Learning Theory

• Andragogy: Adults learn differently than children. They want to know, "Why am I learning this?" and "How will this relate to or benefit my life or career?" Adults are looking for relevance right now.  Deepening their content knowledge of fractions operations will help them better teach fractions operations to students. Adult learning theory must be considered when designing this mini course. Activities in this course must be engaging for adults, relevant to classroom practice, and leave the adult learner with new understandings that they find exciting or motivating to apply to their teaching. This course cannot just merely focus on teaching educators about fractions operations. The course must also provide direct application and practice to a grades 3-5 classroom.  

• Cognitivism and Constructivism: Constructivism hinges on the idea that one is constantly trying to make meaning of new information and relate it to past understandings. Cognitivism focuses on thinking and how humans process, organize, and make sense of new information.  Teachers need to be able to construct their knowledge of fractions operations based on what they already know. This course must consider the knowledge an adult educator already possesses and honor it. Teachers will also need opportunities to construct new learning through digital interactions that are carefully sequenced in thoughtful ways to demonstrate the underlying mathematics that they may not have learned when they were students. Because educators need opportunities to construct and organize their thinking, opportunities for reflection must be built into the course. 

• Activities that teachers can take and use in their own classroom are always going to feel practical and relevant after they have had a chance to do the math themselves. The connections and "ah-ha" moments they have tend to motivate them to try the activities with their students. I have incorporated activities that teachers can do with their students but also activities that cause them to pause and reflect on what they are thinking about too. I have put in scenarios that will help them apply their learning to practical classroom situations. I have provided sorting activities that help them make sense of the content. 

Instructional Design Models

Initially I thought I would use the SAM model, but a lack of access to the SME I was hoping for has made this a huge challenge as SAM requires several rounds of feedback. I think I have followed more of a Rapid Design model given the lack of cyclical rounds of feedback. While I am receiving feedback from peers here in this course on different facets of the project, they are not cyclical. And, I don't have the SME to weigh in on the presentation of the math concepts. The mathematical understanding is really my big purpose in creating this course.  Rapid instructional design has the ability to deliver learning materials more quickly while addressing specific learning needs. Rapid Design also leverages a variety of authoring tools and platforms for rapid content creation and deployment which is more descriptive of what I have done here.

I also made the hard decision this week to pull back on how much I plan to develop for this course. My original mini-course plan is more like a full course in fraction operations. Given that I have limited time around my day job and other challenges, such as the amount of time it takes to create the pattern block interactives, I had to pull back on how much I will develop for this capstone project. Details are in my IDD but I decided to focus solely on addition and subtraction of fractions, the properties at work with adding and subtracting and the implications for classroom instruction. A focus on just these two operations is already proving to be quite a large project but I am glad I re-thought the scope of this. The IDD is retaining the information for multiplication and division with the intention that I will build those out in the future. I think I can instead give some nods to multiplication through a few examples of repeated addition and it will spark curiosity for a learner. 

AI Transparency Statement:  Unfortunately I was ill and lost my voice when this assignment was due. Luckily, I have an avatar already built in Synthesia! This is my face and my regular voice, but it is my avatar reading the script. You may notice a few odd behaviors or eye movements as this video is playing.