EdTech 513: Multimedia

EdTech 513 Learning Log

Chapter 1 Reflection

Based on the e-courses you have taken or designed, which architectures (receptive, directive, guided discovery) have you noticed? Does any one of them predominate? Would you recommend using different architectures?

I have taken and designed many online courses. I have predominantly noticed that many of them use a combination of receptive and directive architectures. For many of the courses, these architectures are more than adequate as they are often used for training purposes, or they are simpler courses designed for middle and high school students. I have encountered most of the guided discovery architecture examples in my graduate-level courses at Boise State, where we are asked to explore the topics we are learning and apply what we have learned in a real-world application. My personal recommendation is to try to incorporate the guided discovery architecture where it is appropriate, as it often takes students into upper-level Bloom's.  However, not every online course will serve the same purpose, and a simple training course with only a few modules or objectives may be much better suited to be used exclusively with receptive architecture.

Some individuals have predicted the demise of the in-person classroom to be replaced by digital learning environments. Do you agree? Provide reasons for your opinion. 

In my personal opinion, I do not see the in-person classroom being completely replaced by digital learning environments. I believe the classrooms of the 21st century will experience many changes in the next few decades, with improvements in AI, the addition of more tech resources into learning, changes in student demographics, and changing expectations for education at all levels. These changes may make the classroom less location-dependent at any given time for any given class. Early childhood education relies on in-person connections and elements of play, movement, and creativity. As children age and their learning objectives change to reflect their advancing abilities, they may not need to spend as much time in a physical classroom and may be able to complete more of their tasks independently in a location outside of a brick-and-mortar classroom. While digital learning will drastically change the landscape of education, I personally do not see in-person classrooms completely disappearing across all grade levels.

Which of the promises or pitfalls of e-learning have you seen? What do you think has been a barrier to realizing promises and an incentive to incorporate pitfalls? 

I have seen many promises and pitfalls of e-learning in my 13-year career as an online educator. Customized experiences help us to differentiate our instruction to meet a wide range of needs among our students. Engagement in learning through interactive experiences and multimedia helps our students focus outside of the classroom, where they are no longer a captive audience, and our content competes with many distractions. When working with students as they venture through online simulations, they can gain valuable real-world experience in a relatively low-risk environment that often closely mimics a real-world situation. This type of experience would not have been possible in a traditional in-person classroom. Digital games are a great way for students to get their feet wet and try using their content in a fun, low-stakes environment where they may be more willing to take chances and learn through making mistakes.  

Teachers who mean well often use flashy graphics or text to make their content more appealing to students, but this may be overwhelming to students with sensory sensitivity. On the other end of the spectrum, walls of text are overwhelming for students and teachers alike, and courses that are too heavily reliant on long texts can lose their effectiveness in helping students learn and understand the content. Sadly, I have also seen some instances where it appears well-meaning instructors threw money at the course with flashy intros or professional actors for a poor return on investment. Losing sight of the goal is easy to do when educators are given larger budgets and more resources that may be unnecessary. Purely leaving learning up to students will often not produce the learning outcomes necessary for our students to succeed. While giving students a choice and a voice when it comes to how they learn can be beneficial, clear course objectives should be stated to ensure the time students spend working on a course is well spent and will lead them to mastery of the course content.

Some of the barriers to realizing the promises of digital learning are inexperienced course developers or online teachers who may have a great presence in a physical classroom but may be lacking the skills needed to successfully teach online or design effective online courses. The biggest incentives I've noticed in my career to avoid pitfalls are giving students and instructors too much freedom to go off on tangents and not spending enough time focusing on the content that needs to be learned within the course. Larger budgets to design courses can lead to inefficient extras that do not serve the students. 

Chapter 2 Reflection

Think of some e-learning projects or courses familiar to you. Was conscious consideration given to ways to manage essential cognitive processing as well as to minimize extraneous processing? 

Thinking about some of the prior courses I have worked in and developed, I would like to think that consideration was given to finding the sweet spot to optimize cognitive processing, but I'm sure it was not always taken into as much consideration as it should be. As I teach in a 6-12 public school, our courses must be accessible to all learners.  One of the perks of designing a course to meet UDL standards is that many best practices to optimize learning are baked into UDL. Reading this chapter and watching the accompanying videos made me realize just how important it is to seek the sweet spot to optimize cognitive processing so learners can understand and retain the knowledge we're trying to pass on to them.  

Take a look at Table 2.3. Based on your experience designing or taking e-learning courses, which instructional methods are familiar to you and which are new? Which chapters do you anticipate as most relevant to your needs? 

While the terminology around each concept was new to me, the essence of each concept is familiar, as I have worked on several major course development projects in my teaching career. I think managing essential processing and fostering generative processing will be most relevant and beneficial to me in my career. I serve students with a wide variety of learning styles and needs. I want to ensure the content I create for them is effective, relatable and supportive.

In chapters to come we will describe how some of the instructional methods are more or less effective for low versus high prior knowledge learners. As you consider the three forms of cognitive load summarized in this chapter (extraneous, essential, and generative), how might these vary based on learner prior knowledge? 

Minimizing extraneous processing will be more important to learners without prior knowledge or little prior knowledge, as they will need to absorb new content. Distractions should be minimized as they are taking in a lot of new content, and our short-term memories can only hold so much at a time. Managing essential processing will be more important to learners with some background on the topic, but are not well versed yet. They will have prior knowledge to reference, but they will need to have the lesson broken down into more manageable parts. Finally, learners with significant prior knowledge of the topic will benefit from generative processing. They should be stretched to elaborate upon what they know and use their own words to convey what they know.

Chapter 4 Reflection

Contemporary authoring systems and graphic resources such as clip art and stock photos make applying the multimedia principle easier than in the past. In your experience, have graphics been used effectively in e-learning? Why or why not? 

Graphics are more often than not used effectively in my personal experience with e-learning. Most of the time, the images or graphic resources placed in the course are relevant to the topics being taught. The visuals can help learners solidify concepts that may be more challenging to learn without the supplemental images. While some courses or presentations have true decorative images in them, most of the images either fit into the representational, organizational, relational, transformational and interpretive categories for images and graphic resources in e-learning materials. During the early days of e-learning, most of the content was very text-heavy. As the internet has evolved, images to help learners grasp the course content have become more common in online courses. Video has also become more common, with many online courses utilizing bursts of short-form content to help reinforce the content of the lessons.

Suppose you are asked to develop an e-lesson with a limited budget. What factors would you consider in determining what proportion of your budget to use for graphics? 

With so many tools available to educators today, creating quality, engaging visual content to help supplement student learning doesn’t necessarily require a significant investment of time or money. There are many easily accessible resources like screenshots, screencasts, AI tools and graphic design tools like Canva that help educators to produce effective graphics, static images, and even short animations. For those working within a tight budget, these tools can help to generate the high-quality content students need without having to invest a lot of money into content creation.

As an educator, I often use my free Educator's account on Canva, which provides access to a wide range of design tools and templates that can be used to create things like infographics or specific images to help students understand and apply their course content. While I am not paying for these graphics, they look more professional than many public domain stock photos and I can be more specific with the images I design if needed. 

For courses that are either more specialized or teach more complex topics, I would consider allocating a larger portion of my budget to create high-quality graphics or animated content for the course. The right visuals or animations that are very effective can significantly improve student engagement and yield higher results on assessments. Complex topics that need more detailed explanations or animated illustrations may require that monetary investment to truly be effective and help students meet their learning objectives.

Describe three instructional goals not included in this chapter that might benefit from animations rather than static visuals. For each description indicate what kind of cueing you might include.

I like the idea of using a brief animation to introduce a topic and add some relevance and a possible real-world connection to hook the student's interest, and consider something like a guiding question while working through the course content. Some type of basic graphic with "let's begin" or "Why is this important? Let's find out." would be an engaging cue, especially for high school students.

Some of the more challenging grammar points are sometimes better explained with a short animation vs. text or a static image when students are actively doing something like conjugating a verb or changing the order of a sentence to express something different. The visual component and watching something change can help them better understand and remember what to do when they run across this situation in the real world. A graphic with text like "How does this work?" or Let's look closer." would be engaging, and students can expect to dive into more of the details.

Short animations to sum up important concepts at the end of a module also help learners determine if they understood the content and are taking away the right concepts after going through the material. It also helps students "wrap up" the content and move important concepts from short-term memory into long-term memory. A graphic with text like "Wrapping It Up" will help students know that they will be reviewing what they learned and wrapping up the lesson.

Chapter 5 Reflection

In this chapter we presented a number of violations of contiguity. What violations of contiguity have you experienced in e-learning lessons or in face-to-face classroom lessons you have created or taken? How do these violations depress learning? 

Many of my face-to-face classroom lessons lacked contiguity. I remember playing the "popcorn" game in many of my elementary and middle school classes, where we took turns reading the textbook out loud. Not only was it boring, but the deeply auditory input with minimal visual cues made learning more challenging for me. When we could watch a video in class, there were many visuals, and things were often labeled or explained clearly with visual aids. I was more engaged during these video lessons and often tuned out after the next class, when we frequently returned to the popcorn game. My elementary and middle school grades were not very good, and I usually felt bored and unengaged in class. If the material had been more organized and student-friendly, I would have done much better in school.

Placing text at the bottom of screens that have graphics gives the lessons a consistent look and feel. How would you reply to someone making this argument? 

 Poor content that's consistent is still poor content.

Yes, that's harsh, but it's honest. Graphics should be clearly labeled, and text should be well placed so that it's very clear what is what, and students can easily look at the graphic and corresponding text and absorb/retain the content. The text also needs to be very clear and easy to read. Fancy or distracting fonts may make reading and remembering the content more challenging for learners.

Have you ever read a book where a graphic appears on the back of a page describing the graphic? You need to flip back and forth to make sense of the message. How did this make you feel? Why did you feel that way? 

This reminded me of the old MapQuest directions that had their heyday in the late 90s/early 2000s. The instructions and map were often printed on multiple pieces of paper. You had to flip back and forth to different pages while trying to follow the map to get to your destination. Unless you had a competent person sitting in the passenger seat with you, you might still have to stop at a gas station to get directions because the map and directions were disjointed. 

The scenario described in the question is frustrating for an educator and would be very frustrating for a student. Suppose the graphics and text are disjointed and require moving the eyes around different parts of the book to read and understand the content. In that case, the student will have a harder time understanding and retaining the information the lesson tries to teach. If the graphics and content were clearly presented on the same page or screen, the eyes could focus on one area and absorb the content more easily.

As long as you present essential narration and graphics, why should the order of presentation matter?

The order of presentation matters because students need to connect to the content and connect parts of the content to fully comprehend the content and store the content in memory to be retrieved when needed. If the presentation is disjointed, students may still be able to remember and recall the content, but committing to memory may be more challenging. A well-thought-out presentation with a clear, logical order will help students absorb and remember the content more easily.

Chapter 6 Reflection

In Chapter 4 we discussed the benefits of animation to display procedures. Would you prefer to use audio or text to explain animations? Why? If you could not use your first choice, how would you use the alternative? 

If I already had an animation, I prefer to explain it with audio if I had to choose between text or audio. The visual representation is already present on the screen, so the audio narration can add important context and convey more information than simple words on a screen can. We want to avoid walls of text that are overwhelming for students to read, so the audio option would be preferable. If I could not use the audio and was limited to only using text to supplement the animation, I would be cautious about making sure any text on the screen was an actual value add for students, was very easy to read, and was used when needed, but not used when it's not required to avoid visual overwhelm.

Can you think of specific instructional situations where you would want to use printed text rather than audio? Describe two or three examples. 

If I had to use audio-only instructions to solve math equations, I would have struggled with math in school. I relied heavily on visual queues and step-by-step printed tutorials to explain how to solve equations. Without the visual component, I would need to be reminded of each step constantly, and I would have required a lot more time to think through each step and remember values each time I made a calculation.

I am a language teacher, and I always make printed flashcards using tools like Quizlet, where students can play with online flashcards to help them remember what they are reading. I teach a logographic language, so I must use the images of the characters I teach the students to help them recognize their new characters and become more familiar with them each time they practice using the flashcards.

If you are dealing with volatile content that will need updating at least monthly, would you select audio or text for your explanations? What other factors might influence your decision?

I would use text for content that needs to be updated at least monthly. Audio recordings often take several attempts to record, and text can be more easily recycled if only a few things need to be updated, while the rest of the content may be static from month to month. When making the decision, I consider the nature of the content, how much content would need to be updated, and (above all) the needs of my students. If I am working with students who need audio content, I would either create the audio content myself or try some AI tools like Murph that do quick and easy speech-to-text files, which may be a good tool to provide audio for content that needs to be updated frequently. If it applies to the situation, I might look for an accompanying image or two if they will help the learner understand and retain the information. Still, I would not spend much time on this if it didn't add value to the learner's experience.

Sketchnotes Reflection

Here is my Sketchnote. I attended a webinar about using this technique years ago but never got the chance to play with this until now. Overall, I am happy with how it turned out. One of the biggest challenges was trying to keep the text very clear and concise. It's easy to resort to walls of text when you have so much you want to say. Keeping it simple was one of my goals for this project. 

I ended up purchasing the SketchWow program after being wowed by its promotional video, but in the end, I think I could have done a better job with the graphics if I had stuck with Canva. They do have some nice graphics, but my choices were often limited. Still, I'm glad I got the chance to try something brand new and venture outside my comfort zone a bit. Since I purchased the software, I can use this to create content for my students. Copyright compliance rules are extremely strict at my school, so I'm glad to have a new tool to work with next year. 

Chapter 7 Reflection

Most asynchronous e-learning courses include navigation arrows that allow the learners to move forward and backward at their own pace. How might this feature affect the redundancy principle? 

When students are able to move through the content at their own pace, it isn't clear if the redundancy principle applies to these situations. If words are used that a learner is not familiar with, it could be beneficial to use on screen text in combination with narration. However, if the material is not self paced and the students are not working with extensive amounts of new vocabulary, it is best to use on screen text or a narration, but not both.

What are some situations in which learners do not have control of pacing in e-courses? How would these situations affect the redundancy principle? 

Live sessions that are not being recorded and videos that do not have the ability to be slowed down or sped up take away the learner's ability to control the pacing in e-courses. In these cases, the redundancy principle would apply. Students can be overwhelmed with excess text on a screen or long-winded narrations that are not value-added to student learning.

Have you had experience viewing or designing e-learning in one language such as English that will be taken by non-English native speakers? What have you found to be most helpful for these learners regarding use of narration, graphics, text, and navigational control?

Having the content available to be watched and re-watched or slowed down and reviewed by English language learners (ELLs) has been very beneficial in my teaching experience of ELLs. Navigational control over the content allows students to go back and revisit content they may not have understood the first time around. 

Graphics or images are often helpful when teaching ELLs new vocabulary words. They can connect the image to the new vocabulary word to retain and recall it with greater ease. While it can be too much content for a native English speaker, audio captions are beneficial. These need to be available for public school students to be compliant with UDL standards.

Chapter 8 Reflection

Think about multimedia courses you have taken or designed. What techniques were used to increase learner interest and motivation? Based on the coherence principle, were these techniques helpful or detrimental to learning? 

Principle 1 asks educators to avoid e-Lessons with extraneous words. As I teach high school students with many competing priorities and short attention spans, I am always very mindful to use words sparingly when I write and make sure my content is short and direct. I used to write long announcements with stories for my students, but now I keep text very brief and use bullet points and lists whenever possible. When I look at my analytics data in my course, short announcements with bullet points do better than longer ones. Students often click off long announcements and do not read them carefully, if at all. By keeping lessons uncluttered with the coherence principle, students will be more likely to stay motivated and working in the course.

What are some techniques you can use to increase interest and motivation that do not violate coherence? List several examples. 

In some cases, a short video or an image could be used to liven up dry content, but this should not be added to the content unless there is a value add. In short, if it will clutter the content, do not add it. However, if it is a value add, it's ok to use a video or image.

The quality of the writing can also make even the most dry material more engaging. I try to keep writing that students will read short, sweet, and to the point. High school students do not want to read a wall of text. 

Finally, I recommend that instructors look for some relevant real world connections or ties to current events that may help the students make connections with the content. This will help engage them and may make memory recall easier.

Many multimedia learning teams include diverse expertise such as subject-matter experts and graphic artists. Describe how the suggestions of these team members sometimes violate coherence principles. How can you best respond to their ideas?

In my experience as a project manager for a new course build, SMEs tend to want to cram as much content into a lesson as possible and sometimes need to be reminded of the course objectives and the target audience to refrain from doing that. Graphic design artists are often fantastic at what they do, but too many fancy graphics, images, animations, etc may distract students from the important content they need to learn and understand. Graphic designers may also not understand the importance of UDL principles, which are important for the success of all students. It's best to respond to their ideas by coming from a place of appreciation, while explaining the importance of designing content that will work for the learners we are there to serve.

Chapter 9 Reflection

If you are designing an e-lesson for new sales associates or for experienced database technicians would you use an agent? Why or why not? 

I would be more likely to use an agent for the new sales associates vs. experienced database technicians. 

New sales associates may benefit from a friendly, helpful and personable agent to guide them through the course. Sales agents are likely comfortable with people, but may not be comfortable with technology. An agent can help build rapport with the learners and encourage them to stick with the course if they initially feel uncomfortable with an e-learning experience vs. a face-to-face classroom. If these are new sales associates, they likely need important background information about the company they're working for, and possibly the entire industry if they are coming from a different one. The agent can help provide this background information. A people oriented salesperson may be more likely to learn and recall information from a conversation about the industry or company with an agent vs dry text on a screen.

Experienced database technicians likely need a completely different course experience with very specialized knowledge. Tech-savvy technicians do not need to be walked through a course and given frequent feel-good prompts and feedback. A course designed for this audience should be designed to be simple, straightforward and free of distractions. As the content in their course is likely to be complex, care should be taken to keep screens clear and clutter-free. An agent would take away from the learning experience and not add anything of value to it.

Have you experienced or would you anticipate objections in your organization to applying personalization in wording and/or use of agents? What kinds of objections might be raised and how would you respond?

As I work in a K-12 environment, personalization or the use of agents would likely not meet much (if any) objection or opposition. In other environments where personalized learning may not be as valued, or guidance from an agent may be seen as a negative, I can see where I would face some opposition. However, in my online K-12 school, we try hard to embrace things like personalized learning and building relationships with our students. An agent may help an overwhelmed student engage or re-engage with the course through a more personalized connection. 

 Can you think of situations in which attempts to apply the personalization principle would violate the coherence principle?

The coherence principle emphasizes avoiding extraneous content that distracts from core learning objectives like unnecessary images, sounds, or walls of text. The personalization principle is about making learning materials more engaging through personalization or agents. It is important for educators to balance both principles and cater to the target audience. If too many extraneous things are used to present the material, the content we are trying to teach may be lost by the learner. It is ok to use a guide or provide supplemental materials, but it's important to balance both the coherence and personalization principles in a way that is most appropriate for your target audience.

Chapter 12 Reflection

To what extent have you used or seen worked examples in lessons intended to build skills? Find some sample lessons and critique them for the inclusion of worked examples and for techniques such as self-explanation questions to maximize their benefits. 

I primarily teach Japanese I to learners with no prior experience with the language outside of watching anime. When I'm hosting live tutoring sessions, I often will deep dive into grammar and use worked examples to help students put together sentences using our new grammar concepts. I also have two middle school students who sometimes struggle with math, just like I did in school. Khan Academy videos have been a lifesaver for me as I often need to revisit the content myself to help my children with their homework.

While these worked example explanations can often be very helpful as students start applying what they know to complete their practice exercises, there are some drawbacks to these worked examples. Khan Academy videos are extremely helpful in jogging my memory, the worked examples are often on the simpler side. As I am helping my students work through more complex problems, I often find myself resorting to using AI for deeper explanations that can help us solve the more complex problems and understand how to approach them. 

Not being able to ask self-explanatory questions and listening to their answers, as my students are passively watching (at all hours of the day) videos I create for them explaining basic grammar, is another big drawback. After reading this chapter, I do plan to remake some videos and try asking some self-explanatory questions rhetorically, and maybe pausing for a bit and sharing the answer so students can get some instant feedback.  Maybe I can't hear their answers in real time or see how they're reacting to my explanations, but adding these quick questions into the videos and sharing some instant feedback will improve my work example videos.

Worked examples have been shown to both improve learning and learning efficiency. Is efficiency important in your environment? Why or why not? 

One of the things that makes online learning more challenging for some students is the lack of a physical classroom with dedicated time carved out 5 days a week where they are a captive audience. I teach Gen Z students and many of them have short attention spans and/or limited time to dedicate to their online courses. My content must be effective and efficient so my students can perform well in the course. Even in cases where students fall behind or struggle to understand the material, most of the time I can find a way to work with them in live sessions or provide additional resources. Those students who put forth the effort to boost their grades will typically bridge learning gaps to complete their assignments successfully and perform well on assessments. I credit a lot of my success to my ability to recognize how to make learning the content a more efficient process, especially for my struggling students with limited time to spend on classwork.

What challenges does your organization face to apply the guidelines suggested in this chapter?

The biggest challenge my school has in applying these guidelines is the virtual environment in which we operate. While we do have live sessions with our students, these are usually few and far between due to challenges with scheduling students for a synchronous time. While we can put together some helpful videos with learned examples, not being able to frequently ask those critical questions to invite students to moments of self explanation is a missed opportunity. I also wish we were able to host more live sessions where students could participate in a train the trainer type of session where they explain how they themselves apply what they learned to solve their own worked example and promote higher level Bloom's activities while they can receive real time feedback from an instructor if any steps are missed or learning gaps are identified from evaluating their explanations. 

Final Learning Log Entry/Course Reflection

I have immensly enjoyed the past seven weeks of EdTech 513. This semester was particularly challenging for me with teaching two summer classes during part of the semester and having to undergo an unexpected surgery in the middle of the course, but I am very pleased with what I was able to learn and create from taking this course. 

Final Artifact Reflection

My final artifact was an overall success, but even Educational Technologists are subject to tech whammies. I was excited to try using HaikuDeck, not just because I'm a Japanese teacher, but because I wanted to try a new tool I never used before. Unfortunately, the slides were not showing up when I was in presentation mode. I attempted to purchase the paid version of the software to remedy the issue, but the platform was not accepting credit card payments at the time. It is likely that HaikuDeck was experiencing widespread technical issues. So, I decided to make the best of the situation and use my paid ScreenPal account to create a screencast using the content I created. It's important to be flexible and come up with a Plan B when using technology. I also wrote a haiku to sum up my lackluster experience with the tool:

Tech issues abound

Must come up with a Plan B

Try again next time

The content I created is going to be very helpful in my teaching practice. My Japanese 1 students often struggle with particles and I realized I needed a resource that explains each particle and when they are used. I made sure to apply what we learned in class by keeping the content relatively brief and keeping the content on the screen itself as simple as possible. In my last submission I included a few review questions at the end to give students a low stakes opportunity to practice using what they learned in a video with some immediate feedback. I decided to do that in my final artifact too. This is something I plan to do going forward as I make new content for students.

How has this course helped me level up?

I have a much greater understanding of the importance of planning multimedia content, keeping the content short and to the point, and keeping the content clutter-free. Before taking this course, my videos were longer and typically not well planned. I used to turn on my Screencast software and ramble at my students while jumping from window to window. I now understand the importance of planning when making content. As our students only have so much brain capacity to dedicate to their studies, it is our job as educators to make sure the content we produce is designed to maximize their potential to learn. I look forward to making new content for one of the new courses I will be teaching next year. The timing of this course was excellent and I am very grateful for the opportunities I was gifted during this course.

Link to course syllabus for reference below.