaknesses. Draw out specific examples from your peersā€™ work to justify your feedback.

Strengths:

  • The topic for the resource is very interesting and useful. Personal finance can be important for adults in many stages of their life. The topic is relevant to its audience and the contents are well designed. For example, the four questions (How to recognize the pitfalls of consumerism, What are common risks of personal finance and how to avoid it, How to manage money conveniently and efficiently, What is the trend of personal finance) are four aspects of personal finance that are relevant and step-by-step. These all sound like common problems people face when managing their money.
  • The design for inclusion has well-chosen target group of people. The resource chose people of English language learners and single parents with kids. These two groups are very likely to be audience who are interested in and would love to learn about the topic of personal finance.
  • Good assessment for the type of topic. Personal finance to me is a complicated topic, and I think that using quizzes or tests only would not really test the learners understanding. The description mentioned of using discussion and quizzes to stimulate the learners’ interests and I think if the discussion is used in the assessment, the assessment would be more accurate in obtaining the learners understanding of the resource.

Weaknesses:

  • Assessment for the learners’ understanding of the resources could be stated more clearly. In the learning outcomes, as well as the end of the resource, contents related to assessments are not very clearly presented.
  • Descriptions of some parts of the resource are vague. “Show students some data charts, financial apps, goods and services.” would be better presented with specific data charts, apps or services.
  • Some learning outcomes could be presented with more measurable statements such as “students will be able to tell (certain numbers of trends)” rather than “students will be able to learn more about the trend of personal finance content” that is written in the resource.

Provide general, specific, and practical recommendations to your peers on how to improve their Interactive Learning Resource.

The Interactive Learning Resource you have presented is great overall. I really like it that you chose this topic because I believe that many people are interested and willing to learning about this topic. The big ideas you designed sound engaging and relevant. However, I would recommend you using more clear statements in your descriptions in the course learning outcomes, the specific contents and tools that you would use in your learning resource. For example, the learning outcomes could be more measurable such as stating what the students could actually do or accomplish after learning about this resource. Verbs such as identify, say, list, write or make could be considered in the clear description (clear and specific).

Jargons should be followed with explanations. Since your resource is designed for English language leaners and people who are probably not majored in finance related field, you may want to include explanations for financial or economical terms and concepts such as the five types of financial risks, P2P fraud, etc.

Overall I think your design is really great and I really look forward to seeing your final Interactive Learning Resource! Good luck!

Interaction and Multimedia

October 30, 2022 / / 1 Comment

Interaction in online learning can be crucial for learners’ learning outcomes. With traditional classrooms settings, learners interaction can be easily observed and changed by teachers. However, in the online learning contexts, it is rather difficult for teachers to get the learners interaction patterns with the videos, reading materials, or other forms of contents assigned to learners. When there is lack of real-human, or face-to-face interactions, learners who are dealing with multimedia learning contents could easily lose their attention or interest if they do not have a strong drive to learn. Thus, find the motivation as well as the appropriate ways to interact with the learners can be important to improve the learners learning outcomes.

Videos that come with questions that are built in between the sections of the videos are a popular form of multimedia for interaction. The questions could be set at the important points and learners could answer the questions to check for understanding. In our group project, there will be such this type of videos and students are required to answer simple yes or no questions, multiple choice questions as well as open-ended questions to sparkle the thoughts. The open-ended question among these questions is a good way for the learners respond to the video. They could input their own thoughts at different points or stages of the videos and the teacher could read the inputs and provide feedback or even present them in the class with the learners admission.

Since our project teaches a theoretical concept, we would suggest the students to go find examples in real-life and analyze the example, and then explain the case they found using what they’ve learned. The feedback will be given both by teachers and the fellow learners through online discussion forums. This is because we think that learning from the peers is also an important step in the study and that this student-student interaction of giving others advice as well as receiving advice could help the learners learn more than in a learner-teacher or learner-content interaction.

Finally, the video will be presented with subtitles, transcripts as well as audios made to present the content of the video with necessary explanations of some visual contents that are not expressed in texts. This addresses the inclusive design we learned previous and aims to consider learners with possible situations that may have barriers with this type of media we chose for the learning.

Peer’s feedback

Reply to Thomas’ Post

Reply to Thomas’ Post

October 30, 2022 / / 1 Comment
Blog 4: Interaction
Thomas’ post 4.

Hi Thomas,

I agree that interactive media is great for learning. You mentioned that the videos sometimes would have “yes/no” choices in during the learners’ watching the video and I think it would definitely help the learners to focus to be able to answer the questions.But I also think that sometimes it would take more than just questions during the video that would help the students to focus. The video itself need to be engaging and interactive somehow as well because if the video’s contents are boring or irrelevant to what the learners’ interests are, answering the “yes/no” questions would not help the students learn much. Sometimes the students could also randomly guess the answer and move on so some forms of feedback should be given along with “yes/no” questions to help with better interaction.

Reply to Thomas’ Post

October 23, 2022 / / 1 Comment
Blog 3: Inclusive Design
Thomas’ post.

Hi Thomas, from what you described about your project, I really like it that it aims for inclusion and this idea itself is part of the learning as well. I also like it that you mentioned that all learners learn differently in their paces, method and so on. When you mentioned that you have different activities set for different types of learners, I wonder how you could make sure that all learners would have similar outcomes if they are assigned with different activities in their learning? Would there be a way to measure the outcomes for different learners? Thank you!

Blog Post 3 – Designing for Inclusion

October 23, 2022 / / 2 Comments
Image I like from this week’s material: CC Image shared by Leigh Black, retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighblackall/26701766821/

Designing for inclusion is important not only for educational contents, but also all online contents in a general sense. This is because the internet is so popularly used that for many people, being online to talk to people, read news, get informed, work and study is part of their life and work. Under this circumstance, online contents should be made available for everyone because each web-user has the right to get access to online contents. This is more urgent now than ever for universal design for online contents as we are kind of forced to enter an era where we work and study online.

In my personal experiences with online learning, most of them are pleasant and I am aware that this is because I am lucky to not have certain disabilities that would prevent me from accessing to certain forms of learning contents. However, there are a considerable among of people with various disabilities that may have much trouble learning with this form of learning. I could imagine that they also have various problem accessing other online information such as news or entertainment contents.

When answering how to ensure that all learners needs are met, I think it is necessary to address the importance of inclusive design for every content designer in the first place. It is because we could easily ignore things that we do not know, or things that we do not care about. The video that demonstrated “selective attention test” proves this point by showing that people tend to attend for things where they set their minds to. It is easy for the content makers to neglect the needs of the minorities and thus bringing them to the attention is the first step to ensure that the learners needs are met. What comes afterwards, is the guideline or framework which could give content creators a standard to follow.

UDL Guidelines Framework retrieved from: http://udlguidelines.cast.org/binaries/content/assets/udlguidelines/

In our group learning activity design, we have many readings and videos to demonstrate the key ideas and concepts. What we could do to reduce barriers for certain leaners is to make the contents into more forms of multimedia contents. For instance, when we only have texts in some reading materials, we would try and make them into audios and comics to meet the needs of learners who may have visual or reading problems. The videos we use would have subtitles for people with hearing problems.

The current design is assumed to be online and to reduce barriers apart from what were mentioned above, we also plan to do test learning where we has friends to test the design and make adjustments according to the advice. We would also try and add community factors in the learning for real-time problem discussing and solving.

References:

UVic, E. D. C. I. (2022). Universal design. EDCI 335. Retrieved October 24, 2022, from https://edtechuvic.ca/edci335/universal-design/

UVic, E. D. C. I. (2022). Inclusive learning design. EDCI 335. Retrieved October 24, 2022, from https://edtechuvic.ca/edci335/inclusive-learning-design/

Replying peer post:

Reply to Thomas’ Post

Reply to Zhihao’s Blog 2

October 8, 2022 / / 1 Comment
Blog 2 – Passive & Active (Cooperative) Learning
Zhihao’s original blog post.

Hi Zhihao,

Great post on passive and active learning! I found it really helpful in understanding these to types of learning and I could relate the concepts in your post to mine on inquiry-based learning.

In your post, you mentioned that active learning includes group discussion, cooperation, debate and even games. I found it similar to inquiry-based learning because these activities require the students to actively participate in the learning process by asking, discussing and exploring the learning topics. In this way, students could actively engage in the learning activity in depth and understand the concepts through exploring and inquiring answers to their problems raised from the activities.

Do you think this type of learning could be used in your group’s design?

Blog Post 2 – Inquiry-Based Learning

October 8, 2022 / / 1 Comment
4 Phases Of Inquiry-Based Learning: A Guide For Teachers
Four phases of inquiry-based learning from teachthought.com

What is Inquiry-Based Learning

This learning approach emphasize the role students play in a learning process. Compared to more traditional approaches where teachers take the leads and tell students what they need to know, inquiry-based learning gives the students the choices on what they want to know. It gives the students the freedom to explore, inquire, experience and discuss.

Benefits of Inquiry-Based Learning

The freedom of learning in a controlled environment ensures what students are supposed to learn, and also encourages their initiatives in learning and inquiring knowledge. Students could also learn the ways of learning through experiences in the process of inquiry-based learning.

By actively engaging in the learning process, students are not just using listening or reading which are ways of in-taking information. They are given the chances to explore using their own logic to process the information and learn from their first-hand experiences.

Here are seven benefits listed for inquiry-based learning (Sara, 2019):

  1. Enhances learning experiences for children
  2. Teaches skills needed for all areas of learning
  3. Fosters curiosity in students
  4. Deepens studentsā€™ understanding of topics
  5. Allows students to take ownership of their learning
  6. Increases engagement with the material
  7. Creates a love of learning

Check the website for more details on the illustrations of the benefits.

What is Inquiry-Based Learning (And How Is It Effective)?
Inquiry-based learning website.

Learning Design Blueprint

Inquiry-based learning could be a great way to use on the topic my group chose on Inflation. Inflation is an economic term that describes the phenomenon where money (in terms of cash) becomes less valuable through time. Inflation affects everyone living in a free market with supply and demands. We could observe inflation when the price of the same items on the market changes (it usually goes up).

Knowing what inquiry-based learning from this blog, I think this learning approach is a good way to introduce the concept of inflation in our learning resource design because the phenomenon of inflation could be found in many places so that students could have abundant opportunities to interact with the resources and generate initial curiosity and questions about inflation. They could also draw, share and learn through real-life experiences.

Source cited:

Heick, T. (2022, January 20). 4 phases of inquiry-based learning: A guide for teachers. TeachThought. Retrieved October 9, 2022, from https://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/phases-inquiry-learning/

Sara. (2019, May 28). What is inquiry-based learning (and how is it effective)? GradePower Learning. Retrieved October 8, 2022, from https://gradepowerlearning.com/what-is-inquiry-based-learning/

Comment to peer work:

Reply to Zhihao’s Blog 2

Blog Post #1ļæ¼

September 29, 2022 / / 0 Comments

The idea ā€œlearning is changing your mind about somethingā€ is what I partly agree with. I think learning can be changing oneā€™s mind, or adding something to oneā€™s prior knowledge and making connections with old knowledge to new knowledge. In the example of learning to ride the backwards bike, the guy is both changing his mind about the way the turning mechanism works which is something completely different from normal bikes, and adding new knowledge to riding a bike. The preexisting knowledge include keeping balance on a bike and the control of speed and direction. So I think learning is not only about changing oneā€™s mind but also adding something to oneā€™s mind which include recalling the preexisting knowledge in oneā€™s mind.

I think this example also represents the two learning theories: behaviorism and cognitivism. Behaviorism believes that learners learn through reinforcement and feedback which could be observed through the guy practicing riding the backwards bike day by day and improve through time. Cognitivism states that learners use appropriate strategies to make connections to prior understandings which is also shown through the guyā€™s learning to ride backwards bike when he tried to connect the turning mechanism to what he had already known about normal bikes.

I found the theory constructivism difficult to understand because it says that learners make their own interpretations based on their own experience and interactions, which to me sounds like each personā€™s learning results cannot be shaped or influenced by teaching or guiding. I tried to understand it by putting it into real life examples. When I learned skiing, I did not have a coach. I only observed other people doing it and tried it out, like a toddler learning to walk. Through lots of trials I learned how to ski down a snow slope and stop whenever I want. By applying this learning experience I had, I understood the theory of constructivism better and had a general idea on the three learning theories.

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