Author: kevinsong

Interactive Learning Resource Topic: Art Therapy

Identify components of the Interactive Learning Resource that might be missing (e.g., appropriate outcomes, alignment, interactivity, inclusivity, technology use and rationale, presentation, grammar, spelling, citations, etc.).

Hi everyone, I think you guys did a good job structuring the class and I really enjoyed looking over the different lessons that you provided. I think that the overall layout and accessibility of finding everything is quite good and you guys did a solid job proof reading to make sure that there were no small errors such as grammar or spelling. I also really liked how you guys decided to go with a more project based class as that fits really well with the topic that you have chosen.

That being said, the class that you created was built for third grade students and I am not sure if third grade students will be able to handle the online technology by themselves well. Is the class mean’t to have parental guidance or are they expected to be able to upload their work on google classroom. I also think that when students are at such a young age, they benefit a lot from being able to talk to actual people and interact with their peers. They also have a very low attention span and getting them to watch a lot of videos by themselves might not be the most effective approach. Do you think that the class would benefit from a few meetings on zoom where the students can share their work with one another?

Provide a summary of The Interactive Learning Resource’s strengths and weaknesses. Draw out specific examples from your peers’ work to justify your feedback.

I think that your group’s interactive learning resource had a lot of strengths for the topic that you chose. I think that the videos that you chose to show the students were well tailored and age appropriate for the students you were teaching. I also liked how you guys got the students to do hands on work and really show that they understood the lessons. A few weaknesses that I found was simply the difficulty of some of the tasks that were given to the students. I think that as a third grade student it could be overwhelming to complete a task such as the task for Shape and Share. I think that getting the student to share their emotions with the clay is enough and getting them to go through a checklist might be too much. I also think that the assessment for each task and the rubric you have provided is good but maybe make it more participation based because I don’t expect third grade students to review a rubric before doing a simple art assignment.

Provide general, specific, and practical recommendations to your peers on how to improve their Interactive Learning Resource.

Some recommendations that I have for your group is just to be more wary of the audience that you have chosen. Although you chose a lot of great videos, I think that setting up some live interaction is crucial for learning at a young age. This can be done with setting up a zoom link or even involving parents in the learning process. I also think that some of the assignment descriptions can be changed focusing on giving more detailed descriptions and less steps to the assignment. For example the one task that I previously talked about on Shape and Share you guys tell the student to, “Use clay to share an experience you have had.” To me, this is such a broad topic and if the student just came from watching the video resource, kids that are in grade 3 tend to be very forgetful and might be lost on what to do. I think that adding some more description to the task like how they would use the clay to share an experience can help even though the task itself is meant to be very creative.

Overall though I really enjoyed looking at your interactive learning resource and trying the different tasks. One other thing to mention is that if the student doesn’t have clay available like myself, is there another alternative that they can use? If they’re expected to have it at the start of the class then its fine.

Hi Chloe,

I love the video that you chose as it has a lot of figures that makes it quite easy to understand what is happening and really breaks down ChatGPT to something that can be comprehendible by everyone. I agree that after watching the video the learner will most likely try it out for themselves and by exploring further they will be interacting with the video. I agree with you that having a discussion afterwords would be great as it is hard to really see if the learners interacted with the video or not. I think that the comment section of the youtube video is very resourceful as its a perfect place to show what you understood or didn’t understand from the video.

Thanks for sharing,
Kevin S

Hi Ziyi,

I think you brought forward some very interesting points regarding the different interactions that can take place when learning. This can be between a large spectrum of different types and depending on if your experiences are positive or negative it can totally have a huge effect on how well you learn. Recently I have been studying human computer interaction and user interfaces as well as user experiences. I think these subjects are totally important too when it comes to academia.

Thanks for sharing,
Kevin S

For this blog post I decided to choose a youtube video for the interactive video resource. Looking at someone else’s video was great for giving our group ideas of how we want to go forth with out last final interactive learning design resource. Here is the video that I chose.

This video was chosen because out whole interactive learning resource will be on ChatGPT and how it can be used for research. In this video, they cover a large subject very briefly having the user follow the steps to create a good ChatGPT prompt. I think it is pretty interactive as it goes over the set up and how to get started as well as the different techniques that can be used in your prompt for effective prompts. This video also promotes trying the prompts out and testing so it is pretty interactive in that way too. The biggest way the learner will respond after watching the video is basically just creating their own prompts and practicing the techniques taught in the video. The only thing that I see that the video can be improved upon is to really test if the learner actually learned the techniques that are used. This however is hard because it is just a video and doesn’t have any quizzing feature imbedded in it. This can definitely be a challenge for video learning as there isn’t really a check your understanding part to it and is mostly just the learner soaking up the knowledge that you’re providing. I think the video did a good job with inclusive design as there are subtitles for those that are deaf and the quality of the video is quite good so it isn’t difficult to see or hear what you are looking for.

Hi Julia, I agree with you that ChatGPT is totally in the same domain for online learning. I love how you brought up how browsers already have built in accessibility support. That is such a cool and important thing that I totally forgot about. I also think that ChatGPT is great for learning and it is quite unique how it is able to return your information differently depending on your skill level or how you understand information. This will definitely make it more accessible for people of different backgrounds.

Thanks,
Kevin

Hi Stephanie,

I love that you will approach building your course with equity and making it accessible to everyone. I believe that nowadays it is very important to have the equity statement so it is clear what is appropriate within the class. I think in education today, the way that we grade and test students can still be changed. I think that some students learn better in different methods of learning and some students just take more time to understand the material.

Thanks for sharing,
Kevin S

To ensure that my interactive learning resource fill fit the needs of all the learners I will look at the different principles that promote inclusive design. To start, this means that the interactive learning resource must be accessible by all learners such as those with disabilities or other formats of learning or input methods that the learners can use. This means that for my textual part of the lesson I will try to deliver the information using a voice to text speech for those that are visually impaired learners as well as think more about other ways to improve accessibility. I will also try to have lots of customization and methods of exploring with learning as seen by my previous post where I discussed abut how I will use inquiry learning.

Some set backs with the format of our learning resource is that it is all going to be online and this means that we will be available basically anywhere where the user has internet but we will also lose some other great features about in person learning where you can make those face-to-face connections with your peers. I will also try to implement various ways of interactive learners such as different styles of quizzes and as well as have people comment to discuss in the bottom of our post. I think one benefit is that our topic ChatGPT is already an online resource so it is quite easy to teach it in an online setting compared to teaching another subject such as how to swim.

Another cool thing that our topic allows us to do is that the student can interact with ChatGPT and use it as a tool to teach themselves too. It is quite interesting how by learning how to create effective prompts, users can then use the prompts to ask ChatGPT how to use itself as it is a language building model that will adapt to what the user wants.

Hi Julia,

I think open pedagogy is an interesting method of learning. Similar to inquiry-based learning, it seems like open pedagogy is more learner based as open pedagogy and inquiry-based learning really rely on the learner to either be curious or learn autonomously. I also use many methods of open pedagogy learning but I still like going back to a textbook at the end of the day.

Thanks for sharing,
Kevin

Hi Rick,

I think that cooperative learning is a very common way of learning as it allows for other member’s ideas and you can learn a lot off of your peers. Just recently I took a class on group dynamics and realized that there are a whole different types of groups that groups can be classified into. I think your example is very good and provides a strong point to your blog.

Thanks for sharing,
Kevin S

The learning approach I will be discussing is inquiry-based learning. Inquiry based learning is an approach to learning that focuses on active engagement and critical thinking. Inquiry based learning is all about having the learners ask questions, investigate topics of interest, and explore solutions through hands-on activities, research, and collaboration (National Research Council, 2000). Inquiry based learning follows a cycle that loops where the learner first gets familiar with a topic, questions it, discusses it and reflects it. This allows for a thorough understanding of the topic and being able to reach a high level of understanding. Some challenges that are faced with inquiry based learning is that it is hard for some students to stay motivated because of lot of the learning is self-guided and another challenge is that it is difficult for students to know when they reached a good level of understanding. Though if the student is very interested in a subject or topic, inquiry-based learning really allows for the students creativity and passion to move forward.

For us, this relates to our learning pods topic because we are going to teach a subject and to keep it interesting we are going to incorporate all kinds of methods. Inquiry-based learning is especially important to us because inquiry-based learning is able to deliver more than your typical teacher classroom learning. This is even more relevant depending on the type of learner because personally I think that I learn better in a subject that I am curious about rather a subject that I don’t care about.

Inquiry-based learning will be used when we deliver our lesson on ChatGPT by triggering the curiosity of the students and then making them learn by exploring or investigating. This will be done by the students trying out ChatGPT by themselves and seeing what type of results are being returned, analyzing the data brought from ChatGPT as well as questioning the correctness of the results. I think that ChatGPT is a great subject for inquiry-based learning because ChatGPT is still relatively new and there is a lot of questions around it as well as ways that you can use it. In our case with ChatGPT for research, I think that students will delve into this black hole of a topic and make the most of the subject by their curiosity supplemented by the lessons that we deliver. Additionally, the students will be able to reflect and think critically about their learning because research methods with ChatGPT isn’t black and white. There is no 100% correct way and people are still learning about how to use ChatGPT as well as ChatGPT itself is changing.

References:

National Research Council. (2000). Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards: A Guide for Teaching and Learning. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Hi Fawzan,

I love to hear that you are enjoying a healthier lifestyle and all the positive changes it has brought to your life. I also love taking a break and getting some exercise as well as eating good food. Self-improvement is so important and it is definitely a challenge to get in the mindset to stay consistent.

Thanks for sharing,
Kevin Song

Hi Zhenshang,

Thank you for your thoughtful insights on the different methods for learning. After examining the different methods, I came to conclusion that I am probably follow a Constructivism based learning model. This is because I find that I work well learning by myself and having the self-guided aspect really allows for flexibility to allow myself to learn whenever I have the time. I do however have some friends that wouldn’t work well in this type of setting because it really takes a lot of motivation and passion to learn by yourself.

Thanks,
Kevin S

Share a story about your best learning experience (could be a formal course or something more personal). Why did you enjoy it?

My best learning experience comes from a formal course that I took at UVic. The class that made me really enjoy learning was CSC 361 with professor Jianping Pan. I found this class especially interesting because the topic on computer networks really caught my interest but also the way that professor Pan structured the class. This class had both tutorials and lab sections and most of the weight in the class fell on midterms as well as assignments. Not only were the lectures very engaging but also the labs used the skills in lecture which would later be used again in tutorial to teach you how to do the assignments. I was able to see and understand better what happens when we make a basic google search or how we connect to the internet and I found this really cool.

Looking at this class from the perspective of the foundations of learning and instructional design technology, it can be seen that Pan did a good job of translating principles of learning and instruction into specifications for instructional materials and activities (Smith & Ragan, 1993, p. 12). Pan made it so it was easy to see how the skills we were learning were used in the practical world allowing us to be able to bridge our understanding to potential solutions in the real world.

Another part that Pan did well was with his amazing behaviourism. Pan’s passion in the subject made it much more exciting and gave us stimulus when asking questions or processing information. The most critical factor that influences learning is the arrangement of stimuli and consequences within the environment (Ertmer & Newby, 1993).

Overall, this class that I took was especially enjoyable because it followed many of the different theories and motivations that make learning both effective and interesting. By including real-world application to what we were doing and an environment perfect for learning, the class and students were able to have a more productive and positive learning experience.

References:

Peggy A. Ertmer & Timothy Newby (1993). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism. (n.d.). In Learning Theories and Transfer of Learning. Retrieved from https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations/behaviorism_cognitivism_constructivism

Smith, P. L., & Ragan, T. J. (1993). Instructional design. New York: Macmillan.

Hi everyone, my name is Kunlun but I go by Kevin. I am a fourth year computer science student with an interest in all areas of technology. I am very excited to learn about the basics of learning with technology as it can be a great tool for learning in the future. EDCI 335 stood out to me in particular because I have already taken EDCI 337, EDCI 338, and EDCI 339 and I believe they have helped me learn more about education on the technical side.

During my free time, I enjoy going to the gym to workout, being in the outdoors and enjoying live music. I am also super interested in trying new things as well as challenging myself on everything I do because I’m super competitive. I can’t wait to meet you guys and learn about what you guys like to do!