Technological Applications

Technological Applications

Just as I began to comprehend the idea of shared knowledge, I was thrust into a group project for CI 503 that was completed with the group meeting only at a distance. The project was aimed at improving the conduct of high school students when they were in the role of a fan at sporting events and included: large group discussion, online discussion and individual reflections via a blog, evaluation of other fans by watching them on videos, and the creation of a video demonstrating what the students had learned about sportsmanship. The instructional unit began with a “goal of making learning more efficient, more effective, and less difficult” (Morrison 2007), and the items that my group actually got a chance to test out on students had a positive impact. As Michael Moore explained, learning can occur as long as there is a high level of interaction between one of the following pairs: student-student (s-s), student-content (s-c), or student-teacher (s-t) (Anderson 2008), and this course had high levels of s-s and s-c.

After examining various design models explored in our own learning and teaching careers, my group decided that the ASSURE model was the best to follow as it was ideal for creating lessons that incorporated good pedagogical strategy and fit well with student needs discovered during the analysis stage of the design process. The group also took the advice of Rudestam/Schoenholtz-Read (2002) when we designed our forums and kept our approach simple and easy to navigate by leaving out a lot of the bells and whistles that WebCT had at its disposal. Evaluation proved to be essential in my group work, and the ASSURE model fit in well with our constant evaluation of both instruction and learning. I felt as though our group, being teachers who progress through instructional design very quickly in the classroom setting, started out a little too far in the design process when we first began. All of us were thinking about what this product should look like before any of the analysis and background work had been done.

Meeting and working at a distance turned out to be a very smooth process even though I did not expect that going into the project. My journey as a learner definitely passed a milestone as I began to understand that learning for me, and more importantly for my students, was beginning to have a social aspect that I had never considered. As a teacher who takes on many of the roles within the instructional design process, I learned to focus on the needs of the learners first, and take time to evaluate the instruction and assessment to see if it matches the objectives that are being laid out for the learner. Continuous evaluation and reflection on my instructional design will ensure that teaching and learning in my own classroom will be more efficient, focused, and as Morrison stated, “once we know the root cause of the problem, we can determine whether an instructional intervention will solve the problem” (Morrison 2007).

In my own district, the Iowa Core Curriculum and the national Common Core Curriculum took center stage in our professional development over the last two years. The process of self-evaluation is vital for both me as an instructor and for my students as learners. My work on this project gave me essential skills for narrowing down objectives and focusing on “what the student needs to know” (Morrison 2007) in order to accomplish those objectives. I thoroughly analyzed the learners before, during, and after instruction to ensure my classroom objectives were being met, and I have focused on building instruction that creates stronger student-content interaction and student-student interaction over the traditional student-teacher interaction. It began to feel as though my role as instructor in this journey is not as important as the students’ role as learners, but still an important vehicle for the path of learning.

Anderson, T. (2008). The Theory and Practice of Online Learning (2^nd Edition). Maxwell AFB, AL: AU Press.

Morrison, G. R., Ross, S.M., & Kemp, J. E. (2007). Designing effective instruction. Hoboken, New Jersey.: John Wiley & Sons.

Rudestam, K., Schoenholtz-Read, J. (2002). Handbook of Online Learning: Innovations in Higher Education and Corporate Training. CA.: Sage Publications.