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Things to do this week...
Updated Monday, May the 4th (be with you).
Get oriented to how the course works.
Sign up for a WordPress blog.
Email me your blog URL.
Customize your blog.
Post a self-introduction.
Read two relatively short chapters.
Form your cooperative groups.
Publish your first 'official' post.
Hello everyone, and thank you all for your work (some of which is ongoing this weekend!). You should have all received a grade for all of posts 1-5 about your learning challenge as well as your peer reviews. Overall, I'm really pleased with how you have engaged with the course and have shown me evidence that you have learned a thing or two!
I really enjoyed following your learning challenges and I wish that I had more opportunity to respond directly, but you should know that I have read every one of your posts, even if I wasn't able to comment on every post. I have loved the fact that so many of you were able to tap into your family and friends for help. I suspect that some of you gained weight with all the recipes flying around, while others lost weight with all the fitness tips and cycle commuting! Whatever it was, several of you have mentioned that you are a bit sad to see the end of the official learning challenge, and some have indicated that the habits you've developed will continue to be important for you. So, I thank you for sharing.
As the course ends, you are welcome to continue with your blogs. They are your work and yours to keep. If you intend to take another EDCI course (336, 337, 338, or 339), you may need it again. All you need to do to keep your posts separate is to create and use another category on your blog.
As I read your peer reviews, I was able to get a sneak peak at your learning resources, and I really like what I see. There is a variety of platforms that you have used, and a very wide diversity of topics that you have covered. I'm looking forward to digging into your final drafts over then next week (or so...).
Remember, as you tighten up your drafts this weekend, that you are not required to incorporate all of your peers' recommendations. There is some very good feedback available to you, but you know your resource better than everyone else, so the context may not necessarily fit the feedback. All I ask is that you provide a brief rationale for the feedback that you did not incorporate.
The stated due date is 10pm on Sunday, June 30, but please let me know if your group needs a little more time to tidy things up. I hope you'll give me your best work.
It's a long weekend, so if you can get things done Sunday night, you can take Monday off and grill up some pork tenderloins or steaks!
Also, I had set the due date of the cooperative group reflection to be Friday night instead of Sunday. Thanks to those who got it in on that timeline. I've adjusted it to Sunday. Sorry for the confusion.
If you have items that I haven't graded yet, please let me know. If you do the work, you should get the credit. CourseSpaces should be up-to-date with everything I have assessed, but i may have missed something, so please check!
I've done lots of teaching in other contexts, but this was my first course teaching in higher ed, and you folks made it enjoyable.
Thank you all very much!
Cheers, and Happy Canada Day!
Colin
Have a great weekend ☺️ pic.twitter.com/eslxNqFPm5
— Calvin and Hobbes (@Calvinn_Hobbes) June 29, 2019
Good morning Everyone!
This is the final week of EDCI335. I have enjoyed reading about your learning challenges and following your progress through those. I think the best part of the learning challenge (for me, at least) was the number of you who were able to connect with a partner, friend, or parent to help with the challenge. Being able to identify people in your life who have expertise that you don't have and to engage with them is a good reminder that learning, even in an online environment where learners are spread across both time and space, can be a social endeavour.
When designing learning experiences, as you very well may do, even if you are not formally a teacher, I hope you'll remember the importance of social interaction with other humans!
I've posted the Week 7 learning materials under 'Units'. Like last week, there is no new content this week as you have a couple of important assignment submissions to work on.
Final Draft of your Interactive Learning Resource
Cooperative Group Assessment
Also, if you haven't submitted previous assignments, please make sure you get them to me as soon as possible!
You may have noticed that you didn't get feedback from me on your draft learning resources. This is intentional. My rationale is that each of you now has more developed cognitive tools with which you are able to evaluate the quality of learning resources and experiences. Your feedback is both valuable and important, and I do not want my ideas to diminish your peers' ideas just because I am the instructor in the course. If you have questions about the feedback you received, please feel free to ask your peers for clarification, or feel free to ask me. I'm here to help, and part of that is like your mom or dad letting go of your bike seat without you realizing it so that you can experience success.
The official end date of the course is Friday, June 28, but feel free to take the weekend and submit by Sunday evening. If you can't make that happen, please just let me know!
Throughout this week, feel free to contact me with any questions that you may have. I'd be happy to meet with you and/or your group in BlueJeans or other web conference tool to talk over your final submission for the Interactive Learning Resource.
Hello Everyone!
I'll post thoughts and links here on Posts 2-3. I really encourage you to check out some of your colleagues' challenges. You are doing some really cool things!
I'll post grades in CourseSpaces by the end of the week and will continue to update this post as I read through your blogs!
One general note on your posts is to ensure that you should not summarizing the readings for me. I've already read them. I want to see the ideas from the readings incorporated into your posts.
Alex, I love your idea of teaching yourself coin tricks using a 60 year old book called Modern Coin Magic. In post 2 you wondered whether you were engaged in an indirect apprenticeship since you are interacting with Bobo's ideas, and I would argue that you are. Your Khan Academy for magic tricks might be r/magic on Reddit.
Great job on your videos!
Hoazhe, thanks for your posts! It looks like you've learned some important lessons about cooking. My daughter often skips steps of recipes too. I would love to see videos of you cooking a recipe! How would you take a deep approach to learning to cook?
Gao, you are making me miss curry udon! One of the advantages of video over live demonstrations is that you can review the demo multiple times, and even slow it down if you need to. I'm looking forward to your chicken recipe! Make sure you continue to connect what and how you are learning to the course readings! Would you be willing to share a video of your chicken experience?
Yolanda, thanks for your posts! It's interesting to read about increasing life-expectancy.
Pinrui, thanks for your posts! Getting back into 'shape' is a great target, although you need to be careful to not do too much too soon! That is a good way to get hurt. Physical training is certainly a good reminder that our bodies adapt to how they are used, and that includes our brains!
It's a good idea to use links when you reference other sites on the internet!
Karen, wow, you are making great progress and documenting your learning really clearly. I love the little pictures you drew in your video! Lookin forward to week 3!
Serena, great job on your video and the pictures showing your progress! Your descriptions of your process are nice and clear. Looking forward to watching your progress.
Haoming, thank you for your posts! I'd love to hear how your wonton-making went! Learning to play the piano is another great task for the challenge, and a great way to spend time with your friends. It looka like you have some good strategies for learning, like understanding the history of the piano, and getting lots of practice. Will you share a video of your progress?
mmmm...rib-eye and burgers, oh my! (sorry)
Your problem of leaving too much meat stuck to the grill might be solved by having a nice clean grate. My grill has a good quality stainless steel grate and it is great for staying non-stick. I've also started grilling a lower temperature and that helps meat not stick as well. Adding pork will also help! I often use chorizo sausage to add to lean or medium ground beef. Don't use extra-lean...dry and flavourless.
Great job on your posts! I'll be grilling some chicken tonight!
Hi Chloe, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us! Making things interesting and engaging is not only a good strategy for becoming more active, but it also works as a strategy for learning all sorts of things. Doggos make everything better! ...and your garden looks amazing!
I appreciate how you are using featured images on your blog! They make a big difference! Great job on the dyno! Thanks for the video.
Thanks for your posts Huiyu! Driving a car with a manual transmission is one of the frustrating rites of passage for new (and old) drivers. Good job with sharing your journey so far. I appreciate my car because it has a hill-start assist feature that automatically holds the car from rolling back on a hill.
Xue, thanks for your posts! I appreciate that you say that your learning plan will change based on the week's readings! It looks like your careful planning led to some yummy eggs and chicken wings!
Hey Cooper, stay safe in your travels! I like how you connected the Veritasium video with inflexible culinary tastes! That's a connection I hadn't thought of before.
Thanks for sharing Liam! It's good to hear that you are taking care of yourself. Please do reach out if you need assistance! I like your plan for building a healthier lifestyle.
Jessica, if you made the cookies at the bottom of post #2, those look fantastic! Are the yellow ones icing? You said something interesting in your post:
For the third time, instead of watching instructional video on Youtube, I connected with my friend video and had her teach me how to make cookies face to face.
This is interesting to me because many people who currently teach in higher ed wouldn't think that a video connection would be considered face-to-face, but you are accustomed to it, so it seems natural.
And thank you for posting your 'failed' chiffon cakes. Although it's not a failure if you can still eat it!
Great posts, Thom! It's cool that Destin's video on the backwards bike resonated so well with your challenge. There are several great iOS and Android apps available that will track a whole load of data for you, if you're interested in such things. I use Strava.
Boyin, thank you for your posts. It would be great if you could share pictures or video of what you are trying to cook. Can you share more about what you are doing to learn to cook?
Jack, your steak looks like a prefect medium-rare! nice job. Your burger looks great too. Thanks for your clear description of your process and some of the challenges you have faced.
Chelsea, it is really great to see your progress through your painting, but also thinking about teaching and learning as you do so. The pictures of not only your actual paintings, but of a little context of where you are working and what your setup is really add to the overall quality of your posts. Thank you for sharing!
Andrew, thanks for your posts! There is nothing like an impending move to get your creative mojo going! You are right about language learning; you need to practice, practice, practice. And it may not make much sense until you have actually moved. Keep at it! To me, it sounds like, by post #4, you had developed a base of 'knowledge' using web resources, but interacting with people is leading to greater 'understanding'. Both play a role.
Renyu, I find that I am really invested in helping you find a way to make a chiffon cake! You I wonder if your oven is displaying temperatures in fahrenheit rather than celsius, which would mean the temperatures you are using are less than half what they should be. Also, my Mom always told me not to open the oven and peek when cooking a cake, otherwise it will come out flat...thanks for sharing!
Andrew, it's great to learn of your progress, and it sounds like you are getting some quality time with your mom as well...win/win! Great thinking to install the Arabic keyboard on your phone and use that to compose messages to your parents as well. It's cool to see people innovating like this to solve small challenges!
Erik, thanks for your posts. You have some good thoughts on the intersection of ed tech and learning motor skills, like shooting a basketball. Web technologies can certainly help, but it take lots of physical practice for you to actually encode the proper movements. Do you think that greater computational power and 'better' algorithms will solve the problems with Knewton, or is there more to consider?
Hi Yana, you noted in post 2 that ch 3-4 don't mention incentives, and that is an interesting observation. I think it depends on the nature of the incentive, as some people see incentives as demotivating. I appreciate how you mention the importance of immediate feedback that you get in face-to-face environments.
Thanks for sharing your progress DipsyLovesAvocado. Flight of the Bumblebee is certainly an ambitious goal. It would be impossible for me! I haven't had a piano lesson in almost 40 years. I appreciate how, especially in post #3, you integrated deep and surface approaches to learning in a natural way. It is a good idea to ensure that you provide some sort of recognition of where those ideas come from, ususally with a link on a website.
Julia, your progress is fantastic, and you get some quality time with Carl! You have done a great job of incorporating images into your posts and it makes it really clear how important flexibility is in yoga. While it can be intimidating sometimes to talk about what things are going wrong, it's also really helpful to do so! Thanks for sharing!
Learning Experience - Sukh's blog - EDCI 335
Sukh, nice to see you making progress on your muscle-ups! Your plans seem solid (especially not skipping leg day!) and it's good that you are getting a good amount of rest.
Alex, thanks for your play-by-play of your adventures in bread-making. I appreciate you connecting Reddit with Lave and Wenger's idea of Community of Practice. In fact, one of the most influential open online courses, ds106, was inspired by an online knitting community called Ravelry. I'm looking forward to your next attempt, and wish I could act as some quality control for you! Also, nice shout-out to Chloe for her contribution!.
Rythm, good on you for practicing some knife skills before getting going with this. Knife skills and a good sharp knife make cooking so much more enjoyable! I absolutely agree with your decision to not let the bread get too soggy for french toast. My mom used to do that and we would have bread soaked in uncooked egg for breakfast. Bleh.
Tyler, thanks for your detailed posts! I appreciate your use of formatting to make them easier to follow! Are you doing that with Markdown? HTML? a plugin? I'd love to hear. Being able to maintain a bike is a great way to save a ton of money!
Alice, thanks for your posts! For some reason, your images aren't showing when I look at your site. Can you see them? The highs and lows of your experience make for compelling reading. I was really rooting your you and your fettuccine! It is possible that the chicken broth that you added to the sauce made it too salty, rather than the butter.
Karen, thanks for sharing your journey of learning Korean. An important thing to remember about surface learning in the SOLO taxonomy is that sometimes it is appropriate to memorize isolated facts. Language learning is a good example where you are trying to memorize the Korean Hangul. Although memorization is a low-level cognitive skill, it is not a surface approach in this case because a low-level cognitive skill is what is required for the task.
University of Victoria - Sign in Service
Katja, thanks for sharing your progress and your process so far in this challenge. Even to my untrained eye, there is a noticeable difference in your drills; even on a single page (like the loops!).
University of Victoria - Sign in Service
Noor, your adventures in baking seem delicious! Can you tell me about how the readings informed your practice over the last couple weeks? I've never heard of Injera, but it looks delicious!
University of Victoria - Sign in Service
Thanks for sharing your process related to your group's work on the blueprint and learning resource. Reflecting on the process itself is an excellent way to improve your effectiveness as a (member of a) group as you work towards the goals.
University of Victoria - Sign in Service
Iris, thank you for your posts! It is very interesting to see how people can create different effects with nail art!
Yuchen, great work! Thank you for including videos of your progress in your posts, it adds a lot. I think your learning strategy of reaching out to your mother, even though she is far away, is a good one!
Isabel, your art project is great! Thanks for including pictures. There are definitely advantages to synchronous learning environments for many people. Immediate feedback is difficult in an asynchronous environment.
View all of Post 2-3 Highlights
Good morning everyone! Just a short update this morning.
I've posted details of your tasks for this week under Units in the menu. Please read the page carefully and let me know as soon as possible if you have any questions about the peer review process.
There is no new content this week as your efforts are geared towards helping your colleagues refine their Interactive Learning Resources.
I've also added some resources and thoughts around assessment under Units > Week 5. You may want to consider these ideas as you review your colleagues resources and as you refine your own resources next week.
Hope you all have a great week! Please let me know if you'd like to set up a time to meet.
cm
Introduces the practice of learning design and its application to technology-mediated learning environments. Explores the principles of learning design, examines how to create learning experiences for others and teach for understanding. Opportunities to plan, design and develop an interactive learning experience using technologies specific for teaching and learning.
Good morning everyone!
Thanks for all of your posts in the last couple weeks. It is my priority to have some grades back to you this week.
This is the last week with any new content for the course, but there is still lots of work to do! This week is for finishing up the details of your draft Interactive Learning Resource to be submitted on Sunday, June 9. Next week, you will be providing peer reviews for your colleagues.
Assessment is a critical piece of an educational process as it ensures that learners have the information that they need to understand how well they have met the learning outcomes for the course.
There are generally two types of assessment, formative and summative. Formative assessment occurs when a learner receives feedback about their performance and has an opportunity to incorporate that feedback into future attempts. In this class, if a learner misses the mark on a post or assignment, I provide some feedback about how to improve, and typically provide an opportunity to revise and resubmit. That is formative assessment. The other type of assessment, summative, comes at the end of a learning experience, and is generally a final assessment of the learner's performance. Typically there is no opportunity to incorporate feedback into future performance, because there is no opportunity for future performance. This is like having to write a final exam in a course.
Both types of assessment have their place in education, but there is a growing trend towards using formative assessment much more intentionally and focusing more on the process of learning (learning is hard), than on one high-stakes assessment at the end of a course which only provides a snapshot in time.
Practically, one of the best ways to get some formative assessment and feedback is to ask questions of your instructor. Submit drafts, schedule synchronous calls or web-conferences. Please let me know if you'd like to schedule some time this week to chat about your Interactive Learning Resources!
View all of Assessing Learning
Introduces the practice of learning design and its application to technology-mediated learning environments. Explores the principles of learning design, examines how to create learning experiences for others and teach for understanding. Opportunities to plan, design and develop an interactive learning experience using technologies specific for teaching and learning.
Just a quick Friday update.
I trust you've seen the alert for this morning. To recap, Your learning design blueprint is listed in CourseSpaces as being due this weekend AND it's listed on the course schedule as being due next weekend. Either is fine. I apologize for the error.
Your learning resource should be in the form of a mini lesson that others will be able to complete and, at the end, be able to show that they have learned something. Remember to prioritize interaction in your resource. That interaction can be with other learners or with people outside the course.
Your first draft of the resource should be substantially complete so that others in the class will be able to work through the resource as learners in order to provide feedback to you.
Obviously, you don't need to submit links to the peer feedback or a rationale for how you managed the feedback with this submission.
I'm reading your week 2-3 posts and thoroughly enjoying the journey through your learning challenges! I'll be posting some brief comments on the blog for each of your blogs, including links. I encourage you to follow your colleagues!
Please let me know if you have questions!
cm
Week 4 materials are posted!
I'm at a conference at UBC today, and today is my 24th wedding anniversary (I don't feel that old!), so this is a bit shorter post.
We are looking at some different web technologies and media this week.
I'll be having a read through your 2nd and 3rd posts starting tomorrow.
Cheers for now, Colin
View all of Technology and Learning
Just a quick update this morning (Tuesday, May 28).
I've received Blueprints from everyone and had a quick read through them. I'm really quite excited about the topics you have all chosen from programming in Java, to demystifying Computer Science, FinTech (Financial Technology, like cryptocurrency...I think), Chinese tea, Sichuan cooking, Electronic Health Records and others that I am likely missing right now as I hurry out the door! It's great to see you passionate about the stuff you are studying, especially as many of you are taking this course as one of the final credits in your degree.
I will provide some more detailed and personalized feedback in the next few days, but I thought I would let you know that you can all safely start working on developing your Interactive Learning Resources. I'm really pleased overall with where you are all going.
Please let me know if you have questions or difficulties!
cm
Introduces the practice of learning design and its application to technology-mediated learning environments. Explores the principles of learning design, examines how to create learning experiences for others and teach for understanding. Opportunities to plan, design and develop an interactive learning experience using technologies specific for teaching and learning.
Good morning!
Thanks for your work last week on getting your Blueprints to me. I will turn those around as quickly as I can so that you can proceed with your Interactive Learning Resources. I suggest that you not proceed until you've heard from me on the blueprint. Consequently, you don't have much writing to do this week. Just Blog Post #3.
This week we will focus on the characteristics of a well-designed online course. Some key terms that you'll need to understand (or at least be aware of and know where to find) are surface and deep approaches to learning and constructive alignment from a short series of (somewhat corny) videos called Teaching teaching and understanding understanding.
Then we will dive into a very practical book called Teaching in blended learning environments which is available for free through Athabasca University Press. Click on the Free PDF tab to download either individual chapters or the whole book. Alternately, I've embedded the chapters in this week's unit materials. You are not required to purchase this book unless you feel it would be of value to you. You'll benefit from learning about the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework as you skim chapter 1, then become more familiar with design considerations in alignment with the three presences of the CoI: cognitive, social, and teaching presence in chapter 2.
There's a bit more reading this week, but it's pretty accessible. If you have difficulty understanding some of the concepts, please reach out to your colleagues. Talk to your group members, ask questions, offer answers, talk about the implications of the readings for your interactive learning resource. Feel free to write an extra blog post to ask your questions. There is a large amount of writing and publishing about the CoI, including at coi.athabascau.ca:
Of course, you can also ask me.
Your blogs
One of the reasons that this course is using WordPress as a platform is to encourage you to use it to build a Community of Inquiry. I hope you will take some time to explore each others' blogs and follow a few people's progress through the learning challenge!
Week 3 is posted!
Click Units in the menu, then Week 3.
View all of Designing Learning Experiences
Introduces the practice of learning design and its application to technology-mediated learning environments. Explores the principles of learning design, examines how to create learning experiences for others and teach for understanding. Opportunities to plan, design and develop an interactive learning experience using technologies specific for teaching and learning.
Good morning from rainy Richmond!
I've been through each of your posts for week 1 and thoroughly enjoyed reading about how you all are planning to challenge yourself. I encourage you to jump into the 'Learner Posts' feed under 'Updates' in the menu and read about what your colleagues are going to be doing.
One of the great advantages of sharing your posts in public is that you are able to share with your family at home as well and also reach out to people who might be influencing you. For example, many of you are using YouTube as a source of information and resources. If you include links to those videos, you are doing a favour to the person who created the video by boosting their stats and giving them feedback.
Future posts
Here are some things to keep in mind generally about using a blog for learning.
Make sure you link to your sources. Even if this isn't formal academic writing, it is still important to acknowledge where you get your ideas. The easiest way to do that is through an inline link.
Remember to use the category edci335.
Read each other's posts and respond to them by including links in your own posts. There are many of you who are engaging in cooking challenges. Follow each other's progress, share tips, encourage each other, challenge each other to cooking competitions! Have fun with this assignment.
Post 2 is due tomorrow, but if you need to choose between post 2 and the blueprint, then delay post 2 for a couple days and focus on the blueprint.
BluePrint
As you know, your blueprints are due tomorrow. It will be important for you to complete this assignment and submit it prior to submitting your major project, the Interactive Learning Resource. Several of you have contacted me with questions, and I encourage that. I'm here to help you succeed, and the sooner you get your questions answered, the better you will be able to plan your work.
Your blueprint is the planning stage for your learning resource, but don't worry about locking yourself in. Learning design is an iterative process and you will always be going back to adjust your plan as things change.
I'm available by email or text (details in CourseSpaces) all weekend if you have questions.
Good morning!
There are still several of you who have not submitted a link to the Blog Post 1 assignment dropbox in CourseSpaces. Please do so as soon as you are able. Feel free to let me know if you won't be able to complete this by the end of Tuesday.
The reason for asking you to submit a link is to ensure accurate tracking of your submissions and also to allow me to provide confidential feedback on your work.
So far, there are only two people who have responded to the Doodle poll in CourseSpaces about finding a time to meet in BlueJeans. Please take a few minutes to do that as well.
Hope you have a great day!
Introduces the practice of learning design and its application to technology-mediated learning environments. Explores the principles of learning design, examines how to create learning experiences for others and teach for understanding. Opportunities to plan, design and develop an interactive learning experience using technologies specific for teaching and learning.
