Let me just begin my saying, holy workload Batman! I certainly underestimated how long it would take to create a course shell and single module for my blended math course. This is something that I can see many of us are experiencing! Understandably, the initial creation of an online or blended course would be quite tedious and time consuming, but once completed, would be able to be used again and again with future groups of students. Still, there is a lot to think about – a lot more than I thought.

A few weeks ago, I decided that Canvas would be the LMS I would use to host my fractions, decimals and percent course. Canvas was (is) entirely new to me, but after exploring it, I decided it looked promising enough to give it a go. I created an account, looked around a little bit, and left it at that. I veered over to Lumi to create my H5P content for my course. You can check this out here. Let me explain a little bit of my rationale for this creation:

1. First of all, and this might come as quite a shock to some of you, but teaching about terminating and repeating decimals is actually not very exciting! In my course I am trying to employ an inquiry foundation in earnest and try to foster curiosity and enjoyment in the learning process. The video I found and added interaction to is one that I found was a good “bridge” between my module’s initial inquiry task and the more traditional approach to converting fractions to terminating and repeating decimals (long division).
2. The video I chose (from Infinity Learn NEET on YouTube) shows an alternative way of identifying if a given fraction is going to convert into a terminating or repeating decimal without doing long division. I thought this was pretty neat, and I even wondered if this “method” might be something that students would discover during the initial inquiry task (uh, perfect!). Except… the terminology in this video was different than the terminology I was using. What I mean is, for the decimal number that repeats, I was using the term “repeating”; in the video, this number is referred to as “non-terminating recurring”. I was annoyed, quite frankly, because this seems to happen in so many situations where, as a teacher, I am scouring the internet for a video that will work to reinforce or introduce concepts to students and can’t find one that is juuuust right. But then, I thought about how it might be more valuable for students to hear a different term and learn that these different terms can mean the same thing. I decided that, instead of creating my own video teaching the same thing, I would just add interactive content to help assist students in learning that these terms are referring to the same thing. This might not seem like that big of a deal, but remembering myself as a younger math learner, there were many times where I was confused about something because it did not follow the prescribed step-by-step method that was shown or explained to me. It is far too easy when teaching (and learning) math to fall into the habit of imitating the instruction and applying that to drill and practice questions without actually developing a deeper understanding, and this is something I want to move away from in my course.
3. After finishing up with that video, and as I continued developing the shell of my course, I realized that I was going to need another video to review long division of numbers resulting in a decimal. I included this video by Khan Academy as an option for student who need it. As I’m sure many of you who also teach math can attest to, teaching new topics often results in having to go back and review or reteach prerequisite concepts. The “learner personas” for my course (you can see my ADDIE template here) include two students who are working at a grade 4 level in math and could certainly benefit from this additional support, but all students have the opportunity to access it.

I found that with Lumi and H5P, I could only do so much; my lesson also includes an inquiry task (activity), discussions and an assignment directly in the LMS for formative assessment (see below for links to these). For students who are completing the course entirely online, though, H5P content comes as close as it can get to being there in-person for instruction and interaction.

Inquiry Task

Khan Academy assignment

Canvas Assignment (“quiz”) – formative assessment

Journal About Math (JAM) – formative assessment

My first module and the shell of my course is complete, and you can view it all starting here. There are a few other odds and ends I’ve included if you care to take a look, such as a discussion etiquette rubric and sample video/written journal entry which I’m sure I’ll elaborate on in the coming weeks.

Planning and creating this course has been a labour of love. I’m thoroughly enjoying it and wish I had a couple more hours in the day to dedicate to it (rather than trying to utilize every single minute during nap times and whatever other spare time small children allow…but such is life). I am looking forward to watching it all (hopefully) come together.

After pondering my initial first try at Lumi, I decided to go with a different activity! Like I mentioned in my previous post, Lumi is quite time consuming when it comes to making a longer length video. I decided to use it to make my first module of my course, which would be a pre-reading task. This includes:

Watching the movie trailer to make predictions and check viewing comprehension using Lumi (link here)

Completing an anticipation guide posted on Google Classroom (student activity)

Pre-reading research to get students familiar with the plot (formative assessment)

Link to Google Classroom

Hello!

I am designing a blended learning course for adult learners to refresh and strengthen their knowledge of CT anatomy (also called cross-sectional anatomy). This means finding anatomical structures on images that were acquired with a CT scanner. Looking at images this way is quite different than what we think of as regular X-rays. I am using the LMS Canvas which has impressed me with its clean, simple, intuitive design and has many of the features of robust LMS. I organized the course content into modules, and embedded H5P content created in Lumi.  The first couple of modules of this course focus on refreshing the learner’s knowledge of CT images and 2D radiographs. Being comfortable with orientating oneself to the various views available and understanding anatomical directional terms that are used to describe locations provides a strong foundation for learning cross-sectional anatomy.

After the foundation is set, subsequent modules focus on identifying anatomical structures within the different body cavities. Each module will cover a different body cavity: thorax, abdomen, and pelvis. By the end of the course, the learners should have a solid understanding of cross-sectional anatomy. The learners will be able to explain the significance of this knowledge as it is applied to Image Guided Radiation Therapy, which I discussed in my course profile post.

All the didactic learning and assessment will be delivered online with weekly synchronous “class meetings”. This is a flipped classroom model, where the weekly class meetings will provide some context for the didactic material. I divided the course into weekly sections, and then put each week of work into its module. Completing one module each week should help the students group the learnings and help with retention. When designing the modules, I aimed to have each of them a copy of themselves to keep the structure simple and predictable. Each module includes a course presentation which includes the didactic information in the form of an interactive video, some activities to reinforce the learning (instant feedback), and an assignment worth a small number of marks. I included the assignment at the end of the course presentation so that the learners see it right away and they do not need to click around inside the LMS to access it. I will encourage collaboration on these written assignments, as they usually do anyway. Each module will contain the course presentation, an assignment, a short quiz (to show independent learning), and a weekly discussion. An exception is Module 1 which contains two course presentations. Module 1 Session A and Module 1 Session B can be viewed by clicking these links. After our readings last week, I have realized the importance of building community inside the virtual classroom. I have also witnessed this happen with this class, as we communicate with each other via Discord. Elements to the class that I will add to foster community are collaboration on assignments and discussion boards, providing a forum for a Q&A space as Katia did for us, and encouraging discussion in our weekly synchronous class meetings. We will also have weekly lab sessions when we meet together within the clinical environment to practice the image-matching software.

Working within Lumi was a fun yet time-consuming process. This is my first exposure to H5P, so a little research beforehand was also required. I loved the creativity involved, yet learning this new platform and its limitations took more time than I would have expected. I am still unsure if I completely understand, and I put a lot of things down to “user error”.  I look forward to feedback from the class about the 2 Lumi Course Presentations created for my course prototype.

Lumi

CLICK HERE to access my module on Lumi.

Arkin and I decided to both create introductory courses for our prototype. Lumi was a helpful tool for this, because it allows you to create interactive lessons and videos to quickly introduce new concepts.

For my module, I focused on introducing Foley artists and the art of creating sound effects. For our prototype, students will eventually make radio plays and will be responsible for creating their own Foley sounds; therefore, it is important for students to have an understanding of the world of Foley. Using an interactive video is an effective way to introduce this new concept (which, for the majority, ‘Foley’ is a new term entirely!) while also assessing understanding. Meanwhile, Arkin created a complementary lesson and introduced the elements of soundscapes, something that students will also incorporate into their final project.

Using Lumi, I was able to use our own grading scale for formative assessment. As students watch the video and answer the questions, their results show their grade on that set of questions; immediate feedback for students is known to be beneficial.

I used a ‘kick-off question’ where students make inferences – a skill we work on a lot in middle years ELA! – and used a combination of multiple choice and fill in the blank to reiterate important information from the video. These questions will help students remember this information as it will be a big part of their future project (e.g. the term ‘Foley artist,’ using unlikely objects to create everyday sounds, creativity involved in Foley artistry, and the uniqueness of the profession). 

There are also some accessibility features such as closed captions, translations, and allowance for spelling mistakes in fill in the blank questions. Generally, extra supports such as these are beneficial for all students; however, as identified in our ADDIE model, we have a large percentage of EAL students; these features would be especially helpful for them.

Pros and Cons of Lumi

Because I only made the one module, this pros/cons list is not extensive; it’s only what I found while working through for the first time. I have used platforms to create H5P content before, and I found Lumi much more difficult to use in comparison. However, the other platforms didn’t have nearly as many options nor accessibility features as Lumi.

Arkin and I look forward to feedback on our modules and to hear what others liked/didn’t like when they were working in Lumi!

Here is the link to my Lumi creation

The Outsiders Chapter 1

I tried making my Lumi interactive by inputting multiple choice and true/false questions. This was a great tool (but time consuming). I think that it could be used to make sure students are paying attention when engaging in an audiobook and checking their understanding throughout.

My assessment included two types of formative assessment. The first one being a check in at the beginning of the video to make sure students have completed the pre-reading activity, which was an anticipation guide. This will be posted on the Google Classroom I create. The other one being a character chart directly after the descriptions of the main characters in chapter 1. This was a great addition because it would eliminate the students ability to say “I don’t know where to find that answer!!!”

All in all, using Lumi was quite time consuming, but I think after getting the hang of it, it wouldn’t be as bad. It is a create tool to use for videos like an audiobook to check student’s understanding and make sure they are engaged while listening. Especially when the videos are a longer like the one I used.

My online course prototype will supplement my in-person grade three classroom. Coming from an in-person environment, I already have a strong community of learners; learners who know each other well, who are (mostly) comfortable with each other in the classroom setting and who interact, in person, all day, everyday. Therefore, a strong classroom climate of interaction and collaboration is already well established, especially at this point of the school year (month six). My concern is  that with my online course prototype, I may lose this community if I don’t put the time and attention into (temporarily) converting my in-person community of learners to an engaged group of online learners. The last thing I want is for my students to move to isolated work on a computer, without any interaction or collaboration with their peers. 

My goal when introducing these online modules is to maintain a similar environment where students feel supported and celebrated for their efforts, both by myself and their peers. I hope to foster lots of student-teacher and peer-peer interaction throughout my two blended learning modules, using similar strategies online as I do in class. Students are used to frequently sharing their ideas, discussing class content in pairs, small groups and whole groups, and receiving lots of feedback while they are working – I will strive to maintain these key interactive pieces of my classroom climate as students work through my online learning prototype. 

The blog post, Building Community in an Online Course, offers four key suggestions for online course community: allow students to get to know me and me them, allow students to get to know each other, create a safe and incusing environment and be present/responsive in the course; these four areas are priorities in my face-to-face practice and this blog offers valuable options for continuing to prioritize them in an online setting. I explore some of these in my examples below.

The following quote from the blog, 6 Strategies for Building Community in Online Courses, is at the forefront of my online community planning: “Community is more than participation; it requires moving from participation to engagement, involvement, and action.” I will be trying to push my young learners beyond simply participating when we complete our online modules. Authentic engagement is something I am always attempting to foster in-class as well!

Luckily, the primary program I am utilizing (Seesaw) has diverse options for communication within it. Interactions will primarily be taking place on this platform. Although not a traditional LMS, Seesaw allows for various forms of communication, including liking work, commenting on work and private or group messaging. As well, it can host photos, voice recordings and videos of myself (providing instruction or feedback) and students (sharing ideas and work).

• Likes & Commenting: Similar to a social media platform, Seesaw allows for classmates to like and comment on others’ work. Students will like and comment on their peers’ work on the Seesaw portfolio page, throughout the modules. When students post work, their peers will be able to see it and either ‘like’ it or give their feedback via a written or oral comment. I will provide explicit expectations for liking and commenting so the students understand the importance of this interactive piece. Commenting will serve as an ongoing peer review exercise, further supporting student-student interaction: “design activities that require student interaction: group work, peer review, etc.“

*To begin, I will require posts and comments to be approved by me before they are live on the Seesaw platform. This way, I can help ensure students are submitting their best work for peers to see and to promote respectful and useful commenting on others’ work. Pre-learning and practice on commenting expectations will be required as we have not accessed this tool on Seesaw yet. Comments will be visible to peers, myself and connected families which should help enforce respectful commenting. In addition, I will regularly comment on students’ work with celebratory messages and thoughtful feedback to model this; this will help mimic the in-person support students are used to receiving in class.

To help facilitate valuable comments, I will offer grade-level appropriate prompts for students to start with (such as: I like how you…/You did a good job on…/This reminds me of…/Did you think about…). As well, explicit instructions on netiquette will be necessary; this term was first introduced to me last week during the class readings: “remind students of the basic principles of ‘netiquette’ when communicating online.”

Seesaw offers many resources to help support student’s acquire and practice digital citizenship skills that will be necessary as we use these communication tools: https://app.seesaw.me/activities?subject=DigitalCitizenship

• Messaging: As well as public commenting, students are able to private message me. During these online modules, I will encourage students to message me with questions, as they typically would ask a question in our classroom. I will be actively checking and responding to messages so students feel supported during their online work. As well, I will be reaching out to students to check in with their learning and progress of the modules.

*This messaging feature allows me to fully “Communicate regularly/Be Present in the Course” with constant communication both on a whole group level (instructions, reminders, advice, check-ins) and one -on-one (more personal check in, aid).

• Photos, videos and recordings: The use of these three mediums, will allow for further interaction throughout these modules. Through our main Seesaw platform, students will be sharing work and ideas using photos (camera tool), recordings (microphone tool) and videos (recording tool). By collecting evidence of learning in these mediums, students will be more engaged in their own learning and the learning of their peers. Seeing and hearing themselves and their peers, instead of just reading typed words, will foster a stronger level of interaction and interest. I will also be using photos, videos and recordings to interact with the class, throughout the modules.

*Students are already familiar with these tools and are comfortable with submitting work via photo, recording and video response.

• Instructional Strategies: With inspiration from Michael Wesch, I will be using suggested techniques to better engage learners during online instruction. For my lessons, I plan to use POV and screen recording of methods of engagement without showing my face on the video. To demonstrate what we are learning/doing, I will use the POV technique: showing the viewer my point of view as I am completing a task. As well, instead of solely explaining steps verbally, I will screen record to demonstrate steps. Does anyone have a favorite screen recording and editing program that they can recommend? As well, I will use Wesch’s storytelling advice. Storytelling compliments our ELA Fairy tale unit theme well, so I will use the power of storytelling to further interest students when delivering course content via online videos. My young learners especially will benefit from these engagement strategies. 

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Thanks for reading! As always, I would love any feedback and/or other ideas to foster online interaction. Specifically, if you are Seesaw-savvy and have any tips and tricks for using it’s communication features, that would be appreciated! Looking forward to reading what you are doing to build community in your online courses!

-Teagan

For our course prototype, Arkin and I are focusing on Drama 7, a subject that can be difficult to teach in a new and engaging way while also creating an environment where students can feel confident in leaving their comfort zone and expressing themselves. We decided that the blended model is a great approach, because it balances small group and face-to-face instruction with engaging technology. Students will have the opportunity to produce, mix, create, and edit radio plays, while also creating sound effects and soundscapes, and starring as the voice actors.

When building community in online and blended learning environments, establishing a plan for communication, feedback, and assessment are very important. Developing social presence where students can meaningfully interact in a trusting environment is also key in designing online community. We are using two programs, Seesaw and Microsoft Teams, to achieve this.

Seesaw will be used for formative assessment. We see many benefits of Seesaw, including:

1. Instructors are able to provide immediate feedback via comments, teacher edits, ‘reaction’ stickers, or using the stylus tool (much like writing comments on paper assignments!). Students receive this feedback immediately, and can make the edits without deleting original work.
2. There is an option to add ‘pages’ to assignments – this is a great feature, as it is another way to show progress and learning. It is similar to submitting multiple written drafts, where each draft shows improvement!
3. Seesaw allows for a meaningful home/school connection. Parents and caregivers are able to interact, comment, and ‘like’ assignments, provide support, and stay up to date with their child’s assignment and progress.
4. Instructors are able to send large group messages, which is especially helpful for due date reminders, communicating trends, or ensuring students are using the platform appropriately (i.e. “remember to save as draft so you don’t lose progress”)
5. It is accessible at school or at home, and can be accessed either via browser or through an app.

Check out this short video to learn more about Seesaw

Microsoft Teams will be used for our summative assessment, and will be used as a communication tool. Like Seesaw, there are numerous benefits of Microsoft Teams in the blended learning model:

1. Teachers can create chats for each group, which are monitored by the teacher. Students can communicate, plan, and share their files in these groups. They can also interact when absent or if they need to work in different areas of the school!
2. Students can also private message the instructor, which is extremely helpful if students are absent or working around the school to record or edit. It is another way teachers can provide individual feedback or instruction throughout the day.
3. We can create a class, where resources, links, and calendars are shared. In this class, we can create assignments and include rubrics and due dates. Teachers can grade and submit feedback right in Teams.

Watch this video to learn more about Microsoft Teams 

Are you familiar with these platforms? What do you see as the benefits or shortfalls? Let me know!

**Long Post Alert**

I enjoyed the readings for this week’s class as they provided clarity into what I was trying to achieve in my online classroom. Over the years, I have learned and applied different engagement strategies, however, my attempts to engage the students within an interactive online environment were not always as successful as I would like.
Completing the readings made me realize that what was missing was community. Yes! This is what I was trying to achieve…. the sense of community. Without being intentional about building a class community was a missed opportunity to properly engage the learners. Making this commitment as an educator means being mindful to who is in your class, and creating interactions that foster relationship building.
How could I have missed that!? I think the answer to that question is, that other than one year during COVID, I have always had a blended classroom environment. (For those that are surprised it was only one year, I will explain. The School of Radiation Therapy is located within a healthcare facility, so the school follows the regulations of that facility. In-class learning was allowed to take place within the provincial masking and distancing guidelines. Since our class sizes are typically quite small, it was not difficult to comply with these rules).
Since the students are in class at times, I believe I relied on these interactions as the only source of community building, leaving the online environment lacking its community structure. Perhaps, this is the missing piece that will help increase online engagement.

The course I am designing is a hybrid/blended course in that it includes in-person lab sessions. All didactic learning will take place online.
Our blog question of the week is What forms of student/student-instructor interactions do you plan to implement in your course prototype? As I plan these interactions, I will be intentional to include relationship building opportunities between the students, as well as between the students and the instructor. In addition, the learning objectives and corresponding activities are guided by Bloom’s Taxonomy learning theory as it aligns well with healthcare programs.

The interactions I have planned to include are listed below including justification for their inclusion and any guidelines or assessments attached.

Weekly synchronous class meetings – including polls and MC review questions, exit slips
Justification: students and instructors engage in real-time interaction, which offers several benefits:
Affective domain: Synchronous classes facilitate social interaction among students and between students and instructors. This interaction fosters a sense of community and belonging which can enhance the overall learning experience and reduce feelings of isolation. The instructor will aim to foster intrinsic motivation and assist in maintaining a positive attitude towards learning. The goal is to encourage students to engage in learning for the inherent satisfaction it brings, rather than relying solely on external rewards or pressure.
Guidelines: there are guidelines for the instructor as well as the participants.
1) The class instructor needs to be prepared to facilitate the meeting. The instructor will have 2 topics prepared:
a. Responses to the previous week’s exit slips
b. A topic of the week to discuss
2) The instructor must create a safe space, whatever that means for the particular class. Speaking from experience, each year brings a different set of students from the last. What one group needs, another may not. The goal is to make the learners feel valued, respected, and empowered to participate fully in the learning process. Creating a safe space:

Set clear expectations and ground rules for respectful behavior in the online classroom. Emphasize the importance of kindness, empathy, and active listening. Model respectful and inclusive behavior.

Encourage the learners to ask questions, share their thoughts and experiences, and express their opinions in a non-judgmental environment.

Acknowledge students’ contributions and efforts. Provide constructive feedback in a supportive and encouraging manner.

Include diverse perspectives and voices in the curriculum and learning materials.

Be flexible and responsive to students’ needs and concerns. Listen actively to their feedback and be willing to adapt your approach as necessary to better meet their needs.

3) The students must follow the guidelines set out by the instructor regarding respectful communication and behaviour.
4) The students are encouraged to utilize the exit slips to communicate any questions or concerns in a safe way

In-person clinical lab sessions
Justification: these sessions are important for all three learning domains:
Affective domain – Not only does patient care need to be comprehensive, and delivered by skilled staff, but it also must address the psychosocial needs of the patients. Empathy and compassion also contribute to patient outcomes. Online environments cannot transfer these lessons adequately.
Provides an additional environment for relationship building between the instructor and the learners.
This is the instructor’s opportunity to teach honesty, transparency, and integrity to the learners through role modeling.
Psychomotor domain – Adult learners do well with practical applications where the didactic knowledge can be applied and transferred to practice. labs must happen before any clinical placement so the learners can practice using the matching software (this cannot be done online as this software cannot be accessed outside of the institution).
Cognitive domain – learning the image matching software, developing troubleshooting skills

Assessments/guidelines
Following each biweekly lab session, each student will participate in a debrief session. Debriefs following simulations in healthcare are an evidence-based practice that:
• allows participants to reflect on their performance during the simulation. It provides an opportunity to identify what went well and what could be improved. This reflection promotes active learning and helps participants to consolidate their knowledge and skills.
• provide emotional support to participants who may have experienced stress or anxiety during the simulation. Discussing their experiences in a supportive environment can help participants process their emotions and build resilience for real-life clinical situations.
• Are used to discuss evidence-based practices and guidelines relevant to the simulated scenarios. By aligning their actions with best practices, participants can improve the quality and safety of patient care.
• provides an opportunity for facilitators to provide constructive feedback to participants. This feedback can help participants understand their strengths and weaknesses and track their progress over time. Additionally, debriefing sessions may be used for formal assessment purposes, such as evaluating participants’ clinical competencies.

Weekly student-led discussion boards – Discussion groups will be encouraged. Each week one student will be responsible for posting a new topic and moderating the discussion.
Justification:
Encourages active participation
Develops critical thinking
Can provide a sense of belonging and pride of ownership
Assessments/Guidelines:
A small portion of their final grade is attached to student participation, including this activity. If the learner is having a hard time thinking of a relevant topic.

Collaborative student activities/Assignments – Students will be assigned to work together on a couple assignments, including the final assignment
Justification:
Collaboration encourages students to discuss and analyze course materials, leading to a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Through collaboration, students can fill gaps in their knowledge, gain new perspectives, and reinforce their understanding of key concepts. It continues to build a sense of community. Students continue to build applicable vocabulary and learn to work with a teammate. This mimics the real world of radiation therapy where RTs are always working with partners/teams
Assessments/Guidelines:
Formative assessments for smaller assignments. However final activity is part of the summative assessment.

Phew! That’s it. In my head, it all makes sense and covers all the bases….

What forms of student/student-instructor interactions do you plan to implement in your course prototype (e.g. LMS forums, Flipgrid, blog comments/pingbacks, hashtags, video chats, etc.)? What justification can you provide for choosing these forms of student interaction? What guidelines or assessment practices will you adopt to ensure that interactions are meaningful, supportive, engaging, and relevant?

This week’s asynchronous class included practical videos and readings to help prepare us for the creation of our class prototypes. The videos by Michael Wesch provide useful tips and tricks to make high quality (and low budget) instructional videos. Above this, his raw honesty about his struggle to be in front of the camera is refreshing-not all of us shine in that kind of spotlight. I can relate to this a lot as I can get pretty nervous speaking in front of people, camera or not. I mentioned this to my husband and he said “…but you’re a teacher…” Yes, I’m aware. But talking to a group of adults is more difficult than talking to 13 year olds if you do it long enough. And even then, just because I’ve become used to it doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with it.

In terms of student/student-instructor interactions, my major focus is designing my course so that the students with exceptionalities do not feel like they are in some sort of separate “group” as much as possible. I’ve based my learner personas on the most recent class I taught, which was during the 2022-2023 school year. While I consider this to be the best class I taught in my career, it did not come without its challenges, which I don’t imagine is surprising to a group of educators. Even with the large majority of my students working at grade level quite independently, the handful of students who needed unique types of additional support was difficult to plan for and manage. I think that having an LMS like Canvas, designed specifically for education, is going to be a major asset and support in bridging some of the gaps I witnessed and experienced last year.

Canvas is a brand new LMS to me, but as I peruse the platform, I have come across a couple of potential tools for interaction, both of which I plan to use in my course. They include a discussion section where the facilitator can post a discussion topic and students can comment, like, etc. The benefit of this is that even with students who are working at a lower grade level, and perhaps not completing the same assignments/tasks as the rest of the group, I can tailor the questions so they relate to a broader context and everyone can participate in the discussion.

Another section in the Canvas courses is something called collaborations, which appears to be the equivalent of a Google Doc or working document of some kind. The nice thing about this feature is that it exists right in the LMS platform. While this isn’t a unique feature just to Canvas, it is handy that students don’t have to navigate far if they are working in groups, some of which are completing the coursework from outside the classroom.

Another interactive method I plan to use in my course is assigning video blogs in which students can respond and hopefully carry on a discussion about. My justification for doing this is that traditionally, and even still today in middle/upper elementary especially, math is typically a subject where students work independently. You don’t see a ton of group math projects or reflections on math questions. Until more recently with methods like Peter Liljedahl’s Building Thinking Classrooms, deploying these types of lessons would have probably gotten some strange looks from people passing by wondering why you aren’t doing math the “normal” way. While I’m still a bit of a traditionalist at heart in this area and have fond memories of how I learned (and loved) math, I think it’s tough to argue that collaborating and connecting with classmates even in this typically isolating subject area is not beneficial for learners. In this course, students will have the opportunity to JAM (Journal About Math), video blog, and communicate with one another about their thoughts, ideas, struggles, and suggestions, hopefully creating a sense of comradery as they learn that many students have similar thoughts and feelings to them, or perhaps something a classmate explains helps to foster an understanding or way of thinking they didn’t have before.

So how will I implement guidelines so these things actually happen? I think my best bet will be setting the stage right away with the insistence that this course will be different than what they’re probably used to in math. Following some tips from this blog from The Innovative Instructor, I will have students create and post introductory videos of themselves, even if they are taking the class fully in person. This will serve as their “practice post” in the walkthrough lesson of Canvas so they have a chance to use the discussion feature before the actual math course begins. During this introductory lesson, I’ll also emphasize the importance of collaboration, explaining to students that commenting and posting vlogs is not just “extra” to the actual math assignments – it’s a central part to this method of inquiry, collective, constructivist learning. We are learning with each other, from each other, for each other.

Working the criteria of engaging with the course into assignment rubrics will also be helpful. Canvas has a a built-in rubric feature, and co-creating them with students will help collectively decide on expectations for interactions.

There is a lot to think about when designing a blended course, a lot of moving parts. As I embark on the module design process in this new (to me) LMS, I imagine I’ll think of/stumble upon other ideas for student interaction. I wish I was teaching right now to be able to implement it in my classroom and be able to evaluate it, but I suppose that will just have to wait.

The interactions I have included in my course prototype are through Zoom. I chose this as an option because it will allow students to discuss the learnings with their peers. Having something that needs to be turned in to go with this discussion. The assignment portion of this activity will put some ownership on the students and hopefully motivate them to complete the task of engaging in conversation. I have used FlipGrid previously for this type of activity and students did not take it seriously and the video being recorded and posted caused some anxiety in students. This relates to the article 6 Strategies for Building Community in Online Courses from this week’s readings. Having a specific time for communication, establishing a social presence, meeting in real time, opportunities for information sharing, collaborative learning and hopefully creating sub communities for students to discuss/ask for help from peers outside of class time.

A characteristic of the classes I have found the most engaging during my Masters program are the one’s where it feels like a safe space. This is talked about it in both of the readings from this week. When you feel safe in a space, even when it is online, students are more engaged and willing to participate. It is hard to articulate the types of things that would done during class when it is an online prototype and being new to online teaching, I don’t know all of the tricks to make middle years students feel like a Zoom is their safe place. Some of the things that I would include that are highlighted in the articles are: creating introduction videos, creating smaller sub groups, using collaborative learning techniques and communicating regularly. Using gamified learning platforms like Kahoot!, Gimkit, Blooket, Quiziz etc. are also ways to engage middle years students and can be implemented in a spur of the moment way (or planned).