Discussion Posts

D1: Introduction Post

Name: Autumn McDonnel

Hometown: Marshall, MN

Program of Study: English education with minors in special education, creative writing, and e-learning...so obviously this class fits in with 1/3 of my minor requirements...but also, being flexible both online and in the classroom is a huge responsibility for teachers, and especially as we continue to undergo the COVID pandemic.

Passions in Life: Writing, books, napping, tacos, and God!

Frustrations with D2L: NONE

One Goal for This Semester: To understand how I, as a future teacher, can maximize my potential and learn how to use the internet as an advantage for both my students and myself.

Favorite Animal: Capybara

D2: Instructional Gaps & Goals

Identify and explain which gap you think is the most prevalent in today's classrooms.
- Use the text to support your views.
Reflect on a time in which you experienced a gap within your learning experiences.
- Use the text to support your views.

I think one of the biggest learning gaps that is most prevalent in today's classrooms is motivation. I work with students every day after school for about 20-25 hours a week, and every day they come in and complain about their homework load; and not because they don't know how to do it or that it's too much, but because they don't think it's important and that they just don't want to do it. And in a short sense, I also think environmental factors play into their motivation as some parents tend to side with their children and express their own personal opinions about the homework teachers give out. Dirksen wrote, "Before you start designing a learning experience, you need to know what problems you are trying to solve" (2016 p. 60). I think it's crucial for teachers to really try to understand what it is about their learners that holds them back before jumping into daily instruction; and if the teacher chooses not to understand their learners and the gaps they undergo, then not only can the teacher refrain from forming goals surrounding their gaps, but they're setting both themselves - as teachers - and students up for failure throughout their academic (and even personal) careers.

I had a large learning gap towards the very end of my high school career, and my learning gaps were both motivational and environmental. I graduated in 2020, the year that the pandemic hit. I always did my best in school up until distance learning became my new norm. I was highly motivated before that, and I simply loved learning. But then the pandemic hit, and I was stuck at home - a place that didn't feel right to learn in. I stopped wanting to do my assignments, and although I attended class physically via Microsoft Teams, I would scroll through my phone and text my friends about how boring my classes were going. I had nothing to do. I was learning through a screen, and my teachers and I now had little to no interaction anymore since we were no longer in person. It made my senior year a drag, but that's not my point. My point is that I felt like because there was nothing to do, I didn't need to learn. Sure, listening to a lecture is easy, but when everything goes in one ear and out the other, trying to reach my learning objectives set by my teachers was difficult. I wasn't given anything to memorize or recite. I wasn't given anything to write down or translate or create a project for. Therefore, learning felt like it wasn't worthwhile. Dirksen wrote, "[Teachers] use words like define, describe, and explain because those are observable actions - you can witness someone describing, defining, or explaining...[but] it doesn't really get you around the problem, unless you are having people memorize and recite definitions. In fact, it's almost difficult to determine if they can define something as it is to know if they understand something. Besides, you don't actually care if they can define it - you want to know if they can do it" (2016 p. 64). My teachers couldn't find a way to make us prove that we were learning by making us dothings. At the end of the day, they just wanted to make sure that they lectured us and that we listened, and nothing more. Thus my gap widened, and I somehow managed to finish that year and graduate with honors by literally doing nothing for the last six months of my high school career.

D3: Most Meaningful Design Focus

Identify and explain which design focus you believe is the most difficult to effectively engage with learners.
- Use the text to support your views.
Reflect on a personal learning experience that you believe the teacher/instructor did OR did not effectively design for a specific focus.
- Use the text to support your views.

I think that motivation, in regards to design focus, is most difficult to effectively engage with learners. Several weeks ago, we worked on an assignment titled "The Rider vs. The Elephant." It was really easy for me to come up with a task to create for the rider, because the rider will do the assignment as best (or as worst) as they can just for the grade. They don't care what they end up with; they just do it. The elephant, on the other hand, needs that extra push to get up that hill, score a full run, or try to get a passing grade. As Dirksen puts it, "How we feel about something is a gauge of how important we think it is" (131). I couldn't agree more with that statement. If something doesn't interest me, why would I even bother wasting my time or energy on it? But engaging with an elephant can be difficult, for obvious reasons. The elephant doesn't lack the knowledge or skills as much as it lacks the motivation. According to Dirksen, you can motivate the elephant to do an assignment, or task, simply by "[telling] it stories, [surprising] it, [showing] it shiny things, [telling] it all the other elephants are doing it, and [leveraging] the elephant's habits" (132). Sure, you could tell an elephant a crazy story that you like to use to motivate others, but what if they've already heard it a million times? It'll just go in one ear and out the other. Sure, you can use peer pressure to your benefit, but what if they're not even connected with their peers? And sure, you could stoop down to their level and include their habits in the task, but what if they just think you're being weird about it? You're going to come across many elephants in your future of teaching, and I will, too; but, unless we can learn how to come across to our elephants and appease to how they prefer to learn, then we're not going to get very far. You can only do so much before it's out of your hands and into theirs. If the elephant has the knowledge and the skills to complete a task but chooses not to do it, maybe it doesn't fall entirely on you. Perhaps you tried your best, and your best still wasn't good enough (that's happened to me a few times that I can recall from the top of my head). It'll happen, because not everyone comes prepared to tackle every obstacle they face, and not everyone is willing to try as hard as they could. I like how Dirksen put it: You might not be trying to fix behaviors as difficult as smoking, but anything that involves extra effort will be a lot easier if the elephant is onboard with the program (218). It'll be difficult to find ways to motivate our elephants, but the harder we try, the easier it will be to succeed, right? We, as teachers, have so many tools to our advance, such as the Technology Acceptance Model, Diffusions of Innovation, Self-Efficacy, Modeling and Practice, Social Proof, and Visceral Matters. It's not about what we think our elephant needs in order to succeed. The elephant knows themselves better than we do. If we want to close the motivational gap regarding design focus, then we need to consider what the elephant wants.

I've never been good at math. Algebra, to be exact. But I always tried my best on my assignments. I never excelled, and I sat at my kitchen table on multiple occasions, crying, because I was trying so hard to figure out how I could solve the equation, but I just couldn't do it and I didn't know where I was going wrong. I remember taking a college algebra exam during my senior year of high school. It wasn't the first exam, but it was the third. I studied all night before, reviewing problems with my friend. I was confident that I'd do good on the exam. I walked into class ready to take it. The first two pages went great. As I flipped to the third page, my mood instantly changed. I became confused. It felt like I was deciphering hieroglyphics, or translating Arabic. I had no idea what was going on, and suddenly I couldn't breathe. I felt a huge weight on my chest, and I knew I was having a panic attack and I immediately blamed myself. I got up and excused myself to the nurses' office to calm myself down. When I was ready to go back to class, test time was over. I blew it. I walked up to my teacher and she shook her head at me. She told me that if I would've studied more then I wouldn't have had a meltdown. I offered weeks before that I felt like I needed tutoring, and she told me that I needed to believe in myself. I told her on multiple occasions that I didn't understand math, and her only response was that I wasn't trying hard enough. So when she told me I didn't study long enough for the exam, I immediately knew I was going to struggle my way through the class. I did my homework. I studied for exams. I asked my friends for help, and when they gave me just answers, I begged them to tell me how they got the answers. I wanted to learn how to do the math, but I just couldn't comprehend it at all. I wish my high school college algebra teacher would've given me the feedback that I deserved. As Dirksen puts it, "The feedback that happens after the learning experience is over should be like good coaching. It helps the learner understand where they are doing things right, where they are doing things wrong, and what they should try instead" (208). I wish I would've received positive feedback and for my teacher to understand my struggle, but she refused. I tried on so many occasions, and yet her only response was that I wasn't doing enough when in reality it was her that wasn't doing enough for me. Dirken later writes that there are several ways to follow up with a student after a learning situation doesn't go right. Dirksen writes that you can "Create a forum online and encourage learners to report back on their experiences, Send periodic emails with examples, tips, and opportunities for learners to self-evaluate, [and] Have virtual critique sessions that allow learners to post work and get feedback from the community" (209). Yes, yes, and yes! I'm glad that I have someone to support me in my efforts of wanting to be a skillful student, though I wish it was when I was taking that math class in high school. Nonetheless, Dirksen's message and my encounter with my algebra teacher give me hope that I can do what's best for my students. When things go wrong, I have the power to make them right, and I have the opportunity to guide my student to new ideas and offer them things and tips to try instead of putting them down, much like my teacher did.

D4: Design & Evaluation Connections

Identify and explain which forms of assessment and evaluation you believe are the most beneficial.
- Use the text to support your views.
Reflect on problems that teachers and students might encounter using those forms of assessment and evaluation.
- Use the text to support your views.

I think Recognition versus Recall is the most beneficial form of evaluation. While I think each section in this chapter is valuable and has some good takeaways, Recognition versus Recall hits close to home for me. I've seen it done both positively and negatively. I think Dirksen: "Recognition isn't a bad thing, and it's often a necessary first step in understanding a topic, but it only gets you so far. A recall-based question would be much better" (277). When I think about my area being English, I know that giving out multiple-choice questions on a grammar test, or even a test regarding a book, can be difficult to choose from. I, myself, tend to look at all of the answers and trick myself into thinking they're all right, because of this, this, and this, and it's so hard to choose what I think the right one is out of the others, that also look right. However, I always preferred open-ended questions because I could always specifically recall a key grammar topic or book theme and clearly explain my thought process without the constraints of choosing between A, B, C, or D. Perhaps some of the answers coincide? Well, with single selection multiple choice, you can only choose 1, when there could be multiple answers...but with an open-ended recall question, you could give multiple answers that still lead up to the big picture. Again, Dirksen and I see eye to eye. She states, "So if a learner answers this [recognition] question correctly, what does that tell you about what they learned? It tells you that they can apply basic logic to a situation, but it tells you very little about their [knowledge] (277).

However, Recognition versus Recall comes with a downside. "The problem with recall questions is that a human has to look at them to judge whether the answers are right or wrong, which is a much more labor-intensive process than letting a computer grade the choice of A, B, C, or D" (Dirksen 277). I've seen this happen various times when my teachers handed my tests back in high school, and once in a while in college. Some of my professors even write in what the answer should've been, and explain why I was wrong or where my thoughts went astray. I do tend to find corrections like that helpful, though, instead of just accepting I was wrong without knowing why. I have also seen professors/teachers mark answers with a question mark, and once the student sees the question mark they usually stay after class to talk about why the teacher was confused. This moment of reflection allows the student to verbally express the thoughts that they couldn't quite put on their page, because, again, writing is labor-intensive, as Dirksen puts it, and when we (as students) are tired of writing and want to be done, we just give up and assume our professor will fill in the blanks for us, which is wrong (usually)!

D5: Website Share Out

Your website portfolio's shortened URL.
Possible areas of focus that you would like your classmates to offer suggestions to.
- Identify the item in need of attention and how to find it.
Reflect on what you believe is the hardest part of creating digital content and communication tools focused on how people learn.
- Use the text to support your views.

I personally don't like the layout of my artifacts. I like having my ISTE standards at the bottom, but my layout just seems so boring. I do, however, like the way it's organized, but they all look the same. I don't know if this is good or bad, so let me know what you think of my layout on each artifact/in general. You can find my artifacts simply by hovering over the ELRN 410 tab on the top right corner of my homepage. From there you'll see my discussion posts and artifacts 1-9 and can click on whichever section you'd like to view.

I think the hardest part of creating digital content and communication tools was simply setting it all up so it was user-friendly and making sure that my website wasn't boring. It took me a while to realize how to make folders when we were first setting up our websites, and, again, I think that my layouts are just overall boring. I'm unsure how to make my website "pop" out to others. I did at some pictures on my artifact and discussion banners so people could recognize that the typewriter indicates I'm majoring in the English ed field...but are my pictures obvious enough? I tried to make them correlate to my major and I didn't want to change them too much. I only put them in because I felt like they blended in well without causing a distraction to my website viewers.

Please let me know what you think (yes, I know that I'm missing my ISTE standards on half of my artifacts, but they will be put in there soon!). Any and all suggestions are welcome!

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