edciblog

link to the post – Learning Design II – Xitong’s blog (opened.ca)

great points on cooperative learning, good that you talked about how it is helpful in a social context, learning isn’t only about self paced studies but it is about interactions with one another secondly some great points on how we psychological are motivated, since motivation is a very important factors into the learning design, without it, it would be hard to learn no matter how good the teaching skills are. also to say that competition is another one that sparks motivation, which people don’t really think of much, as learning is a journey of self improvement but also a journey of competition. not only competitions, corporation are also a really great point as well that people misses out on, since the environment is really what determines our learning outcome and we have to work and engage with the environment to get the best learning result, this is really fantastic point!

link to the post – BLOG POST 1. LEARNING THEORY – EDCI355-CH (opened.ca)

i totally agree with the fact that the process of learning is more important than the result of learning, and that process of learning is how to determine result of learning, method is more important than effort in learning which is kind of of surprising to most people, but from my experience is also that no matter how hard you try you should always come up with a strategy to learn, people focuses too much on the result and just ignore how they should get, which is the most important thing out there.

link to the post – BLOG POST 2: INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING – EDCI355-CH (opened.ca)

very good analysis on the inquiry learning, great job analyzing what position it puts the student on, and their relationship with the teaching in the learning environment which is very important,
great analysis on the pros and cons of inquiry based learning, how it helps the student in what ways are clearly stated. it also posted how it helped the student to memorize and discover different topics.

link to the post – Blog Post #4 – Interaction – zileb (opened.ca)

great job talking about the relation between cognitive difficulties and learning, strategies are really important and i totally agree with that. Me as an ADHD symptoms carrier have been benefited by using effective strategies to help me focus on my learning.
finding the learning styles and the activity that suits you the best is definitely really important, people learn in different ways, therefore, it is hard to say there is good universal strategies, spend time to find the one that is suitable for yourself is really important. Therefore, creating an activity to help the student to find out their best way to learn is definitely worth the effort instead of just telling student to go and do an universal learning style.

Topic reviewed : Chinese language basics

As for the approaches, it will be better to state which approach you will be focusing on mainly, since there are three approaches, not having one main approach could be confusing to what step approach the learning design is leading to. For me personally I would prefer having a strong single approach to scale my process and go dig deep into it. However, I really like and appreciate how you can come up with so many different types of approaches and integrate it into the learning method to help they learn a new language.

I really liked the rationale as it provided the basic to a strong fundamentals to the Chinese characters and symbols, however, I think it would’ve been way better if the activities have more variety rather than just competitions, for example, tell two people to act in character and chat using simple Chinese greetings, it gives more colorful experiences into the learning program and makes it less boring while maintaining its instructiveness.

I really like how you guys are catchy with every details of the fundamentals, making student imitating after teacher and not letting any part of the basic to be lost to ensure student have strong base and that will help them in the future. And as a native Chinese speaker myself, I appreciate that very much since I know the importance of learning the fundamentals in Chinese, everything is confusing if you don’t learn the fundamentals well.

as for the interactive learning resource, I personally don’t think it is needed to include the origins of Chinese since the ancient Chinese is so vastly different from the modern Chinese we have now, as a native Chinese speaker, learning old Chinese got me confusing, not to mention that these are the people that don’t even speak modern Chinese, therefore seeing ancient Chinese to them is probably no use, and if not it might confuse them a bit as well. Therefore, I would say just focus on the version we have now, and let them fully get used to it, if they are interested in how the history of Chinese has changed upon, they can go deep into it in the future.

I like how from topic 1 to 4 there is a great build up from the fundamental to the hard ones, making them learn step by step like building a building blocks. You guys have really done a good job of getting the fundamentals right for the learners.

and I love how you made them identify the differences between pinyin and grammar, so basically letting them to know pinyin basic first and tell them to write an essay to show how it works that makes them different from English to get used to the Chinese pinyin system, this is a really good idea since they are really confusing and its very important to know the difference between the two systems.

And you are telling them to write after all of that which really is nice since you got all the potential confusing factors sorted out.

However, I would say try to not be too repetitive and add more diverse factors into the topics since even though the fundamentals have stacked up and potential confusions are erased out, it can be too boring to just keep focusing on the writing and imitation of the characters, try to add more diversities into it instead of just focusing on the writing, things that can help them understand but not limited to only writing.

overall I really like the planning you guys put up with, giving clear distinction of when to learn what and a really good framework to learn from the fundamentals of Chinese pinyin to writing the Chinese language while helping them to identify the difference between Chinese pinyin characters and English. However it would really be a lot better if there were more diversities and co-oporation with one and another instead of just writing and reading.

1. What kind of interaction would the video require from your students? Does it force them to respond in some way (inherent)? not really any interaction was required, however student have to respond to the video since they need to click it and it can’t be dismissed. All students needs to do is paying attention to the video.
2. 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)? do an activity that is probably the most effective way to respond to a video, since student are might not be willing to make note when they are tired or when dismissing the importance of the topic. On the other hand, if thinking about one topic is not really a necessarily requested task according to the course requirement the student might feel not obligated to do such a complicated thing.
3. 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? Ask certain questions about the video for them to provide their thought on, this way it will better to ensure that the student pay attention to the video and not just skim it thru. Questions needs better to be reflective questions that allows them to provide their thought on certain things rather than just yes or no or fixed answer questions, this way it could ensure them to better think about the content of the video. this also will help them to develop their own perspective on the video by looking at it.
4. 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? using a blog to post their answer to the questions asked will allow them to share their answers openly with other people and be open to receive feedbacks from outside. blog is one of the best way to interact and share thoughts openly with one another. the technology to use is laptop or computer, basically anything out there to type your thought on a blog platform so your thought can be shared and are open to others to comment for feedbacks.
5. 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? it will cost around 20 minute to complete the activity, it can be scaled for larger number of student since each of the group member is working individually on their own to provide their own thought. However, with the open blog settings, student are able to interact with each other by sharing their thought and providing feedback by commenting on other’s blog posts once they are done with their thought.

1. How will your interactive learning resource specifically ensure that the needs of all learners can be met? we are using open and direct approach, trying to keep it simple for all the learners out there with the most simple understandable approaches. In this resource we are focusing on orchestra music which everyone has a place to play together in groups. People would need to participate together to achieve a goal with uncomplicated direct instructions given to one group. despite of the individual learning progress, people have to work as a group in order to satisfy the learning goals and advance, this way people don’t feel left out despite of the speed of their process. Instructions are given simple and direct with everyone doing the same thing in order to ensure a easy and cooperative platform are given to the learners so no one feels left out.
2. How can you adjust your planned learning activities to meet the needs of your learners if an unexpected event occurs? (for example, a pandemic arises and many of your employees must now work from home – how will you ensure that they can still do their jobs? What training will they need, and how will you deliver it, knowing they must remain at home?) This is a common discussion thread right now as many schools and universities have made the switch to teaching online. all interactive activities are able to be switched online for learning purposes, these include the questions asked that are to be answered, all types of performances can be done on live zoom, watching sources can be found on various website, there isn’t really any barriers posed for online learning as instructions can be also demonstrated via zoom, student are able to receive the signals and the feedbacks successfully via zoom. However, group playing in music requires a great amount of synchronization with each other, this sort of synchronization in musical playing will not be as active when they are online.
3. Consider the learning environment for your current design. What potential barriers can be reduced or eliminated to provide more pathways for learner success? synchronization in playing group instrument is an important step to success, teaching so many people at once will be sort of hard to ensure everyone can be on the same level, therefore, in order to make sure the class is able to perform well as whole over all, instructions need to shift its focus from individual skills development of an instrument to how to play instrument as a team, learn how to cooperate and to be synchronized with other people as a whole even though everyone might potentially have gap in their level can make the team much better and the process of playing much enjoyable for these people who might be lacking individual skills.

An overview of the characteristics of the approach 

the approach that we did was behavioral approach, which aims to develop habit I the learners and in the process decided which approach is the most effective to the learners. this model uses serious, of prompts to get responses for, leaners, and feedbacks are continuously given to the learners to model their progresses on track.

A discussion of how the approach does or does not align with your chosen topic.

my approach does align well with our chosen topic, since the approach focuses on behaviorism and that a big part of the behaviorism approach focuses on the feedback given to the learners, it will align well with our topic of operant conditioning. Operant conditioning focused on giving either positive or negative feedbacks to the learners and these could either done by reduction or reinforcement to them to shape them into a certain behavior. Therefore, both my topic and the behaviorism approach constitute a same step that is very important to its framework which is constantly using feedback to give to the target to keep their progress on track and shape their actions to the desired outcome.

If it has a place in your final Interactive Learning Design (why or why not)

In terms of using it in the final interactive learning design, it well be used since operant conditioning focused on interaction by feedbacks to model the behavior of the learners, and this is also a key factor of the behaverialism approach.

As for our learning design, we will be using direct instruction, therefore behavioral approach would be very suitable since giving reinforcement in very proactive behavioral approach, combined with the use of direct instruction method, the teacher was able to demonstrate what they want the student to be receiving without any barrier, and the student are able to understand simple messages without facing much of the confusion. A clear and concise messages to give to student is always easier on both the teacher and the student’s side when it comes to expressing one’s idea.

after reading the reverse learning blog, the interesting point about bicycle stood out, although I was able to understand the concept of it that how reverse learning would be able to affect us and how our brains are wired to learn one way and we can not reverse these cognitive affect. I just wanted to say that even for anyone who’s not rode a bicycle before, this bicycle was impossible to ride since the coordination of the wheel and the hold is needed for people to ride it in a straight line, it is impossible to ride anything if your hold is opposite of your wheel since you would lose your balance. however I totally agree with the ideas that were sent out that we are wired in some way to learn things and if that algorithm is totally reverse, we lose our wirings and get confused as I have personally have different experiences with it. Such as when i am typing Chinese, there are characters in English letters making up Chinese word which is called Pinyin, it goes by different pronunciation and i find it so confusing after i learned English and sometimes i would get some characters wrong in Chinese since i type there are letters that pronounced differed when I tried to type them.