EDCI335

Peer Review

July 26, 2023 / / 0 Comments 
Learning Pod: 4
Peers’ Names: Li, Summer, Zhao, Ziyi, Dean, Zili
Interactive Learning Resource Topic: Artificial Intelligence
https://classroom.google.com/c/NjE2MDUwMDU5Njkz?cjc=64mf4np

Missing Components

The first “missing” component I noticed was issues with grammar. There are quite a few areas where incorrect grammar has made explanations & instructions confusing or unclear. Many of the quiz/review questions are also unclear/confusing. It appears some of the questions also do not involve material that has been taught/explored. I cannot comment on alignment with learning outcomes as I do not see learning outcomes within any of the course topics. Organization is not uniform between the different topics. In my review I believe that this team could have made better use of the Google Classroom technology to organize thoughts and ideas in a more cohesive manner, and make the learning experience simple for student users.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths: Most topics include a good amount of information/resources for learning the content. For example, the topic “AI Within Mobile” includes a reading as well as a video that each include relevant content. There is also an optional activity within this topic that includes an additional video resource.

Another strength is the personal feeling of this ILR. Each topic includes an “Introduction” section where the creator of that topic introduces themselves and positively welcomes questions about the content.

Weaknesses: There are many grammar & punctuation errors within this Google Classroom, as well as issues with text alignment. For example, in the topic “AI Within Inclusive Learning” the text moves to the next line mid-sentence without filling the page first from left to right. This continues throughout the topic and is not uniform. 

Another issue which may stem from the grammar issues, is that some of the descriptions, content, and quiz questions are confusing and/or unclear.

Recommendations

Overall your learning resource has a personal welcoming feel and provides a general learning about the topic. You may want to consider reviewing grammar and organization to increase the clarity of the content you are teaching, as well as working together to create a uniform and cohesive flow throughout the entire Google Classroom. For example, take a look at the title of your last subtopic. It is currently titled “Art” which does not match the titles of other subtopics. And as for grammar, ensure sentences are ended with periods, text alignement is uniform, and sentences are not missing words.

Great job overall! 🙂

Blog Post #2

June 18, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Open pedagogies refer to a set of educational approaches that prioritize openness, collaboration, and learner empowerment. Unlike traditional teacher-centred methods, open pedagogies emphasize active participation and engagement from students, encouraging them to take ownership of their learning process. This educational philosophy is closely aligned with the principles of open education, which promote free access to knowledge, resources, and educational opportunities.

The belief that learning should be a collaborative and inclusive endeavour is at the core of open pedagogies. Teachers serve as facilitators and guides, creating a supportive environment where students can explore, experiment, and co-create knowledge. Open pedagogies often involve project-based learning, problem-solving activities, and group work, fostering critical thinking, creativity, and teamwork skills.

One key aspect of open pedagogies is the use of open educational resources (OERs). These are freely available educational materials, such as textbooks, videos, and interactive tools, that anyone can access, modify, and share. By utilizing OERs, educators can customize and adapt learning materials to suit the needs of their students, enhancing accessibility and relevance.

Another hallmark of open pedagogies is the integration of technology. Online platforms, collaborative tools, and social media networks can facilitate learners’ communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. Technology enables students to connect with peers and experts worldwide, expanding their perspectives and fostering global citizenship.

Open pedagogies also promote learner autonomy and agency. Students are encouraged to set their own learning goals, pursue their interests, and take responsibility for their learning. This approach nurtures intrinsic motivation and a lifelong love of learning, as students feel a sense of ownership and empowerment in their educational journey.

Furthermore, open pedagogies encourage transparency and open dialogue. Assessment and evaluation methods focus on feedback and reflection rather than just grades, promoting continuous improvement and self-assessment skills. Students are actively involved in assessing their own progress and learning outcomes, creating a culture of shared responsibility and ongoing learning.

Open pedagogies are a strongly applicable education approach to our topic, which revolves around financial literacy. Personal finance is not a cut-and-paste topic. Things are always changing, and everyone’s budgets and bills will look different. This causes the topic to require strong problem-solving skills. By teaching through a method of active participation, students can fully submerge in concepts surrounding credit cards, loans, and budgeting, among other relevant topics. 

Blog Post #1: Learning, Motivation, Theory

June 4, 2023 / / 0 Comments
Anatomical heart embroidery.

Prompt: “Share a story about your best learning experience (could be a formal course or something more personal). Why did you enjoy it?”

The best learning experience I have had was IB Biology in high school. This was a 2-year HL course, and while I enjoyed the first year of it, the strategies my teacher used to help us grasp the content in the second year were incomparable.

This was a high school course, so it consisted of an hour a day of class time for the duration of the school year. While my high school supported IB Diploma students, many of those enrolled in IB courses were only completing the certificate (taking one or a few IB courses and potentially earning university credit). This meant that the class was a mix of students who had experienced IB courses in the past – and had sat an IB exam – and those for whom this was their first experience in an IB course. These courses had a set international curriculum and were therefore different from other high school courses. The exam questions were structured in a very specific way, wherein the wording or structure of the questions would seem scary and unfamiliar to someone who was encountering IB exam questions for the first time. This teacher was incredible at preparing us for this exam, so we performed at our highest capacity. For her, teaching was exactly what she wanted to be doing and it showed in our learning. Her goal each year was to “beat the world” by achieving a class average on the IB exam that exceed the global average – and we did!

Over the course of the year, each topic was delivered to us in a printed set of papers that contained blanks we must fill in. Sometimes this was a word or phrase that was missing, and other times we were given a blank table. The information that needed to go into these spaces was always given to us clearly, but rather than structuring our notes and possibly rushing through or skipping them entirely these worksheets made the task less daunting. This is an example of how cognitive learning strategies were incorporated into this course. I find cognitive strategies to often be the best way I learn and found that they encouraged me to try as I felt like the task was not too big for me to achieve. 

Another task that we were regularly presented with was an “IB question of the day”. Each day when we walked into class, the first five to ten minutes were spent on a past IB test question (on material we had already covered). We would see the different types of questions and learn how to answer them to please the grading rubric. Questions may be encountered more than once throughout the year, creating repetition. One question that we repeated time after time (many times) was drawing and labelling an anatomical diagram of the human heart. This question ended up being on our IB test! Our class ended up between the global average for this section by a wide margin due to the repetition we engaged in. This question & response task we participated in daily is a good example of how my teacher used behavioural learning strategies.

An additional regular task we completed was unit “one-pagers”. For this task, we were to fill no more or less than an 8.5 x 11 sheet of printer paper with the content of that unit while using as few words as possible. This encouraged us to think out of the box and structure this blank sheet in a way that contextually strung together the concepts in the unit for each student. This is a great example of a constructive learning strategy, and I found that (with the guidance of the unit learning outcomes) this was a good learning strategy for me as well. 

image showing person walking in pre-painted footprints
Photo by Flickr user jfchenier under CC license: BY-NC 2.0

Welcome and Introduction

May 2, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Before proceeding with this first blog post, we expect you to consider your privacy preferences carefully and that you have considered the following options:

  1. Do you want to be online vs. offline?
  2. Do you want to use your name (or part thereof) vs. a pseudonym (e.g., West Coast Teacher)?
  3. Do you want to have your blog public vs. private? (Note, you can set individual blog posts private or password protected or have an entire blog set to private)
  4. Have you considered whether you are posting within or outside of Canada? This blog on opened.ca is hosted within Canada. That said, any public blog posts can have its content aggregated/curated onto social networks outside of Canada.

First tasks you might explore with your new blog:

  • Go into its admin panel found by adding /wp-admin at the end of your blog’s URL
  • Add new category or tags to organize your blog posts – found under “Posts” (but do not remove the pre-existing “edci335” category).
  • See if your blog posts are appearing on the course website (you must have the the edci335 category assigned to a post first and have provided your instructor with your blog URL)
  • Add pages, if you like.
  • Include hyperlinks in your posts (select text and click on the link icon in the post toolbar)
  • Embed images or set featured images and embed video in blog posts and pages (can be your own media or that found on the internet, but consider free or creative commons licensed works). To embed a YouTube video, simply paste the URL on its own line.
  • Under Dashboard/Appearance,
    • Select your preferred website theme and customize to your preferences (New title, new header image, etc.)
    • Customize menus & navigation
    • Use widgets to customize blog content and features
  • Delete this starter post (or switch it to draft status if you want to keep it for reference)

Do consider creating categories for each course that you take should you wish to document your learning (or from professional learning activities outside of formal courses). Keep note, however, that you may wish to rename the label of the course category in menus (e.g., as we did where it shows “Learning Design” as the label for the “edci335” category menu.  This will enable readers not familiar with university course numbers to understand what to expect in the contents.

Lastly, as always, be aware of the FIPPA as it relates to privacy and share only those names/images that you have consent to use or are otherwise public figures. When in doubt, ask us.

Please also review the resources from our course website for getting started with blogging:

University of Victoria
Photo by Flickr user serdarkaya under CC license: BY-NC-ND 2.0

Test Learning Design Post

May 2, 2020 / / 0 Comments

This post  will appear in a few places:

  1. in the blog feed on the front of your website
  2. in the Learning Design menu on your website. This is because we have applied the “edci335” category to this post and the menu item “Learning Design” has been created from the category “edci335.” For every post you make for this course, please assign the “edci335” category to it. You are welcome to use this blog for your personal hobbies or for other courses, in which case, you could create additional menu items and categories for them.
  3. if you give permission, your posts categorized “edci335” will be aggregated onto the Blog Feed on the EDCI 335 Course Website.

Feel free to delete this post once you understand this. If you have any questions, please reach out to your instructor.

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