Final Design Solution

Learning Design Solution

This hybrid e-learning and in-person Professional Development (PD) training is designed to provide Gen Ed teachers with structured collaborative modules around learning about strategies that can be implemented to support their ELL students.

Since our learner analysis reflected Gen Ed teachers wanting to complete this training during paid working hours and also having little to no personal time to dedicate to these trainings in their personal time, each module will only take place during the weekly PD, aside from the final classroom observation assessment.

Information about how to implement these strategies into their own class and lesson plans through practice scenarios will be included throughout these modules, and Gen Ed teachers will have the opportunity to collaborate with others for feedback.

This training will consist of the following 5 modules that will cover the span of 5 weeks:

Module 1, Week 1: Culturally Responsive Teaching

The first module will focus on how to set and foster a safe and productive environment for ELL students in the classroom by learning the basics of Culturally Responsive Teaching.

Gen Ed teachers will be able to recall information by implementing their learning in scenario activities where they will practice integrating what they learned and be assessed through collaborative feedback.

They will also be tasked by dispersing the Checkpoint 1 survey to their ELL students that will measure their current comfort in their classroom, their current feeling of engagement, and their current feeling of success in their classroom. This will be compared with the Checkpoint 2 survey at the end of the 5-month training.

Module 2, Week 2: Strategic Peer Groupings

The second module will focus on strategic peer groupings to enhance ELL student contributions and collaborations in group activities. The format of this module will follow a similar format and sequence to module 1.

Gen Ed teachers will be able to recall information by implementing their learning in scenario activities where they will practice integrating what they learned into a scenario of their own from their classroom where they will show their understanding of the effectiveness of these strategies. They will then be assessed through collaborative feedback.

Module 3, Week 3: Technologies

The third module will focus on leveraging technologies to support translation and communication to enhance ELL student learning in the classroom.

Module 4, Week 4: Final Assessment - Implementation & Observation

The fourth module will focus on preparing Gen Ed teachers to strategically implement pertinent strategies learned for 1 or more ELL students for a specific lesson that week.

Gen Ed teachers will be able to recall information by integrating what they've learned in this training up to this point into their own lesson plan that they will be teaching. They will show their understanding of the effectiveness of these strategies through explaining their thoughtful reasoning to peers and give and receive feedback before implementation.

They will then be assessed by their peers (using a rubric) in the upcoming week through classroom observations.

Module 5, Week 5: Final Feedback & Reflection

The fifth and final module will focus on receiving feedback from peers from the classroom observations.

This will serve as a time for reflection and collaborative iterations on lesson plans based on feedback, as well as motivating communal accountability by sharing next steps in the community forum.

Gen Ed teachers will also disperse the Checkpoint 2 ELL student survey to compare the data around the feeling of comfort in the classroom, feelings around engagement, and feelings of success to Checkpoint 1, which will support them in strategizing next steps.

Assessments

Self Assessments

Based on the theory of constructivism, learners will interact with knowledge and understanding checks when watching videos and reading text about ELL support strategies.

Example of an Interactive Video Assessment (Edpuzzle):

Scenario Activity Assessments

Learners will further demonstrate their understanding by implementing their knowledge in scenario activities, which will be peer-assessed using a rubric like the one below.

Example Scenario:

In an 8th grade humanities class, you have a student named Amina who is a newcomer ELL at the Entering level of English proficiency. The upcoming unit is on the indigenous peoples of North America before European contact. Amina comes from a Kurdish background and has had limited formal schooling experiences before arriving in the U.S. this year.

Create a plan implementing culturally responsive teaching strategies to ensure your instruction is culturally responsive and accessible for Amina.

Example Analytic Peer Rubric:

Final Assessment

The final assessment will consist of applying learnings to an upcoming lesson plan and implementing it. Learners will be assessed by peers who will conduct a classroom observation using the rubric below.

Peer Observation Analytic Rubric:

Logic Model

Design Rationale

When considering the design of our instructional experience, the team took into consideration several key factors, including how we can apply different pedagogical theories to our learning solution, the application and use of the multimedia principles of design, leveraging online learning communities, and what types of technology and media would work best to support the learning outcomes and goals.Our ultimate hope for the project is that course allows general education teachers to better support their ELL learners. Our hoped for outcomes as they relate to design goals and objectives are as follows:

Primary Goal: General education teachers will be able to understand what strategies can be implemented to support their ELL students based on the students skill-levels, needs, and lesson content.

Objective 1: Teachers will be able to recall different ENL techniques depending on their students’ ELL level, their background, and the lesson learning objective.

Objective 2: Teachers will be able to integrate ELL strategies into their current lesson plan designs in order to meet the specific needs of ELL students as it relates to English language acquisition and overall subject fluency.

Objective 3: Teachers will be able to understand the effectiveness of the ELL strategies implemented in their classrooms by giving and receiving feedback from peer Ged Ed teachers and their ELL students.

Objective 4: Teachers will be able to leverage technology to support translation and communication between ELL students, Ged Ed teachers, peers, and the topic being covered at large.

During weekly professional development time, general education teachers will meet to complete the following tasks and activities:

First, our students will watch instructional videos that feature a different learning topic weekly. Next, learners will be tasked with designing scenarios to support ELL students based on a prompt, before having to implement the strategies in their own lesson plans. Furthermore, learners will be asked to observe other teachers implementing ELL support strategies and provide feedback in order to support metacognitive processing, as well as contribute to a collective, social learning environment. Learners will engage in group work, where they will collaborate and share responses to scenarios, as well as collectively create ELL support adjustments to lesson plans, and receive feedback on their current strategies. Finally, general education teachers will be asked to contribute to an online community with questions, ideas, wonderings, and feedback. Many of these activities will be happening simultaneously.

In the following section we will show and discuss what learning theories influenced our learning design solution, what design principles we found to be the most effective in meeting the specific needs of our learners, and what technology and media will be used to support learning outcomes.

Source: Carrie Williams Howe

Main Learning Theories

Several learning theories guided the design of our instructional solution, including constructivism, constructionism, social-constructivism, and connectivism. The central tenants of each of these theories worked to exemplify how our instructional design would work to meet the learning needs of our users (Oyarzun, 2019).

Constructivism will be emphasized through the use of active learning and construction of knowledge that is supported by video and AI technologies. Our work will build upon learners' existing knowledge and experiences, as the course will begin with a knowledge check. From there, learners will engage with content in a manner that works to refine existing knowledge, and build knowledge models. Active learning will be emphasized as they work in groups to address the specific ELL challenges they are facing. Additionally, the use of authentic tasks will be used to ensure that learning is culturally relevant and applicable to a variety of different situations.

Constructionism will be utilized through the use of tools and technology, as learners are enabled to express their ideas and create digital artifacts that support their ability to understand what strategies can be implemented to support ELL student needs.

Social-Constructivism will be the most crucial to the design of our solution, as learning will take the form of a social process. The group work and conversations that our learners will engage in will work to allow knowledge to be co-constructed and created through social interactions. Social interaction, collaborative learning, cultural context, and discourse will be supported during PD time. A core tenant of our program will be to allow learners to engage with one another, and share strategies digitally and face-to-face.

Connectivism theory emphasizes the importance of social networks and connections within the learning environment. Since connectivism posits that learning does not exist solely within one mind, but is interspersed amongst many minds, networked learning, distributed cognition, and knowledge aggregation will be designed into the lessons as learners work together – both on and offline, to create meaning and deepen their understanding of ENL techniques.

Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning

Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, as well as the dual-channel assumption and the cognitive load theory assumption, guided the design of our multimedia content by setting forth a set of rules that could be applied to the video, photo, audio, and text materials that we will create and disseminate to our students (Mayer, 2009).

Source: Mayerlab

Chunking

Dividing our content out into more manageable, bite sized chunks by segmenting important content into smaller lesson bits, will work to ensure that our learners do not experience cognitive overload.

Dual Coding Theory

Dual coding theory will be utilized by using different channels to convey information to learners, through both visual and auditory means. Videos, photos, text, and audio will be used to ensure that users can take in information in a variety of ways, increasing their rates of understanding and retention.

Signaling Principle

the signaling principle will be used within video content to highlight pertinent information, and increase recall. By drawing learners' attention to important aspects of the video content, we can ensure that they will be using their cognitive capacity to retain the appropriate information.

Redundancy Principle

The redundancy principle states that with an audio narration voiceover, use only graphics on screen – don't use graphics and text. The reason for the redundancy principle is that it helps minimize distraction. In the design of our video, we will try to keep extraneous information and details to a minimum.

Spatial Contiguity

States that designers must keep all related text and graphics physically close together in the frame. The benefit of this is that when graphics and text are far apart, it takes students longer to understand the relationship between them, and more time to connect them together.

Temporal Contiguity

Will be implemented by ensuring that visuals and audio occur at the same time, as opposed to having the voiceover audio play before the visual is shown.

Pre-training Principle

We will make use of the pre-training principle by making sure that instead of having learners begin the course right away, they are given access to an introductory guide that teaches the basic definitions, terms, and concepts – this will help them build prior knowledge.

Segmenting Principle

We will use this principle by providing learners with control over their learning by including 'next' buttons and customizable video settings. This will work to ensure that learning is “chunked” and more consumable, thus making it easier to process and retain.

Multimedia Principle

The design of our videos will avoid using text on screen alone. Instead, relevant visuals will be included. By choosing thoughtful visuals to enhance and clarify the information, we can allow learners to code information through different channels, as well as avoid creating extraneous load.

Online Learning Communities

Within the realm of education, online learning communities are digital platforms and spaces that support individuals in their quest to acquire knowledge, engage in knowledge sharing, collaborate on projects, and contribute to an online learning ecosystem (Dennis, 2020). These communities can take on many different forms, but for our learning solution, we will leverage the implementation of a forum (Padlet) to support learning outcomes. On Padlet, students will be able to

Share knowledge: Students can share resources, articles, or other educational materials to enhance their learning, as well as clarify any potential questions their peers may have.

Contribute to a collaborative learning ecosystem: Learners can engage with each other on discussion boards, and surface questions, ideas, and solutions to problems that general education teachers may be experiencing in supporting their ELL students.

Networking: Students can strengthen their relationships and teacher networks as they work to build community supports outside of the PD environment.

Technology and Media

In order to meet the learning goals and objectives of the project, we believe that designing a learning solution that makes use of the technology and media types listed below, will be the most effective in aiding general education teachers in their quest to support ELL students.

Technology:

Padlet

Google Docs

AI assistant

Media:

Face-to-face

Video

Text

Graphics

References

Dennis, C., Abbott, S., Matheson, R., & Tangney, S. (Eds.). (2020). Flexibility and pedagogy in higher education: Delivering flexibility in learning through online learning communities. BRILL.

Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Oyarzun, B. & Conklin, S. (2019). Learning Theories. In: McDonald, J. K., & West, R. E. (eds). Design for Learning: Principles, Processes, and Praxis. Routledge.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse