As mentioned in previous summaries, creating effecting learning environments was something I fine-tuned as I moved through each subsequent project in the Educational Technology program. The more I learned and realized that the content and learning outcomes need to be decided first and then technology integration is added to enhance those factors, the better and more effective my projects and implementations became.
The course I used for my Instructional Design course is taught to traditional first-year students at the University of Delaware. These students are not only new to the college environment and its teaching methods, but also new to the technology and resources available. Therefore, I chose to use technology as a substitution and an augmentation, to ease students into an online teaching environment. This also allowed for community building in a traditional classroom setting, which is important for early student development.
For my Multimedia eLearning Environment I wanted to create a professional development environment for practicing academic advisors. I have taken a number of courses through my professional development organization, NACADA, and found them to be very helpful in how I do my job. I decided to use key aspects of those courses to create an online community for advisors in the College of Health Sciences at UD. The learning environment involves a lot of discussion board activities and resource sharing, which I found to be an effective way for colleagues to share best practices with each other.
My Technology Plan, born from my Needs Assessment, uses online resources, gathered through a professional development course for academic advisors, to help facilitate students' exploration of career options, and start productive conversations between advisors and students. The modules also include common questions asked by advisors to their students to again help facilitate conversations between advisors and students. The learning environment allows students to explore and learn about themselves, while also giving their advisors pertinent information to help guide the student through their undergraduate career. The ePortfolio also creates an artifact for the student to use post graduation.
My Curriculum Project is a series of screencast videos explaining to new students how to use important technology based around class registration at the University of Delaware. As one of the last projects in the Educational Technology program, this involves a high use of technology and is backed by several learning theories, such as cognitivism, learner-centered, and the multimedia principle. These videos help students learn how to use common technology on UD's campus in a format they can access and view on their own time and at their own pace. It also incorporates multiple forms of media (visual and audio) to offer a more effective learning experience.