Category: edci335
Peer REVIEW FOR POD 4
Overview:
The general narrative of the learning design in this paragraph seems to me to be very well organized and clearly described. The background, concepts, and general introduction of the learning design are expressed in detail. The perception of the impact of games on education is very clear and easy to understand. The only thing that confuses me, however, is that the Cool Math Games are based on Scratch? Or are they two completely different sites, using different design approaches? Perhaps consider a more detailed presentation of the relationship between the two sites to learn specifically about the subject of design. Overall, a very organized depiction of the topic of this learning design and an introduction to the research that follows.
Learning theory & design description and rationale:
These two sections were very well written as well as described! As readers can understand your learning design is built or organized based on these theories. The description of your design being based on constructivism is very well founded. In your description, how the learning design was proposed and developed is supported by constructivist and experiential learning theories. These theories are very helpful to the learning design and will support you in designing the entire study.
Learning context description:
In this section, you describe roughly what you are learning to design for. My understanding is that you are trying to convey that the learning design is age-neutral, but that your intent is to use it for college students or adults to develop higher level technology. I think this is a very clear statement of who you created the learning design for, but perhaps it could have been clearer.
Topics and Activities:
The design of this section is very organized and detailed. The topics and learning content are clearly outlined and described throughout the learning design. I learned about the whole learning design about Scratch in this section, and the description of this section gives an idea of how you designed the content of the course. It also mentions the possible stereotypes and confusion about the topic, which is very helpful in helping learners understand the course.
But it doesn’t look like there is an assessment plan section, so I wonder if I missed it. My suggestion for an assessment plan for this learning design would be to perhaps consider having learners create their own learning game or work in groups to complete an assignment for assessment purposes.
The whole description of the learning design gives an idea that your overall idea for game education is very achievable.
Pod #4 Learning resource link:
POST#4 INTERACTION
This video provides a learner-materials interaction. It displays the information of Chinese tea types and the functions of different tea. The Youtuber introduces various main Chinese tea kinds and she describes the taste, functions, and suggestions in this YouTube video. The video is in great organization and easy to follow for learners. Students do not need to give reflections on this video. The main purpose of this video is to introduce different types of tea in China, it gives the basic understanding of tea for students.
Making notes is important for students who are watching this video. It provides basic knowledge of Chinese tea, and it contains a lot of information that needs to be remembered. After watching the video, students are supposed to have basic knowledge about various types of Chinese tea. According to this YouTube video, students should generate their thoughts on Chinese tea. Students are asked to have a discussion in the small group shared their opinions. Based on what they know from the video, they should discover more information about the subject topic. They are encouraged to discuss what they think about the provided material. The activity helps students to develop their academic knowledge about Chinese tea. They could use the online forum or discussion in person.
This video decreases the teacher’s work amount, and it is manageable and worthwhile. It provides a lot of detailed information about the course material which helps students to get a better understanding of tea. Besides, the video is organized clearly for students, and it is easy to comprehend for beginner learners. This activity is suitable for a larger number of students. It uses simple online technology and it assists students to communicate with each other. Personally, I think the video should provide discussion questions in order to discover more knowledge about Chinese tea for students. It may include various further thinking about the provided information for the audiences.
POST#3 interactive learning
Inclusive design is a kind of learning technology that benefits every people who are using or learning the content. It optimizes the interaction between users and the system in order to support the activities of users. The inclusive design considers what people would have a problem with while they attend in the project. It aims at the practical experiences of all learners or users and makes users involved in the design which will be useful for their learning. Besides, inclusive design is called accessible design as well, which means the project will be accessible to every people without special design.
According to our project blueprint, there are many pictures of the content shown in the learning plan. Considering disabled individuals like blind people, there might be problems for them to understand the material better than others. Therefore, for the success of disabled learners, the showing pictures might be suggested changing to audio-video of the content in case of those special situations. Furthermore, there are many works of writing in our project assessment plan. But with the people who are not good at writing, this might be a challenge for their learning success. For the better experiences of all learners, the diversity of the learning content should be considered.
In order to fulfill all learner’s requests of the learning content, the study material should be covered more information on the topic. For example, our learning project is supposed to illustrate the Chinese tea culture to every learner, including Chinese students. However, there is some information about the traditional tea culture which Chinese students may be familiar with. So, the learning material should contain more details of the tea culture in case of losing interest. On the other hand, abundant details may be overwhelming for beginners of the study, so the material should be considered including more interactive material for better understanding.
Post #2 Direct instruction
Direct instruction is a teaching approach that is highly organized by instructors. The teaching content and style are entirely controlled by the teachers who are giving the class, so students only need to receive the information provided in the class and follow the steps of the content. Direct instruction is highly effective for learning objectives in the early grades (Kinder &Carnine, 2991). With direct instruction, teachers do not provide nonacademic materials to students, and the teaching focuses only on academic learning. Teachers provide modeling, instruction and feedback to students, and ask students questions to check that they understand the content (Gersten, Woodward & Darch, 1986). Instructors organize the learning tasks and lead students to efficiently complete learning tasks. Direction instruction is a kind of the traditional teaching approach which are used in various countries. The most important purpose of direct instruction is fully utilize students’ academic learning time, and make sure they can understand and master the learning materials. Students under this learning technique usually finish their homework with teachers’ guidance, therefore they are asked to reach a high level of grade in the course. In addition, teachers who use direct instruction usually structure and control the class by themselves, not students. This learning approach has less interaction between instructors and learners.
For our learning pod project topic, direct instruction would not be the perfect learning approach choice. Our chosen topic is Chinese tea culture, which is new to students who are unfamiliar with Chinese culture. This topic needs to provide a lot of extracurricular material to students and help them to understand the course content better because it contains many histories of China which are nonacademic content. Therefore, direct instruction may not be the first option of our learning pod project topic. Besides, our topic needs interaction between learners and teachers, so that students can perfectly understand the information that they have never learned before. The grade maybe not the most important in this topic is another reason why direct instruction would not be chosen. This topic pays more attention to the understanding of the Chinese tea culture rather than how high-level grades that students can get. As a result, direct instruction is not suggested with our learning design.
References :
Gersten, R., Woodward, J., & Darch, C. (1986). Direct instruction: A research-based approach to curriculum design and teaching. Exceptional Children, 53(1), 17-31.
Kinder, D., & Carnine, D. (1991). Direct instruction: What it is and what it is becoming. Journal of Behavioral Education, 1(2), 193-213.
Pod’s blogs ：
Comments on others ：
POST #1
In chapter 11, the authors mention three different learning approaches which are behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. Each part represents a learning theory that displays how the theory is conducted and how to use it to learn. Different theorists define learning in various ways which shows how people learn.
The first main theory behaviorism focuses on the importance of a learning environment. It defines learning as a reaction which stimulated in a special environment. The learning was done when the reaction was appropriate for the stimulus. The next main theory is cognitivism. Theorists propose cognitivism as a process of cognition, and learning contains complex thinking and information processing. Learning theory began to transfer from behaviorism to cognitivism representing that learning is not only a reaction of stimulus but also more about processing. Cognitivism supports that learning needs the brain to participate in the process the new knowledge and rearrange it. Based on the theories above, constructivism was discovered by theorists. This theory claims that learning is what we can extract from personal or others’ experiences and transfer them into our knowledge. Constructivism may be thought of as a branch of cognitivism, but these two theories are different from each other. Constructivists think that learners process information from the external world and then create it in a special format in the brain to learn.
In my opinion, learning needs to combine these theories.
Based on my personal experiences, what I learned from school is more likely be behaviorism. In my hometown, we received knowledge only from the textbook, teachers, and our parents. School is more focused on how students process the information given by teachers and use it on exams. Therefore, students are more likely to rote memorization for a better grade. According to the article, the low processing is conducted by behaviorism strategies. I prefer to study to be more constructive. The information that we extract from others’ experiences helps me to learn it better. I would like to combine three learning theories as to my study strategy. For example, for my major class, I will receive the knowledge from the professor, and then I rearrange it in my brain using my special style, then I would like to talk with my classmates and see what they think about it.
Comments about others:
https://kylap.opened.ca/2021/09/15/edci-335-blog-1-learning-theory/