Failure to Motivate

If an online course fails to keep the attention of the students, review of the target audience, instructional practices, and curriculum need to be analyzed to determine the cause.
For this discussion I will assume we are discussing a class of non-traditional students in an online program such as ours. As Dr. Jeanne Ormrod discussed in this week’s presentation, adult learners will have much different factors contributing to their motivation. This makes the reasons for class apathy different than those seen in more traditional settings. Non-traditional students have formal education and real life experiences that shape perception of the online class and its instructional content. A 19 year old freshman with no work experience is less likely to disagree with instruction than a 40 year old person seeking a graduate degree in a field he has worked in for 25 years.
According to Dr. Ormrod and our text, in order to maintain high levels of motivation, students need arousal, competence, self-determination, and relatedness. These psychological needs are recognized in the ARCS Model of Motivational Design. Without knowing the true reason for declining interest in a course, the four components of ARCS can be analyzed to determine possible areas for improvement.
First, if the problem is related to attention or arousal, the curriculum may need to be redesigned to include more inquisitive activities. Non-traditional students need to be challenged with meaningful and thought provoking ideas. The activities should be varied and dynamic to prevent a monotonous pattern of instructor driven assignments. Students should drive the debate and lessons could be altered with their ideas in mind.
Relevance is a more important issue with non-traditional. Older students who have worked in a field and decide to pursue a related degree will have real life experience standing in the way of instruction that sometimes exists only in a perfect world situation. How do you motivate a student who believes the ideas will never work in the real world? The activities need to be authentic in delivery and execution. A student majoring in Graphic Design should feel everything they do in the production of their assignments is true to that career. Assignments should present clear objectives and goals are clearly defined by the instructor or students.
Student confidence can also affect motivation. Students need to be aware of course goals and objectives. Activities should be described in detail and expectations should be clear. Grading policy and deadlines cannot be ambiguous opening the door for feelings of unfair treatment and confusion. Success should be achievable at various levels. Small accomplishments will lead to large ones. Consistent feedback and constructive criticism are needed to push students in the right directions for success. In a middle school setting, new teachers who do not consistently apply classroom policies and procedures will often discover their mistake and take the Thanksgiving vacation to develop a strong set of policies and start the year over that Monday. This shouldn’t be an issue in graduate level courses.
Satisfaction can lead to a positive experience in class that provides great motivation for students. Assignments should be authentic and students should feel that they not only successful in their course work but are developing the skills to be successful in the real world. They should have opportunities to use newly acquired knowledge in real life situations. Feedback should be authentic and reinforce desired behaviors. Equity in standards expectations is very important to motivation in students.
Determining the issues with students in an online course and applying the correct adjustment with basic psychological needs and ARCS model in mind will increase the level of participation in class.

Week 7 of Learning Theories and Instruction

Being a school teacher for ten years, I had determined my own learning style a long time ago. The ideas I had about how I learn have been reinforced through this course. The past seven weeks has been very enlightening. I enjoyed gaining a much deeper understanding of my learning preferences and an even greater understanding of how to instruct others.

So many of the strategies we use in public education today are key components of Constructivism. The school district has done a poor job developing a good understanding of constructivism and reasons why teachers have to implement its strategies in class. As the Instructional Facilitator for my campus, I have been able to better communicate the constructivist theory and why we use certain strategies in the classroom. My entrance into the Instructional Design field is great blend of my education and design backgrounds and a bit of perfect timing also. Many of the Connectivist strategies are still being introduced in public education. The concepts I learned about over the past 7 weeks have helped organize my ideas about instructional strategies on my campus. I look forward to implementing these ideas over the coming months.

Technology is such an important tool in education today. I spend more and more time using technology to learn and improve my own abilities. The web is my primary resource for new information. I use it constantly to develop better understanding of new concepts. Ten years ago the information I found on the internet made its way to worksheets and Power Points. Today the information builds my personal web pages and sparks conversation on campus blogs. Teachers now receive information through RSS feeds and text messages more often than memos or meetings. With new technologies on the horizon, I possibilities are limitless. I am very excited about the future of instruction in public schools and corporate settings. I hope to continue this blog as a record of my progress in both my education and career.

Future of Instructional Technology

This week in class, we were asked to discuss an emerging technology that we could use in the next 5 years as Instructional Designers.

It was difficult to decide on one emerging technology that could be utilized in an educational setting. In education today we have so many different technologies to use. The problem is that they don’t always work together. You find yourself setting up one technology system one day and another system the next. The cost of buying several individual components becomes an issue also. I feel the problem is not what products to use, but how to bring them all together in an intuitive and efficient interface. Because of this I think mobile devices will be the key to the integration of all applications needed to bring about a renaissance in education.

In education today we have access to a huge amount of information on district servers and the web. We have hands on kits that provide interactive and authentic learning environments. We have small handheld devices that record and upload data to computers. Graphing calculators are used in math classes. Most rooms have access video projectors, document cameras, scanners, and sometimes smart boards. How do we pull it all together?

I believe the evolution of the now popular electronic readers will bring all these applications together. Several companies are developing the next generation of readers that will give students the power of a laptop in an affordable, lightweight package. This type of mobile device will give access to everything else the Horizon Report discussed to each student in or outside a classroom setting. These new readers are less expensive to purchase and upkeep. They will allow a district like mine to provide each student with a mobile reader for less than the cost of annual book adoptions and computer purchases. Apple Computers and Plastic Logic are introducing their tablet readers in the next year or so and I’m sure the evolution of these devices will be considerable faster that what we saw with items like the IPOD.

Using these new mobile devices, students could enter the school and daily assignments can be uploaded to the readers before they hit their seats. Attendance can be taken as the devices enter classrooms and connect to the network. Interactive presentations and text can follow the instructor’s lesson. Students can see video, graphs, charts, and images at their seat instead of having to look at a screen across the room. Notes can be taken on the readers as the lesson is taught. Interactive lessons can be deployed after the lecture. Students can get up and use the tablets to guide them though cooperative group discussions or lab setting type stations. As the students work through the lessons, the mobile device can follow them. They can access the district intranet or the web utilizing those applications made possible through cloud computing. During the lesson, information can be uploaded to their personal webs, submitted to the teacher’s virtual inbox, or printed directly to the class printer. Homework assignments can be loaded and the student can take the tablet home to complete. RSS type feeds can provide students and parents with information. The ability to sign documents on the reader and submit will eliminated letters home. Grades, progress reports, and daily communications can be automatically updated on each tablet by teachers. Alerts, school cancellations, sporting events, and special events can be sent to the student through the mobile device.

I have been following the development of the devices for about a year now. I am very excited about the possibilities of these mobile devices in an educational setting. These devices will be the new hub of the connectivist world.

Plastic Logic QUE

References:

Johnson, L., Levine, A., & Smith, R. (2009). The Horizon Report (2009 ed.). Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium. Retrieved from http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2009/
Date Modified: 16 Dec 09 11:38 PM MST

Network Changes Impact My Learning

With the addition of my classes through Walden University, my learning network has changed dramatically. The Mind Map below does a good job visually representing the impact. Most of my learning and influence now comes from my courses. Although the information in our classes is somewhat familiar to me, it has had a profound effect on my performance at work. The classes have refocused me and my ideas. I have implemented several changes at my campus that have all been successful. The information I use to make decisions now comes from outside of my career and has made a dramatic difference. Blogs, webs, and profession webs have become the main learning tools. In the past I relied on the internal support from the district.

The most important tool I use is my laptop. I would be lost without it. 3 months ago I found out just how lost I was. My computer became infected with a Trojan house that somehow bypassed the district security measures. Several others in the district were also affected. I had to use a loaner machine for five weeks. I had to reload software, set up email, and configure everything to run the way I like it to. The first day it happened I sat and did nothing for the most part. I felt lost. Luckily everything was backed up but I didn’t have access yet to the information on the new laptop.

I now have to laptop back and its running better than ever. That’s good with all the new knowledge and ideas flowing in from internet based sources. I knew these resources were out there but I never utilized them like I am now. Whenever I have a question I use the online resources first to develop a better understanding of possible solutions.

I feel more connected than ever and my enthusiasm for what I am doing couldn’t be greater. My learning network is growing every day. I am developing a support system that will help me and my peers.

Mind Map using Adobe Illustrator

Social Constructivism and Online Learning

I believe an online education can be a fulfilling and valuable experience, but it has obvious limitations when scrutinized by Constructivists.

The best experience I had in education was at San Antonio College. I started there after high school in the Advertising Art program. Many of the classes I took there were taught by professionals from the local advertising and design agencies. Even the permanent faculty worked closely with the different agencies. Most classes were centered around the completion of an advertising campaign based on an assignment given to us by the agency. If it was a copy writing class the focus was on copy and the agency’s copywriter would be our advisor. Two or three times throughout the course we would meet at the agency and discuss the progress of our campaign. The final class was at the agency and we had to pitch our final product to the professionals as if they were the client. It does not get much more authentic than that. I learned so much during my time there. I did not really appreciate it until I moved on to Texas State University. The program is highly rated, but I found a much less authentic environment and was disappointed with my experience.

Constructivism is strongly tied to social interaction. Although we have great discussions via the internet there are several issues that make it difficult to say it is as constructive as a face-to-face class. The authentic learning which is important to Constructivists is not always practical in this setting. The blogs are a great way of connecting to other professionals but still does not provide the same experience I mentioned before. Responses by others in the class are great but the ideas are usually well thought out and lack the spontaneous debate that happens face-to-face. I think the discussion is often deeper than a face-to-face would be so there are some benefits. Scaffolding, Reciprocal teaching, and Peer collaboration all have their limits in this forum. Another issue with online courses is the environment. When you go to a brick and mortar school and sit in a class the environment is conducive to learning. That environment is not always available in this situation. Another idea that stood out in the reading this week fell under the premise of Situated Cognition. Students exposed to a certain procedure for learning a subject experience situated cognition for that method; in other words, that is how this content is learned (Ormrod, Schunk, & Gredler, 2009, p. 187). If we learn in an online environment will we only be able to perform in an online environment?

I think that these issues and others mentioned in this week’s text are minimized by maturity and experience in both learning environments. Personality and learning style also plays a significant role. I believe in online education and feel I will get as much out of it as I put in. There are however, limitations to this format.

Valuable Resources - Creatively Speaking

All this talk about brains and learning theories have me thinking about two people who have influenced me in my career choices in the past fifteen years. As an Instructional Designer I find their influences are still relevant and form a good foundation for my future.
I was introduced to Edward de Bono when I started college in pursuit of a degree in Graphic Design. De Bono’s book, Serious Creativity, was required reading at Southwest Texas and for good reason. Strategies like Lateral Thinking and Six Hats method are great for developing creative or “out of the box” approaches to problems. You can find more information including weekly postings by Mr. de Bone at his official website
http://www.edwdebono.com/index.html

In Education, a new Learning or Teaching theory comes around every five years or so. When I started teaching, Harry Wong was the name I heard most. His classroom strategies and techniques for building relationships with students was the hottest thing going. Today, Robert Marzano has educator’s attention. His strategies are firmly based in learning theory and educational research. His book, Classroom Instruction that Works, was the subject of a district wide book study 2 years ago. You can find more information about Mr. Marzano and his research at the following link.
http://www.marzanoresearch.com/research/researched_strategies.aspx