EDTECH 523 – Communication Plan

Part 1 – Routine Administrative Tasks

Daily Tasks

• Check and respond to email and messages from students.
• Check the discussion forums for new posts, reply as needed.
• Check for any completed assignments that have been turned in.

Weekly Tasks

• Review the upcoming tasks for the week.
• Check to make sure all hardware and software is working properly.
• Grade any assignments that have been turned in.
• Follow up with any students who are falling behind or who have not completed module requirements or turned in assignments.
• Contact any parents that need to be contacted – remember, contacting parents does not always have to be bearing bad news. Try calling a parent with good news once a week!

Critical Thinking Prompts

• Establish minimum posting requirements, and be sure to allow for adequate time between due dates to allow for reflection and meaningful responses.
• Assign groups for some assignments to promote collaboration between peers.
• Respond to selected posts to encourage critical thinking and engagement.
• Make an effort to respond to each student post (even if it is privately) to assure that all work is being read and evaluated.
• Model appropriate behavior and communication – remember, students will look to you as an example.

Part 2 – Discussion Forum Strategies

Suggested Activity: Find a creative way that you feel represents you the best to introduce yourself to other students. Create a comic, write a song, make a video, compose a story, whatever you would like – creativity is paramount. Some key things to focus on would be:

• Hobbies
• Family
• How you like to be addressed
• Personal anecdotes
• Personal musings
• Unique facts/qualities/talents that you possess

Suggested Activity: Send students on a scavenger hunt activity to find something that relates to the material. It could be a current event, a YouTube video, poem, story or photograph or specific website. Have students write a post about how the item relates to the material from the module, and then respond to others’ posts.

Suggested Activity: Present students with an ethical dilemma, and have them respond how they would deal with it. Do not allow students to view others’ responses until they post their response.

Suggested Activity: Allow students to harness their creativity, and have them create a “Wanted” poster similar to those found in old westerns, but have it describe something they wanted to learn more about. Whether it be a character or plotline from a book, a construct they may not have fully understood during instruction, or whatever else they feel charged by. Allow students time to respond to one-another’s “Wanted” posters to facilitate peer-based instruction.

Suggested Activity: As a writing activity, have students write about a person (real or fictional, depending on the lesson) whom they would like to meet. Have them elaborate on why they would like to meet them, what they would like to ask them, and to describe what they imagine their first encounter to be like in great detail. This will allow learners to see the individuals as whole people, complete with back-stories, personalities, etc.

Part 3 – Discussion Forum Assessment

Online Discussion Forum Checklist

• Initial post is made by the requested deadline.
• Post meets all the requirements for the assignment.
• The response is on-topic and furthers the conversation.
• Proper netiquette is observed, and posts are respectful.
• Any clarifying questions presented by peers are answered in a timely manner in a respectful way.
• Activity within the forums is consistent throughout the module and shows active engagement in the material.
• Student is actively engaged in and participates in group discussions and projects.
• In the event of personal emergencies, technical difficulties, or confusion regarding the set expectations, learners need to communicate with the instructor so that a resolution can be achieved.

Part 4 – Management Issues and Strategies

Lack of Participation

• This may indicate that students may either be lacking motivation, feel overwhelmed or are intimidated by the material or the instructor. Take charge of the situation early, and use active teaching strategies to engage students by rephrasing the question, or posting a response of your own. Contact students who are not actively participating via a private message and inquire about their lack of participation. There is usually a reason behind the behavior.

Students are waiting until the last minute to post and respond

• Quite commonly will you find students waiting until the last moment possible to post and respond to their discussion forums. If you find that your students are not motivated to complete their discussions on time on their own accord, set two due dates: the first for an “initial” post or response, and a second for collaboration or responses to peer materials. Make sure that the two dates are a few days apart.

A student dominating the conversation

• Frequently you will find a “tribe leader” arise if there is not an innate sense of leadership within the discussion forums. Try to take a more active leadership role in the forums, and if the student continues to dominate, contact them privately and encourage them to engage in deeper reflection before responding to allow others to voice their opinions as well.

Students have digressed from the original topic

• As an instructor, it is your responsibility to moderate the forums and help keep discussions on track. If a student presents an idea that is not correct, encourage them to further their reflection and perhaps make some additional conclusions. Offer some feedback to guide them in the right direction. Additionally, if the conversation seems to have derailed drastically, make sure to post a question, or a reflection which will bring the discussion back on track.

Students are not branching out ideas – limiting their understanding to what has been shared by others (groupthink)

• This can point to your original prompt not engaging deep enough reflection. Encourage students to reflect further by presenting open-ended questions that will encourage students to further reflect and answer with more in-depth discussions.

Students are misunderstanding key concepts

• As a moderator, it is your responsibility to make sure that the reflections and responses are correct and present correct information. If you see a trend in the discussions pointing to a misunderstanding, try to understand where the misunderstanding occurred and then present clarifying information in the forums. If it was an item in the module itself that caused the confusion, gather feedback from the participants on how it could be clarified or presented differently to prevent confusion in the future.

The course has a large enrolment, and voices are getting lost

• This is a common occurrence in large classes – the simplest solution is to create private groups for students to participate in. By creating smaller cohorts, students will be able to participate in an environment that replicates a small class, which will encourage participation, accountability and a thorough understanding of the material as students are less likely to disengage from the course.

Communication is aggressive or inappropriate

• This concern may certainly arise when students are passionate about a topic or conversation and may begin to take certain comments or opinions personally. Frequently this can be avoided by having the students complete a “refresher” course on Netiquette at the beginning of the term, but sometimes students need a friendly reminder to engage appropriately with one-another. If a particular student proves to be a repeated aggressor, communicate with them privately to express your concerns and address the behavior. If the issue persists, further action may need to be taken with administrators.

Original Idea

Suggested Activity: Allow students to self-assess their work at the end of each Module. Have each of them write up their successes, their challenges and what they wish they could have done differently. This creates an open line of communication between the student and the instructor, as well as allows the students to build a private space where they could be honest and share legitimate concerns regarding the course with the instructor. As the instructor, it is your responsibility to respond to each student individually and address his or her successes, failures and concerns. This will allow instructors to have their finger on the pulse of each student’s learning progress, and at the end of the course will give each student a narrative of their journey through the course.

EDTECH 522: A Reflection on a Significant Learning Experience

While I have had a lot of experience with the many roles of the online education process (the learner, the teacher and the developer), the most significant learning experience for me in EDTECH 522 was the Rich Media Tutorial.  With my past professional experiences, I have an arsenal of information that I can use in experiences that foster learning.  While I have had significant experience with more traditional online teaching practices such as discussion forums and project creation, and I have also had significant experience with face-to-face teaching I have never had the opportunity to blur the lines and verbally teach using an online medium.

The Rich Media Tutorial provided me with that opportunity.  In EDTECH 522 we were assigned to create a tutorial using some form of video and media integration which will allow us to teach/present information via video recording.  For my assignment I had chosen to create and deliver a tutorial on using iPad Accessibility features in the classroom, a tool which I hold a significant amount of expertise in.  The tool I opted to use for the tutorial was Camtasia.  The reason I had chosen to work with Camtasia is that it was a tool which I had never used before, and overall had heard very positive reviews about.  Creating my content was nothing outside of my traditional comfort zone, but when it came to mastering Camtasia I was in untrodden ground.

My past experiences and certifications all focus around Apple hardware, software and related technologies and within those platform most things work very similarly.  Camtasia was quite foreign to me and certainly took a few hours before I truly had a hang of the tool.  Once I felt that I had appropriately mastered the software, I proceeded to record and edit my tutorial – quite successfully I may add.  Overall, I found the experience to be transformational as it forced me to step outside of my technology comfort zone and learn something new, which I greatly appreciated.  I had ended up finding a number of parallels (specifically in regards to the editing process) to Apple’s iMovie software, and therefore gave me the illusion of a security blanket of sorts in this learning process.

I feel that by gaining mastery of Camtasia I had an opportunity to gain experience in something I would not normally have, and it actually proved to be highly beneficial to me as I had a job interview for a new opportunity at the Centre for Online and Distance Education at Simon Fraser University where I could speak on my experiences with this software and how it could be used to shape and enhance the current online learning environment at Simon Fraser  University.  I feel that ultimately being able to comfortably discuss a tool as powerful as Camtasia with as much comfort and confidence as I did is what helped secure the position for me.

While it is not something that we are able to do right now, at SFU CODE we are having planning conversations regarding how we can enhance the current online learning paradigm by integrating new tools like this into the online environment to start blurring the lines into the realm of a more modified blended learning environment.  Being a key contributor to this conversation, I feel that the skills I gained from this module alone is going to help fuel my success in at Simon Fraser University, as well as give me the confidence now and in the future to step outside of my comfort zone and try out new tools to benefit both my students and myself.

Tech Trends Lesson Plan: Digital SLR Photography Basics

Every year the internationally recognized NMC Horizion Report as well as the regional NMC Technology Outlooks are part of the Horizon Project to review new and upcoming technology trends that they believe are going to have a significant impact on education around the globe in the next five years.  Using this report, I selected a technology that I feel can be integrated immediately into classrooms to help enhance the educative process.

The technology that I chose to integrate into my lesson were smart phones/tablet computing devices, and specifically for this lesson, an application from the AppStore/Android Marketplace.  My lesson is designed to teach novice Digital SLR camera owners the basics of taking pictures in manual mode, and adjusting the aperture and shutter speed themselves.  Specifically, I chose to integrate the Light Meter application from the AppStore to showcase how technology can assist and enhance a process that until recently, has not seen much of a revolution for a few centuries – photography.

In my lesson, students will learn the basics of adjusting their camera controls manually, the interrelation of aperture and shutter speed, as well as how to interpret the information that is provided by the light meter application, and how to implement that information to assist them in taking great pictures.  I feel that rather than using a traditional light meter and calculating the aperture and shutter speed manually, this process will give these amateur photographers the power they need to shoot in manual mode, but still the ease of use of shooting in automatic mode where the camera does all the work for you.

This project aligns with the following AECT standards:

• 1.3 Instructional Strategies – The sequencing of the events in this lesson will guide students to use their previous experiences to build and expand their knowledge to master the skill of manual photography.
• 1.4 Learner Characteristics – Previous photography experience will act as a foundation when explaining the interrelated nature of aperture vs. shutter speed, and sample images that students will have seen before such as hummingbirds and streaked lights on a highway at night will act as examples from which students can build their knowledge and understanding.
• 2.3 Computer-Based Technologies – Using microprocessor-based technologies such as smart phones and tablet devices will assist in making the skills more transferrable and applicable to the student’s everyday lives.

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