That's a wrap!

Honestly, I was perplexed on how I would be continuing my learning journey. Would I simply return to the same old bad habits, or try and incorporate new techniques that I have learned along the way? That feeling lingered until I had an opportunity to review a poster that a friend was creating for an upcoming social event. I found that I immediately had many comments to make on how it could be improved (maybe she didn't want my help after all - ha!). From looking at the colour scheme, contrast, font choices and size, to the language used and the amount of text. I was able to use what I had learned in class to hopefully(!) help her out and make the poster more appealing. After all, like everything nowadays, you need to entice your readers to delve a little bit deeper, your viewer to hold their attention a little bit longer, in hopes of engaging the audience to interact with the materials. It is a rare occurrence to be able to immediately put all your new found skills into practice, and it was certainly a marvel to realize how much I did indeed learn over the past 7 weeks.

The things that stand out for me are:

1. The group project. I had such a fantastic team to work with. It was a rewarding experience, and helped to set the tone for the rest of the class. Although I might suggest that you consider moving it back one week. Two people in our group didn't even join the class until we were already done our project, and we all felt a bit sad that we missed the opportunity to work with them.
2. The hang outs. Online learning can be very isolating without any live interactions. These hang outs added a lot to the class. My classmates were very engaged with the topics and contributed to a rich and vibrant conversation.
3. The section on graphic design. I think I gravitate to visual elements, so this section was particularly interesting to me. 

Next steps:

1. Register for the Writing for Engagement course in the winter term. Then finish up the certificate program as soon as possible thereafter.
2. Continue to learn about engaging my learners through a variety of modes and mediums.

Creating an ePortfolio

Well that was a learning experience! The last time that I had to create an ePortfolio was when I was completing my MLIS at Wayne State University in 2012. That ePortfolio was part of a larger assignment that was teaching us about html coding and ftp. 

This time around, I thought I would use it as an opportunity to learn more about the functionality that was recently made available to faculty, staff, and students at Saskatchewan Polytechnic. Learning objects can be added as they are completed from any course page + you can reflect on the item. You can also add any item to your ePortfolio that is not associated with the Brightspace course. Adding items was easy, although tagging was not necessarily intuitive and took me a couple of tries to figure out what I was supposed to do. 

From there, I endeavoured to make the ePortfolio publicly available. A lot more trial and error here, until I finally gave up and asked for help. Then I didn't fully read the instructions, so a bit more frustration ensued. Ultimately, users need to create a presentation of their ePortfolio which can then be shared. Within the presentation, you can organize and add pages. On the pages you can add content. You can also create a theme for the ePortfolio, which essentially turns it into a resume type item. 

I am glad that I had a chance to experiment with this functionality, as it will be a part of our LIFT program, and as such, it will be important for me to know what we are asking of our learners. 

The Power of Storytelling

I attended the hang out on October 20 which featured a special discussion on storytelling. My key takeaways from this session were the importance of conducting research in advance in order to add authenticity to your story, and power to your words. 

This book was recommended by the presenter - Story Design: The Creative Way to Innovate by Denise Withers 

If we think about it from the big picture, storytelling could involve looking for patterns in data and then deciphering what the patterns tell us. 

From a learning and teaching perspectives, we may consider what behaviours we are trying to change and how would a story fit into that narrative.

Finally consider how to craft a story, and what its structure would be. 

BTW - I did purchase a book that was recommended in a previous class, The Science of Storytelling. I am really looking forward to reading it. 

PPT for the win!

I love when you think you know everything there is to know about something and you walk away with several things that you learned. 

This happened to me while I was watching a video for class on elements of graphic design. The three items that were new to me are: 

• Use the eyedropper option under the home menu, theme colours. You can use this option to match colours that you find on the web. This is an ideal for covering items that you do not want such as logos on an image.  This option will allow you to match to the background as well.
• Layers - arrange layers instead of bring to the front, etc. as this option is more precise
• Use https://accessibleweb.com/color-contrast-checker/ to check colour contrast

Elevator Pitch - Presentation Redesign

Project: NIO Microteaching Exemplar Session

We offer a new instructor orientation 3 times a year. The facilitators in my department are responsible for 5 sessions of the 3-day program. The learning outcome for the program is 'explain the components of a lesson plan'. The sessions that we cover include icebreakers, elements of a lesson plan & creating a learning outcome, microteaching exemplar, engaging learners and providing feedback. I have taught the orientation twice this past year, and felt that the exemplar session was not as successful as it could be.

The session that I have redesigned is an exemplar on microteaching. Microteaching is the main assignment for the orientation. Each participant is tasked with providing a 15-minute lesson using all components of a lesson plan, but in particular, an active learning technique. When we have offered this session before, participants were confused on what was our lesson, and what was an example of the microteaching session. Watching the learner's microteaching sessions in August, it occurred to me that it would be lovely to highlight a past learner's work in future iterations of NIO. The choice of program would also make it easier to distinguish the content from the example. 

The redesign has a past student come into the classroom and deliver the 15-minute microteaching session, and then the class dissects the lesson. We tried it like this, just last week, and learner feedback was very positive. Learners identified the elements of the lesson plan, and were also less intimidated to create their own session. 

Reflection on Week 5

If you are interested in the basic principles of graphic design, you will enjoy this video. 

  

The video reviews the concepts of space, line, colour, texture, and placement or layout. It also goes over the positions of power, or the four points in any image that the eye automatically scans. 

Week 5 also discussed the use of Canva templates. I use Canva all the time. I add PPT presentations and images to my online courses. One thing that I have gotten into the habit of doing is adding the transcript below the item, as well as adding descriptive alt text. I truly believe that learning experience design is useless if it is not accessible to everyone. Applying the UDL principles is vital to any and all learning objects. 

During the week, I reflected on the design decisions that I made in online courses. For example, whenever possible, I set up links to open in a new browser window. For me, this makes it easier for the learner, as they can easily return to the content from the course without losing their place. They can also leave the tabs open if they want to refer to that content later. I also centre all of the videos the page. Perhaps because this helps draw the learners eye to this important content as does not fall in line with the rest of the text. I insert a Canva image to break up text, I include alt text, and add an accordion fold with the text transcript below the image.  Finally for consistency, I try to highlight content in a similar fashion throughout the course. Pink aside boxes for readings, grey framed box for instructions and teal aside boxes for reflections. I hope that by doing that, the learners know what will be expected of them just by the visual clues on the page.  

Week 5 also spoke about the use of stock images in a course. I use Unsplash for images that have a Creative Commons licence. Copyright is an important consideration here, so make sure that you use images that do not require attribution, or reference them correctly. 

I also really enjoyed this video. Especially what he had to say about telling a different story, one without songs, a peaceful village, a love story or a villain. He asks us to tell a different story, while making sure that the audience invested in the arc of the main character, whether or not they like them. How can you make your audience care? 

Finally, we covered the importance of video editing. I use Camtasia to edit my videos and then Kaltura to publish them. I add captions and try to add chapters. I think it is important to not just share the recording from your class, but record a condensed version of the lecture with the sole purpose of creating the reference copy. That way viewers of your video do not need to skip through class discussions and things that are not relevant to them when they are viewing it asynchronously. 

Reflection on Neuroscience

As I was making my way through the materials for week four, a couple of points stood out. I have captured them here for future reference or review.

Alvin Toffler, in his book Rethinking the Future states that "the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn" (para. 20).

Gottfredson, C., & Mosher, B. (2012, June 18). Are you meeting all five moments of learning need? [Blog post]. https://learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/949/are-you-meeting-all-five-moments-of-learning-need

This resource focuses on effective learning strategies to retain and recall information. 

Weinstein, Y., Smith, M., & Caviglioli. (n.d.). Six strategies for effective learning [Blog post]. The Learning Scientists.  https://www.learningscientists.org/downloadable-materials/ [CC BY NC ND] 

The reason why storytelling is so powerful is that "your brain remembers pictures first. It then remembers the emotional context, and finally, it remembers language" (para. 4). There is a connection between the emotion, the image and then the language, or the point of the story or presentation. 

Stevenson, D. (2016, July 26). Storytelling and brain science: This is your brain on story [Blog post]. https://www.td.org/insights/storytelling-and-brain-science-this-is-your-brain-on-story

Reflection on Learning

Apparently there is no such thing as learning preferences. But for argument sake, let's say there were. I have definitely discovered that I find audio to be very challenging. This is interesting to me because I am a huge fan of audiobooks. I rarely read a real book. I listen to books before going to bed, when I can't sleep in the middle of the night, on the road, and while I am cross stitching. 

Audio in a course, without the accompanying PPT slides that tell me what information to focus on is proving difficult. Perhaps, I am an old school learner, where I want to know exactly what the expert thinks I should know. Perhaps, I am from the generation, that wrote down every word on the slide and then just regurgitated it on the exam. What did I retain, probably not much. 

Perhaps I need to reflect on my reliance on PPT.

Reflection of Group Assignment

In the opening week of U of T's Learner Design Experience course, learners working in small groups were tasked with compiling a list of 5 things that create an ideal learning experience. It was important to provide a rationale for each item, as well as a reflection on the items that were not included on the list. 

The conversation was easy, and consensus was achieved immediately on four out of the five items: inclusion, engagement, interaction and relatable. We discovered that we may have chosen other words to describe an ideal experience, but when we began explaining why the characteristic was chosen, we quickly realized that we were talking about the same concepts. 

But what would that fifth item be? It was suggested that integrity should be included on this list, as presenting information that is valid, accurate, trustworthy is a foundational value of most post-secondary institutions. When integrity is modeled by instructors, learners can see first hand how they can include ethical practices in their own work. Our conversation was fascinating. We all came from different industries, but could all provide examples of how integrity was necessary in our fields. 

This assignment was also a good opportunity to be creative. We came up with the analogy of building your own burger, with different components of the burger representing items on our list.