Final Course Prototype

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As I write my final blog post tonight, a quote from an old professor comes to my mind:

 

“Start small, start smart, but at least start.” – Nick Forsberg

 

Well Nick, I will tell you that I DID NOT start small on this project. I should start by saying I had good intentions on developing multiple online courses for all the disciplines I teach (Math 9, Math 10WA and PE). If you know me, you know that I like to jump in with both feet. I tend to have big ideas and (sometimes) an unrealistic timeline for myself. What I didn’t know was that building an online course takes time, patience, and many hours of planning. Even though I am handing in my course prototype tonight with 5 out of 7 modules “under construction,” I still have plans on finishing these before I return to work next year. 

 

An Overview of My Course Prototype

Every year when I teach Math 10WA, I have students fail the course because they are unable to keep up with classroom content, or have been removed from class as a result of violating the school’s attendance policy, or students have quit coming to class due to personal reasons. I believe students who have failed this course should be given another opportunity to try again; whether that is enrolling in another face-to-face Math 10WA class with a teacher, or completing the required modules online (asynchronously). This class serves as an opportunity for students to “try again” and work with a Student Support Teacher (SST) to attain a Math 10 credit while meeting their personal needs (for example: learning in a different environment).

 

After countless hours of planning my course, creating content, editing videos, and organizing my materials, I am very excited to share my final course prototype with everyone! This link includes my course profile detailing the purpose, target audience, learning objectives, lesson plans, and more.

 

An Overview of the Creating Process

If I had a superpower, I would be perfect every minute of the day and wouldn’t need to re-do anything. In reality, I am far from perfect; however, I expect perfection in the work I produce. Creating this online course generated some frustration for me as I would change my plans often, and re-record my instructional videos because I found a “small” mistake in them. I quickly realized that I was never going to be 100% satisfied with my work, and I needed to find balance with my time.

 

During our Zoom meeting with Katia on March 13th, we discussed accessibility and equity online. I reflected on my prototype and wondered if I needed to make some changes to my course. I ended up adapting many of my google documents and hyperlinks to ensure my content was accessible for all my learners. I also appreciated the week when we peer-reviewed our colleagues’ prototypes. It was refreshing to get new perspectives on my LMS, course content, and assignments. The peers who reviewed my course provided excellent feedback for me to consider, which inspired me to make some positive changes to my prototype. 

 

Overall, I am proud of the work I have done to complete my Math 10WA Recovery Credit Course, and I am excited to try it next year with my students! I am sure I will modify assignments/activities in the future to continue improving my course.

 

Video Walkthrough

Here is a link to my course walkthrough so you can see how it is set up! 

I hope you enjoy 🙂

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Final Course Prototype!

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Course Overview

General Description:

My course is intended as a 4 week credit recovery exercise for grade 12 students taking Workplace and Apprenticeship Math 30 in the province of Saskatchewan.  This course deals with the buying and leasing of vehicles and corresponds to curricular outcome WA30.6. As I describe in my course profile, students attending my school live in a neighbourhood that is highly dependent on personal vehicles.  Therefore, this material is both relevant to their daily lives and required by curriculum.

Method of Delivery:

This course is mostly asynchronous with a some blended elements.  Students will complete the majority of material online, but will come into class once a week to demonstrate their calculation skills, give presentations, and check in with the instructor.

Content:

A full video overview of my course can be seen at the link below on YouTube.

 

As my course is not accessible to users outside my school division I have provided links to key items below.  This is not exhaustive however; please note that most assignments and quizzes are only viewable within the YouTube overview.

Course Profile

Gettting Started

Module one: understanding the difference between leasing & buying a vehicle

Module two: buying or leasing a vehicle (the process & cost)

The Creation Process

Below you will find links to blog posts that detail the development of this course.

Wow.

That is a lot of links.

However, if you read this far I feel that I owe you an explanation of my process that is not an endless bulleted list.

When I began EC&I 834 I did not know what to expect.  Like most instructors I had engaged in emergency remote teaching during the pandemic, and while I did learn a lot I feel it would be fair to say that my material was less than ideal.  In the same way escaping a house fire does not make you a professional fire fighter, planning during the pandemic did not make me an expert in online instructional design.

My plan was very simple.  Be the sponge.  Absorb as much knowledge as possible until I figuratively weighed 6-7 times my regular body weight (boy, this analogy cam off the rails a bit).  My first “ah-ha” moment came during our presentation on the ADDIE model – starting with a deliberate/meticulous planning process got me off to a strong start.  Unfortunately, I was a bit trigger happy and plowed too far ahead.  The online space requires that instructors pay special attention to engagement (which is challenging in an asynchronous environment).  Not a problem.  I would go back and revise the material I came up with and add more opportunities for interaction.

This process of planning and patching continued throughout the development of the course.  H5P interactive elements?  Better go back and put those in.  Is your material accessible?  Nope!  Better go back and add transcripts to your videos.  Did you use AI constructively to aid in the creation of your materials?  Are your assignments something that could easily be completed with AI?  How about some peer feedback?  You get the general idea.

I think this exposed some fundamental flaws of my design process.  I always want to race ahead and get things done now.  This doesn’t allow for a lot of flexibility, which is strange because when I plan for in-person instruction I account for the unexpected.  I naturally leave time for student questions, and have outright abandoned my plans when the needs of the class have dictated it.  If you read my blog articles you can taste a hint of frustration as I try to get out of my own way.

If I could go back in time with the knowledge I have now I think that I would have produced a better course, but the learning process (including the frustration) was far more important than the artefact that I ended up creating anyway.  I need to learn to relax a bit and work through the process naturally.

That’s growth, right?

man deep’s e-portfolio 2024-04-04 03:41:35

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Feedback & Equity

In my opinion, receiving constructive criticism presents chances to grow as a learner and elevate one’s output. My two classmates evaluated my work.

Below are some points made by First Reviewer

  • The selection of seesaw is appropriate because kindergarten students can easily use it.
  • Young students find using Seesaw interesting because teachers can upload a range of media uploads.
  • The use of Seesaw, LUMI and H5P shows that efforts have been made to engage students in interactive activities.
  • The course profile is designed effectively and easy to follow.

Points made by Second reviewer

  • Lumi activities #1 and #2 were easy to understand.
  • ADDIE model was easy to follow and planned in organized way.

Suggestions

  • Prepare two complete modules on two different sounds.
  • Try to make YouTube video interactive.

To improve my ADDIE model, I will undoubtedly work on it. Also, I will create two comprehensive modules for teaching letter-like sounds, such as A and B. However, I didn’t make my YouTube video interactive because my intended audience is kindergarten pupils, who are incapable of reading anything.

Reflection on Accessibility and Equity

Online studies have become necessary at the advent of technology. The shift to offering online programs has unveiled huge gaps within access with respect to technological equity. The challenges include problems in the reliability of the internet and poor availability of hardware or software. A poor learning environment is a socio-economic factor that exacerbate disparities in education. These problems may hinder the students from engaging fruitfully in learning online, thus affecting their academic performance. It also robs them of a richer learning experience.

Acknowledging diversity, organizations must make materials accessible in a manner that will benefit all potential users (BCcampus, 2024). BCcampus (2024) further posits that the institutions of higher learning are examples where tutors need to select media technologies that support diverse users. Kovac (2019) points out that there are a number of media technologies that can be used including audio, video, and slides. Designers are called upon to ensure that their choice of media caters to the physically handicapped. BCcampus (2024) recommends that instructors consider the underlying factors considering either intuitive or inductive approaches to choosing media technologies. BCcampus (2024) states that instructors need to consider the varying demographic diversity of students ensuring that their needs are optimally attended. They also need to ensure that the students can not only efficiently but also affordably afford the media. Eventually, different students differently access content. The instructors must ensure that the materials accessed inform the same needs.

Kovac recommends that educators work with their institution’s Office of Accessibility to develop the use of universally designed courses. This, therefore, entails institutional commitment not only in the provision of the necessary technological infrastructure but also in the development of an inclusive culture that supports diversity in learning. There is a need to find a way through which to counter the challenge. Instructors need the knowledge of the specific difficulties most students would be experiencing, especially a student living with disabilities or one who cannot access technological resources (Toy, 2024).

References

 

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Course Prototype Submission

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Here is the link to my Google Site where my course prototype is housed. For students, this link is available via Google Classroom.

At the start of the school year, I modeled how to navigate our math website with students. Here are the steps to follow if you would like to look at my completed course prototype.

  1. Google Sites link
  2. Shape and Space
  3. Chapter 1: Understanding Angles
  4. Lesson 1: In the Real World

Once students reach the lesson they are on, they then complete the 4 or 5 steps listed out for them to complete. When finished, they can move on to lesson 2 by clicking the link at the bottom of the page, or they can use the drop-down menu at the top right of the screen where it lists each lesson for Shape and Space.

Teaching my split classroom in a blended learning style has allowed me to facilitate my students’ learning more efficiently. My main goal for this course prototype was to make my lessons more interactive and engaging for my students. With the help of Lumi I feel confident that I am moving in the right direction. I look forward to collecting student feedback on their level of engagement with the new version of my lessons.

AI In Teaching and Learning

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When considering AI in teaching, it is a tool that can be utilized to help create different performance tasks for students to complete on specific subjects. For example:

-to create a rubric with expectations perfectly put in a table

-to create a lesson plan in a specific time frame and materials

-to create teacher examples for assignments

In middle years and high school, the use of AI is inevitably going to happen. I think the best way to create a safeguard against this is teaching students how to use it properly. This would be similar to the way you would teach students how to take information from a source and paraphrasing it to avoid plagiarism. My course would be an easy one for student’s to use AI to help them complete tasks since it is a well known novel. Using online tools to complete tasks for novels is not something that is new. When I was in high school, many students (myself included), would use Spark Notes to help with the completion of comprehension questions. It would be quite clear through conversations that you have with students to determine whether or not they are completing the readings and fully understanding the novel. This is why it is important that assessment is done through a process of triangulation and not just focused on product. The product part of triangulation would be the easiest to use AI to complete. The conversations you have with students and the observations you make would not be able to be completed using AI.

A-eyes Open

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Until now, my experience with AI has primarily involved experimenting with ChatGPT by asking questions alongside a traditional internet search. I was able to see how AI synthesizes information compared to manually sifting through search engine results. I knew it was being used to complete complex tasks, but I had not looked into this as I did not realize it could influence my classroom, beyond figuring out if students are using it to cheat.

My interactions with ChatGPT only consisted of asking for information; it never occurred to me to ask it to do a job for me.

Reading the blog posts from our class about how to incorporate AI into the classroom has inspired me to seriously consider bringing it into my course development. I am cognizant that any information I use from generative AI needs a critical eye to look for inconsistencies, accuracy, and biases. In addition, it is necessary to assess the usefulness of the information, as it is clear there is a skill to writing effective prompts.

I found our class members’ blog posts inciteful. For example, Christina demonstrates revising the prompts given to ChatGPT until it provides a lesson that meets her classroom criteria. Lauren discusses using AI for various administrative tasks such as creating the course outline and improving accessibility and Matthew suggested using it to create multiple-choice questions. I find creating well-written multiple-choice questions very time-consuming. I went to ChatGPT and asked for some multiple-choice questions for my course prototype and was happy with the results. What it provided were questions that serve as an excellent starting point, which is often the most time-consuming part of the development process.

Bringing AI into course development is only half of the equation. I see now that it is essential to address the role of AI with the students. Continuing to ignore, ban, or combat ChatGPT is not an ideal option. It is widely accessible to all and has rapidly become integrated into the mainstream.

To mitigate the potential misuse of ChatGPT by students looking for answers to the lessons, Christina adopts a strategy I have seen among other students in this course, such as Leanne and Matthew. Christina emphasizes the students’ role as learners and reinforces their responsibility in the learning process.

I believe this approach would be effective with the adult learners I teach. This is an approach that I now envision in my own classroom. I teach adults who are there to learn a particular profession. A profession that requires honesty and integrity. They should be reminded that they are there to learn, and they are accountable to themselves, to learn what is required to make them successful in the ‘real world’ which is the clinical environment. Appealing to their sense of integrity from the outset will ideally guide them to make the right choices if their integrity is ever challenged.

An additional approach is to re-think the assessment tools. As Dr. Couros suggested, an essay may no longer be the appropriate tool to demonstrate learning. Assessments that show critical thinking and synthesis of information need to be refined for each subject.

So how CAN the students use AI? In her blog, Lauren outlines some student opportunities such as asking the students to generate content from different AI sources and compare them. The students would be required to critically assess the outputs for accuracy and comprehensiveness. Matthew points out that in the process of using AI, are the students still not learning? Depending on the assignment or assessment, this may be true.

If our future includes using AI, students must have AI literacy. Educators can foster this by addressing the use of AI with the students at the forefront, providing guidelines that include the opportunities AI offers as well as the ways AI can compromise academic integrity.  Educators must design assessment tools that work in the current age of AI. As more is learned about AI, resources such as those provided by  Camuson College will become available to educators.

I am looking forward to reassessing my current course as well as my course prototype through this new lens. I believe this will only bring improvement.