Ai-Chu's Design Principles

Hi all,
Here are my design principles for language teaching. Hope you enjoy!

DomoNation.com: design language teaching by elisha75830

My job aid and crazy spring break

OK, so I couldn't finish the dreamweaver tutorial as I promised myself.

This spring break I was and still am overwhelmed by the assignment loads. I contribute most of my time on finishing the job aid and our major project. Yeah, that's right, although major project does not due until some time in April, our group needs to finish creating the whole instructional website by this Monday so we can do trial run next week on W200 class.

Tired, but rewarding week!
Although this spring break feels nothing like a break (been staying up for several nights), I am contented with how much I learned through working on my job aid and the major project. I feel that I am getting a better sense on color and spatial arrangement than I used to be at the beginning of R541 class :)



My job aid:

 

Week 10- Lynda.com Tutorial

Dreamweaver CS6 Essential training

I have not created or designed a website before, but since our major project is going to be an instructional website for PLN, I figured learning some web design skills might be helpful. I have finished the first chapter of Dreamweaver CS6 Essential training on Lynda.com.

Some take-aways includes:

1.  How to manage my workspace
• Panel arrangement
• Different screen display: code, split, design. I can even split the screen into two code windows. One shows HTML and the other shows CSS ( Go to application toolbar and select split screen view).  
2. The difference between HTML and CSS 
• In HTML, you are just giving commands.
• In CSS, you are creating styles through sets of commands.  
3. How to use functions in the "property" inspector including
• Designing your text (font, typeface, bold or Italic...)
• Matching the text color with certain color  
4. How to use functions in the "Insert" panel 
• Create description and title for my webpage (in Meta tag) 
• Preview my design in certain browsers 

This is only the first chapter, so basically what I am learning here is just to get myself familiar with the workspace environment. I am planning to finish the whole 9.5-hour-long tutorial during this spring break. I might spend one day watching the video and practicing the exercise and another day reviewing and applying what I learned through creating a self-introduction webpage. That's my plan for the spring break and I WILL ACHIEVE THIS GOAL!!! 

Week 9- IST conference 2013

Even though I am not a student from IST department, I sure did have a very great time participating the 2013 IST conference . This conference has become the highlight of my week for sure :) Thanks to every IST people who make so many efforts in organizing this event.

During the reception diner, I joined Dr. Curt Bonk's talk in regard to MOOC. I was pretty confused at the beginning because I had never heard of MOOC before...actually it was until I went home and checked it online did I realize MOOC, Massive Open Online Courses, is a general term for online course systems rather than one specific website like Udacity or edX... Still, it is good to learn what MOOC is, its business potential, learning potential, and how it may change the game of higher education. I checked some of the MOOC websites (Udacity, HarvardX...) I really like their website design. In each course, they provide a introductory video at the beginning, which is visually appealing and creative. The Introduction to Computer Science course definitely used the common craft technique.They also provide class summary, skill requirement (There is no prior programming knowledge needed for this course!! <-- This sentence makes this course so appealing to me), and what knowledge we will acquire after completion. These designs no doubt make the course attempting for learners. 

In today's conference, one of the most interesting sessions I attended was Khendum Gyabak's round table which talked about "digital tools utilized to enhance literacy practices among the digitally under-served population". This is a very meaningful research and I like the idea of empowering students through creating their digital stories. Though I like her research very much, I sort of played the devil's advocate and challenged some of her points, after all, I am literacy education majored, should not let people get away from this topic too easily lol. Khendum answered my questions very well, which I felt I should totally learn from her. But at the same time, all the presenters did a great job and I totally learned a lot from everyone of them. Great experience. My mind has been fed :) 

Job aids potential topics

Topic 1: how to brew an espresso with "De'Longhi EC155 15 BAR Pump Espresso and Cappuccino Maker". 

We currently bought this espresso machine to brew coffee at home and found out the manual is extremely abstract and hard to understand, especially for English non-native speakers. Therefore, I would like to create a job aid for making a nice cup of espresso with this espresso machine to help people who are as confused as I am. I might also include information on bean choosing and grinding selection. 

Topic 2: Tax return preparation for foreigners. 

Tax return is also an extremely confusing process which I have not yet figured out. One of the greatest problem is its term usage in the instruction, which many of my friends have been complaining about. It would be great if I can ever get familiar with the whole process and design a job aid to make the process easier and understandable for people, but I am not confident of me ever understand the whole complicated procedure... 

Week 8- Scaffolding

Summary:

• Tom Bruch, John Saye
• Soft scaffolds, the dynamic actions of a teacher or peer in support of an activity
• Hard scaffolds: the static supports that can be planned in advance.

• Four types of scaffolding (Hannafin, Land, Oliver, 1999)
• Conceptual: 
• "here's the help you'll need for understanding this concept
•  --> highlight important concepts, provide questions or definition
• Strategic: 
• --> bullet points/ listing / diagrams
• Metacognitive
• --> reflection
• Procedural
• --> clip guy-information on procedure

• Things to think about:
• Complexity: ease vs challenge
• Structure: contrived vs realistic/ authentic
• Depth: basic vs deep understanding

• Decision points
• Presentation of content
• Practice
• Feedback
• Assessment
• Feedback
• Conclusion(reflection)

• A word about fading
• The goal: fade the support; achieve learner independence
• We don't always get this right

• How do we consider scaffolding in our design?
• Intentional design decisions
• Hard scaffolding
• Soft scaffolding
• With consideration for
• Complexity
• Structure
•  depth
• At various decision points
• Presentation
• Practice/feedback
• Assessment/feedback

• What's the difference between a job aid and a scaffold?
• Technology tools for job aids/ scaffolding
• Adobe captivate
• Groups diigo  

Reflection:

                                                  "What's the difference between a job aid and a scaffold? "

      To answer this question, I searched for more information on job aids and I found these two links to be extremely helpful: Designing a job aid, Dave's Ensampler. Based on my understanding, they are different in the following aspects:

	Job Aids	Scaffold
Purpose	To quickly access information to perform a task	To effectively acquire knowledge during task execution
Design	Gear towards one specific task	Gear towards specific learning goals
Element	Only involves presentation	Involves presentation, practice, feedback and assessment
Type	Tend to be procedural	Can be conceptual, strategic, metacognitive or procedural.

Basically, I feel that job aid is a part of scaffolding process while scaffolding involves a broader scope of learner's learning. I don't know if I understand correctly though... 

Week 7: Storytelling/ humor/ cases

Summary:

What is the role of humor?

• To create a memorable moment
• To foster a creative collaborative environment
• "contextually rich learning"
• Attention
• Encoding
• Emotion: emotion drives attention and attention drives  learning-Robert sylwester.

Why do we use stories? (Jonassen & Hernandez-Serrano, 2002)

• To convey or make meaning

• As a cultural communication tool

• To affirm commonalities or make distinctions

• To create memories

• To frame interpretations

• To understand

• To support arguments
• To facilitate vicarious interactions
• To facilitate authentic exploration

What is a story? (common elements)

• Context and characters
• Beginning, middle, end
• Conflict, climax, resolution
• Types:
• The springboard: what you can get learners from here to there; "I did this and you can, too" story.
• The exemplary situation: "the best way to do it" story
• The cautionary tale: don't do this, or something terrible will happen
• The turning point: we were doing this and we change our direction, and this happened as result.
• The historical account: part of what happened in the history
• The news item
• The allegory/ parable/ fable/ myth

What is a case?

• A story with a targeted learning or assessment purpose
• Sometimes called a scenario or a case-scenario

When do we use a case?

• To illustrate a pathway or best practice: learner reflects, discusses meaning
• As source for learner response, application of knowledge (formative assessment)
• To reveal gaps in learner knowledge: learner provides response, reflects, experiences, collaborative interactions, discusses meaning
• As summative assessment tool: learner provides response, is scored according to established criteria

Developing the Case

• Context and characters
• Challenge
• Timeline
• [the response]
• [results]

Decision points

• Introduction

• Presentation of content

• Practice
• Feedback
• Assessment
• Feedback
• Conclusion

A word of caution

• It is important to understand the range of cultural considerations
• Humor rarely translates between cultures and languages
• Don’t' essentialize: don't use characters or storylines that will deepen the negative impression/ perception on a certain group of people. Ex, use a Hispanic person as a criminal character.

Reflection: 

        Storytelling is an important element in teaching. Dr. G and Dr. L's screenshots together provides a comprehensive introduction to the theoretical principles and practical application of this element. On top of Dr. G's elaboration on case development, I think if we would like to use case analysis as a summative assessment, we should plan out the evaluation criteria first, and then develop the case based on the evaluation criteria. This shall ensure the case story includes all that should be evaluated. 

        The RSS story video in Dr. L's screenshot not only is interesting but also happens to be our project content. We might include this video in our project. "The open textbooks explained example" is an awesome idea for developing storytelling video when we lack the skills of using computer software to design graphics or animations. 

        Finally, in terms of humor and essentializing, it is true that humor doesn't translate between languages and cultures. For example, Americans like to show humor through sarcasm, which is something doesn't exist in Asian cultures. Using sarcasm as a way of humor may only make students of other cultures feel bad about themselves because they do not feel engaged in the situation and sometimes they even need someone else to explain to them why it is funny. It is also true that we should not use characters or story lines that will deepen the negative impression/ perception on a certain group of people. What is ironic is, I did not learn any of the negative perceptions until I started my studies in the US and people kept "EMPHASIZING" that we should NOT EMPHASIZING these negative perceptions and then explain what negative perceptions exists currently. If they did not tell me those existing ideologies, I may not even develop those perceptions. What makes the situation even more complicated is that, obviously, if you don't know these ideologies and act upon them, people recognize you as a foreigner, an outsider of this society. So what now?