Xuyao Han’s Blog

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-0uDkm3i1D7sH3IzNb8zMeelZ3NHd8oU/view

General Comments

Hello, Yue, Saina, Yang, and Huanghao. First, I would like to thank you all for sharing your interactive learning resource. It is very well thought out, and I enjoyed reading it. I think the formatting of the resource is clear, and your group topic is interesting and relevant for the students who study that. I would like to provide some suggestions about which areas of your interactive learning resource are particularly strong, and which areas I think can be improved.

Resource Overview

Forgive me if I am mistaken or have overlooked something, but I could not find the resource overview. I noticed that you have a page called ‘guidance of learning design,’ which may be functioning as the overview. If that is the case, I think it maybe could benefit from a bit more detail. 

Learning Design Rationale

With reference to the learning theory your group will utilize, I think constructivism is a good fit. However, I think it would perhaps benefit the strength of your resource if you decide to connect the theory directly to some of the activities you will have. It may be good to give an example of how the theory will function in your lesson, but that is just my suggestion. As for the learning design, you can maybe say how the two types will interact, or how you will design it so the different types do not contradict each other.

Learning Context

As for the learning context, I think the size of the class is suitable. You said that you want students who are independent thinkers. How will your group ensure that the students who register your class are independent thinking? Maybe you can write more clearly how students will be chosen for this class, or if you will teach the skills they need, such as independent thinking or conducting viral publicity, which you also wrote about in this section.

Learning Outcomes

For learning outcomes, I think this section is good. You write clearly what information the students will be expected to remember. Personally, I would not make any changes to this section.

Interactive Activity

I think all your activities are good for the student’s to increase learning. For this section, your group wrote about four activities you would like to do with students. But I wonder, will it be able to be completed on time? If the class period is not long enough, perhaps it will not be enough time to do all activities well. I think it could maybe be useful to combine the two videos into one activity and two readings into one activity, but that is just my personal opinion.

Assessment Plan

Your assessment plan writes what is the goal for your learners. However, I think it would be useful to write what methods you will use to show that your learners have understood the topic. How will you know whether or not the students have achieved the learning objectives you wrote about before? For example, you can have the students do a short quiz or write an online discussion so that the teacher can see if the students learned the material fully or not.

Design For Inclusion of Diverse Learners

I think it was a good choice to do the English Language Learner as your target audience. I know your group has ELL students, so you understand well the struggles that may be faced by them. To make a suggestion for the students with hearing impairment, maybe they would benefit from a video that has subtitles, so they do not have to rely on their hearing.

Choice of Technology

Your technology choices include some good resources. A Facebook group can be useful for facilitating discussion. And the Iclicker website you mention is good for in class quizzing which can let the teacher know about students’ knowledge or opinion. Even if it is good, I think perhaps you could improve the role of technology in your resource by stating directly which activity you will use each technology for.

Resources

I think that your resources themselves seem to be quality and come from reputable sources. If I had to suggest an improvement, maybe the full source citations would be better put towards the end of the resource, rather than the beginning. I think the long citations may distract from your ideas, which should be most important. But overall, I think the source content is good.

Closing Comments

Finally, I would like to thank you all again for sharing your resource with me. I hope that some of the suggestions I gave can be of use for you guys. I think the final resource will be really good and informative for the student’s safety. 

The video I chose is from YouTube, and the topic is AI. The video is called What is Artificial Intelligence? In 5 Minutes by Raj Ramesh. The author of the video has a PHD and wrote many credible books about AI, so he is a good source for information.

In what way are they likely to respond to the video on their own, e.g. make notes, do an activity, think about the topic (learner-generated)?

The students might want to take notes. Since the topic has many aspects, it will be helpful to write some key points. They may also have some questions, since the video is meant to be short and doesn’t talk deeply about some ideas. They can ask the teacher, other students, or look at online resources to find the answer. The interaction is generated by the learner and can make them interact with teacher, student, or material depending on the preference of the student.

What activity could you suggest that they do, after they have watched the video (designed)? What type of knowledge or skill would that activity help develop? What medium or technology would students use to do the activity?

Because the video covers the topic broadly, I would suggest the students do an activity where they remember as many facts from the video without watching it a second time. They can post the facts to online forum with other students or directly to the teacher. I think for short video, it may be better to post directly to the teacher, because many students will have the same idea and will be repeated.

How would students get feedback on the activity that you set? What medium or technology would they and/or you use for getting and giving feedback on their activity?

Students can post the facts they remember to the teacher, then the teacher can respond and say which areas the student should study more and which area they seem to understand well. They can use a LMS like Coursespaces to post the response.

How much work for you would that activity cause? Would the work be both manageable and worthwhile? Could the activity be scaled for larger numbers of students?

The activity for this video will be quick. The students will not have to spend a lot of time. However, since it is a simple activity, I think it will go well with some other reading. Also, they should have another longer activity, such as discussion. Student-student interaction will be helpful to make students have a deep understand, and they can form some opinion about the topic. The activity will not be a problem if there are many students because they will interact with the teacher individually.

How could the video have been designed to generate more or better activity from viewers or students?

I think the video is very good for the short length. However, it does not require interaction. I think it is not possible for YouTube, but maybe if the author uses another software, they can have some question for the student appear on the screen. They can only continue the video if they answer the question correctly. This can force the interaction, which will help the student learn the ideas.

1. How will your interactive learning resource specifically ensure that the needs of all learners can be met?

For the lesson plan my group created for the blueprint, our goal is to teach the basic knowledge of AI to middle school age students. Because the topic AI can be a little complex, we must find a way to plan the lesson to be more easily understood to young students. For young students, they are not having a fully developed brain, therefore they maybe don’t understand is they only read or hear about the topic. Follow the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) it states that lessons should emphasize limitations of its design and not the limitation of the learner. So we will recognize that our topic has some limitation and design the lesson to increase student learning success.

For example, in the face-to-face course, we can increase learning by adding a visual element and interactive element. Using Google Home as the example, we can do a demonstration of how the AI technology works. One or two students can volunteer to help in the demonstration and the other students will watch. The students will interact with the Google Home and showing others how it works. Then we will say why this technology is an example of AI. This way, the students will have a solidify understanding of the topic.

If the students will not be able to participate in real lecture because of situation like the Covid19, then the lesson will still have similar demonstration. Instead of participating in class, the demonstration can be taken in video and sent to students. Also we can ask the students to look for some AI they find in their own home, such as Siri on an iPhone or in smart cars like Tesla. However, not everyone will have access to the technology and that is a limitation of our topic. But we will design it as best as can so that students maximize learning.

The method I choose is the inquiry-based learning method. This method is focused on students’ role in learning. In inquiry-based learning, they are encouraged to ask questions and share their ideas with the group. This kind of learning starts by posing questions, problems, or scenarios to the students and having them think for their own. It contrasts with traditional learning that just presents facts to students and asks them to remember the facts. Some benefits include that the inquiry-based learning is more fun for students and they will take ownership of their learning, which fosters engagement to the topic. Further, this type will help the student learn critical thinking and communication skills. They can use these skills in other subjects or even for the daily life [1].

Because our topic is AI, a part of computer science, I think this method is adequate. Inquiry-based learning is common and effective for studying science. For example, a study conducted on 5th graders studying science found that the students who were taught based on the Inquiry-Based Learning method scored significantly higher on their test after instruction [2]. Our goal is to teach middle school students to understand AI. They are only a bit older than the students studying science in the research study, so I think clearly the inquiry-based learning method could be suitable.

[1] “What Is Inquiry-Based Learning (And How Is It Effective)?” GradePower Learning, 28 May 2019, gradepowerlearning.com/what-is-inquiry-based-learning/.

[2] Abdi, Ali. “The Effect of Inquiry-Based Learning Method on Students’ Academic Achievement in Science Course.” Universal Journal of Educational Research, vol. 2, no. 1, 2014, pp. 37–41.

The videos about science video and riding bicycle were very interesting and simple to understand because they include visual, which helps me. However, I found the reading that discuss behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism a bit difficult to understand. The author used some vocabularies that I am not very familiar with. When I realize this problem, I search in the online dictionary, but I find that some of the words are still hard to get the meaning. After that, I ask my girlfriend to help me with the concept, because she is speaking English as first language. When she explains it to me, I find the concept is very easy to understand because she know me well and how to explain clearly for me. This make me realized that learning should be personal.

Every person have a different way to understanding because of their different experience and connection to other topic, like the author mention in the textbook. Of course, in a large course at universities, it is not possible for the professor to make the course customizing for every person, but I think it is good to find your own way in a course. Sometimes, when we do not understand well the teaching style of the teacher or writing of author, we can find help. When learning a difficult topic, I can ask my friend or classmate, and they can know me well already so to explain it in a way that work for me personally.

Personally I like the concept in the constructivism approach. Constructivism focused on the real world and recognize that everyone have different interpretation of world. So I think this approach makes a lot of sense because I find that even we read the same thing, we can have different understanding. And constructivism think that transfer comes from authentic tasks in meaningful contexts, and I think that is true because I feel I cannot learn something well unless I have some practice with it in real world. If I just reading something, I maybe don’t understand as well than if I can do some experiment.