My name is Beliz and I am now a fourth year student here at UVic. I’m originally from Edmonton, AB but I moved to Victoria 3 years ago. I’m a sociology major – which I absolutely love – but I also have a passion for education, and therefore I’m enrolled in this class to meet my education minor requisite. I’m working closely with other sociology students in running the Bureau of Sociology Students (BOSS), which is something I’m looking forward to this year! If there are any other social science students, please reach out to me! I’d love to meet others regardless. I took EDCI 335 last summer, which has a very similar set-up to this class, so I’m relieved that I have previous experience in guiding the not-so-usual set up of this class!
Here’s a small glimpse of how my summer went; it created a very relaxing start for my fourth year:
The layout of expectations you’ve provided in your blog post are easy to follow and very appropriate! I think that the video is the right choice, and your activities flow very well in ensuring optimal and inclusive learning. I really like the idea of learners being able to play around with different settings, and ultimately slowly becoming comfortable with the concept. Having students provide feedback to each other as a way to interact is a great way to tie back in the students, as I can imagine, their websites would differ greatly. If I was a learner presented with this idea and learning strategy, I believe I would excel and obtain a strong understanding on HTML and website creation. Thank you for your contributions, great work!
The topic for my pod’s interactive learning resource is misconceptions of learners with learning disabilities. The video I have chosen address the facts and misconceptions of intellectual learning disabilities.
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)?
Learners would likely respond by taking notes on this topic: defining learning disabilities, identifying what someone with a learning disability might experience, and why it might be harder for them in comparison to someone without a learning disability. The learner would then interpret and create their own understanding of the concept in relation to their own experience or others around them.
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?
After watching this video, I would present learners with multiple different kinds of learning styles – commonly used by people with learning disabilities, to show learners the multitude of ways that people differ in the way and pace that they learn. I would suggest they use programs such as digital textbooks with auditory tools to compare to traditional hard copy textbooks. This would further strengthen learners knowledge on this and other topics, as they would be introduced to different learning styles that they might find suit them as well.
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?
Very little work. It would be very manageable, as learners would have the option to explore and choose the different learning styles available. This activity could be scaled for larger classes as it would be easily accessible, straight-forward, and clear.
How will you address any potential barriers for your learners in the use of this video to ensure an inclusive design?
Because of the video and presented activities prioritization of the integration of inclusive learning designs, there would be a limited potential in barriers. However, learners will have the option to select from various learning styles, in which a self-directed environment ensures that they choose the style they see best fit.
I appreciate you bringing up the critique against the traditional education model and it no longer being a one-size-fits-all approach to learning. It was quite the powerful statement when you said “education is a human right, it should not be viewed as an industry”. We shouldn’t have to conform to these standardized systems of education, but rather challenge their continuation of upholding barriers against learners reaching their full potential.
I believe that the solutions you’ll be using in your own Interactive Learning Resource are very appropriate, and will yield maximum benefit to your topic. Promoting a supporting and collaborative environment not only inside, but also outside of the classroom is an amazing point. Thank you for contributing to such an important topic, great work!
An inclusive design begins with various options of appropriate for materials and assessments that challenge learning barriers. This learning design critiques against the ‘average learner’ model, and advocates for the recognition of possible challenges that individuals might face when learning. As the primary focus of my groups Interactive Learning Resource, we challenge traditional teaching methods that offer a one-size-fits-all approach to learning, and advocate for the integration of more inclusive teaching designs.
Evident in the image above, the three guidelines of universal design can be referred to as better solutions in our groups Interactive Learning Resource:
representation
action and expression
engagement
First, our resource recognizes and thus represents a plethora of different learning options for students with learning disabilities. We recognize the barriers they may face compared to a student without learning disabilities, and thus offer the inclusion of various learning methods – for example, digital textbooks’ auditory information features. These multiple means of representation provide a variety of selection for the learner to access materials that would specifically benefit them.
Second, when accessing these different options, our group advises for multiple tools to be used for the learner, so they can achieve their full educative potential. There is a variation in the methods they can choose from, which ultimately promotes strategic and comfortable learning. In this way, learners are able to use different resources to demonstrate and exercise their new-found knowledge in their own different ways.
Lastly, compared to traditional teaching methods – such as direct instruction styles – universal design learning is able to capture and maintain the engagement of the learner. Because it is more inclusive to their capabilities, learners are able to optimize, regulate, and sustain what they are learning, and thus better apply it to the demands expected from them. Compared to a teacher-led approach, learners are able to practice self-autonomy in their learning, and avoid facing limitations that disadvantage their learning potential.
References
Meyer, Anne, et al. Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice. CAST Professional Publishing, an Imprint of CAST, Inc., 2014, UDL Theory Practice, retrieved from: udltheorypractice.cast.org/
I really appreciate the detail and depth of your blog! It is very informative and the materials you’ve added are a great addition. With your Interactive Learning Resource topic being stress, I also agree with you that experiential learning doesn’t quite align with your concept and the goals you’d want to achieve. In a classroom setting where individual experience and life lessons are needed when discussing your topic, especially with your chosen demographic, experiential learning would not be very beneficial. Learning through the cycle of 4 processes presents a very solid learning approach, in which the last process of the cycle (acting) ends the process by encouraging the learner to exercise what they’ve learnt. Overall, this is a very informative blog post in which I’ve learnt something.
A direct instruction teaching style involves a teacher-led approach in which material is directly taught to the students with the reciprocative expectation that they’ll interpret and thus utilize that information on their own (Rosenshine, 2008.) In these classroom settings, the teacher “shows, models, demonstrates, [and] teaches the skill to be learned” (Sun et al., 2022, p. 3.) It is regarded as an efficient model in relation to transmission, as it allows the teacher to be in full control of the cognitive load exchanged between the teacher and its students (Sun et al., 2022.) Additionally, this ensures manageable limits where a teacher can “ensure students have fewer encounters with misconceptions and provide corrective feedback as soon as they detect a misconception” (Sun et al., 2022, p. 3,) thus lowering the students’ chances of confusion regarding the material taught.
Here is YouTube video that provides an easy-to-understand definition and example of direct instruction teaching:
This video (2013) covers four things that teachers using this model must do:
Motivate students and build background knowledge
Explain the new skill students are expected to learn
In my groups Interactive Learning Resource, the direct instruction approach will not have a role. This is because our topic being the misconceptions against learners with learning disabilities completely contradicts this idea. Our resource critiques the direct instruction approach as being very limited in the way it educates others, and challenges its exclusive nature. Individuals with learning disabilities benefit from alternate teaching methods – very distinct from a teacher directly instructing them on the material. Our learning resource introduces more interactive methods of learning, such as interactive textbook learning that can be student led and centred.
Instead, the approach that more closely aligns with our interactive learning resource is cooperative learning. In this approach, students are not solely provided with an abundance of information and expected to learn it independently, but rather they are able to work with their teacher and other students to solve problems. In this approach, students are thus better able to communicate to teachers their limitations to certain concepts, and thus better interpret them based on an interdependent and collective end goal.
In the image below, here are some given benefits to cooperative learning, in which my groups’ resource will incorporate:
Sun, J., Anderson, R. C., Lin, T.-J., Morris, J. A., Miller, B. W., Ma, S., Thi Nguyen-Jahiel, K., & Scott, T. (2022). Children’s engagement during collaborative learning and direct instruction through the lens of participant structure. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 69, 102061. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2022.102061
TeachLikeThis. (2013, October 11). How to do Direct Instruction – TeachLikeThis [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJJkkUPC_yM
I really enjoyed reading about your different experiences with the different learning theories. During my first two years here at UVic I was also a psychology major, and I agree with behaviorism theory being so familiar! I also found that behaviourism was most helpful to me (and many others) when it came to the material and its applications. It reminded me of the concept in psychology – classical condition and positive and negative reinforcements – which I’m sure you also know all about! Using myself as an example, when I first started university, I used to use the same learning style I used in high school, which did not yield me the best results on my tests. This negative reinforcement encouraged me to change my learning style, which then resulted in more desirable results, ultimately changing the way I study and teach after that.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading your blog post, and it was also very interesting to see how the various learning styles differ in the way you work with others. I look forward to reading your other responses!
Based on your reading, would you consider your current instruction style more behavioralist, cognitivist, or constructivist? Elaborate with your specific mindset and examples.
Share a story about how you overcame a learning challenge. Why was it a challenge? What strategies did you use? Use the language you learned in this unit.
Although my instruction styles have changed throughout my education, I would consider a behaviouralist style as best fit for my current style. I find that increased frequency of repetition is when I learn best. However, being a sociology student – this is not often a technique I can use with the material I’m taught. Sociology, and many other social sciences, require critical thinking and the ability to apply its material, whereas classes I’ve taken in other disciplines (like sciences) often fit behaviouralist styles better due to its dependence on memorizing the material. After reading Chapter 11, I realized that I mix both behaviouralist and constructivist styles. I use behaviouralist styles when it comes to reinforcing material such as historical events and sociological definitions. I found that I solely used a behaviouralist style last year for a required statistics class, when the constant repetition of problems and formulas was the best option. I did not resort to a constructivist style of construction, in which I could not make my own personal meaning of the material based on individual experiences, as the class was very formulaic and structured.
This was quite challenging for me to adopt at first, as I am very comfortable with constructivist structures and critical thinking. I had to follow a certain method in that class – in which knowledge was necessarily flexible enough to change. For example, I had to re-learn the way I approached statistics, it was very different from the math I had learnt in high school. Like the concept discussed in The Backwards Brain Bicycle, a skill I was comfortable with was challenged and I was forced to unlearn my previous behaviourist construction style to adopt a constructivist one, to thus relearn the discipline of statistics. By connecting the content of this video to my past learning experiences, I newly learned that knowledge does not equal understanding, and that in order to excel in areas I’m unfamiliar with, I must be careful of the way I interpret things and be willing to change them.
Relating to the neuroplasticity of the brain, I found an interesting image that directly relates to the video:
This image reinforces the idea mentioned in The Backwards Brain Bicycle, in which the brain is apart of an algorithm in which unlearning and re-learning a skill disrupts its ‘control system’, making it difficult, and that exposure is just not enough. Instead, like I did with in that statistics class, we must not assume that understanding something is not enough to classify it as being knowledgeable in that area. Willingness to challenge the concept of cognitive biases must be done through “repeated and direct attention towards a desired change.”
References
Ertmer, P. A., Newby, T. 2018. Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism. In R. West (Ed.), Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology (1st ed.). Available at https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations.
Monet, M. (2019, September 4). Neuroplasticity is Mind Boggling Science. Medium. https://medium.com/invisible-illness/neuroplasticity-is-mind-boggling-science-29a215e44096
SmarterEveryDay. (2015, April 24). The Backwards Brain Bicycle – Smarter Every Day 133 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0
This is a peer review for the interactive learning resource topic on stress.
Starting off, I really appreciate your ‘Welcome’ section. It’s great that you presented exactly what this resource would include and provide to its audience. This initial clarity tells the reader who exactly this resource is targeting, and what will ultimately be achieved by the end of it.
I definitely agree with your choice with using the constructivist learning theory in association to stress. Like you mentioned, the personal experiences brought up by students will create more meaningful interactions of learning. Especially important to the topic of stress, it is crucial that learning is promoted and acquired through a space in which learners are able to draw on and share their own personal experiences – which you have already demonstrated in your document.
To take it one step further, perhaps you might consider elaborating even further on how you will achieve this – or what you might consider if students do not feel comfortable using this model to learn or express. Considering cooperative learning and its overall encouragement of students talking to each other about their personal experiences and strategies, how will you navigate students who just simply don’t want to share? I think your chosen age group is perfect; the alarming rate amongst them is quite concerning. However, it is undeniably an awkward stage during life where you don’t quite understand yourself, others, and your own emotions. Therefore, how will you address some of these setbacks?
Although it might be slightly off-topic, I found a helpful YouTube video that you might use as a reminder on how to approach this topic more subjectively. Some helpful tips that Children’s Wisconsin (2020) include:
Asking open-ended questions that elicit conversations, not just ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers
Validating and acknowledging their feelings as they express their thoughts
Working with them through their thoughts, not offering solutions
Remembering the demographic you’re teaching, and therefore altering the way you convey or interpret information
Great technology choices! I’m glad that you also included just simply using paper and a pencil. Kahoot is also a great way to keep your audience intrigued and interested – especially considering your chosen demographic.
As for your modules, I appreciate that you start off juvenile, and begin with definitions and fun activities like ‘true or false’. This will keep them engaged, but also slowly ease them into the upcoming topics. Educating them on potential signs of stress is also great! They might not be comfortable with or fully understand the extent of stress, so clearly identifying these markers is a very helpful way to eliminate confusion. Following up, including an exit slip that requires them to use their active recall is a phenomenal way in ensuring they won’t forget (or remember) the signs of stress. Personally, this has always worked for me too!
Introducing concepts of eustress and distress could be confusing, however, your additional explanation of it being ‘good’ or ‘bad’ stress is very helpful! I appreciate that you’ve included examples of everyday activities these learners could relate to, like: “doing physical activity, playing sports, [or] watching a suspenseful or scary movie”. Like you mentioned previously, this coincides with your inclusion of constructivist learning theory very well! Students are able to recall on their own experiences, and relate what they’re learning directly to it. Overall, your other learning outcomes and activities look great, and I fully agree with them being good activities in keeping the students not only engaged, but also learning.
Personally, my favourite activity is in learning outcome 5 with the ‘Think Pair Share’. However, like I mentioned above, I think it would slightly elevate your description if you included how you might react to and accommodate students who might not want to share. If majority of the students feel this way, will this become an obstacle in carrying out this and other activities?
Overall this is an amazing interactive learning resource! I really appreciate your topic itself, I think this is such an important conversation – especially for this demographic. I believe that these conversations should happen more often in classroom settings, and this resource is definitely one significant way to start the conversation. Thank you Pod 4 for your contributions!
References
Children’s Wisconsin. (2020, October 15). How to talk to your kids about mental & behavioral health [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQbVoaD3hl8
