Session 6: Piecing the Virtual Course Together through Learning Activities and an Instructional Design Team

Learning Activities with an Emphasis on Absorb Practices

1. According to William Horton, Consulting, Inc., (2011), absorb activities are the “read, listen, and watch” practices in any effective online course.  Our course plan discusses a student PowerPoint presentation and recordings that the instructor will do for his students. In addition, not only are there articles and readings that the instructor will post, but all these components are strong examples of absorb activities, where sensory learning is required.

2. According to William Horton, Consulting, Inc., (2011), Do activities are the knowledge and skills a student can take from any online course. In addition, discovery and decoding information are essential components as well.  These aspects go hand in hand with the discussion board questions.  The questions will give the students insight into new topics and will make them ask questions--which is critical in an online course.

3. According to William Horton, Consulting, Inc., (2011), Connect activities are applying what you have learned. For younger children, this may include a math scavenger hunt, where the student takes what they have learned in their current math lesson and try to search for their own answers. For this particular online course, the connect activity would be the group-based activities. This form of interaction helps the students apply what they learned, enforce roles, create collaborative techniques, and increase effective communication in order to understand the underlying goals of an assignment. This leads to group success, which may lead to success if same tasks are employed in future group scenarios.

4. The learning activity I wish to elaborate on are absorb-based activities.  Development tasks in creating presentations are hard work in face-to-face courses, not to mention online courses. Let us first review what absorb activities typically address. According to the Learning Activities (2010) PowerPoint, absorb activities include presentations, sharing stories, readings, and occasional field trips.  I propose the PowerPoint presentation required of each student be presented with a demo aspect that addresses the cultural movements of colonialism, industrialism, and modernism. The demo may be an interview with the instructor himself that addresses his views on the three eras. However, our sources are quite limited. The professor can only perform for a record if needed, has many students to tend to, and does not prefer the use of web 2.0 technologies to communicate with his students. Therefore, for this absorb activity, it may be best to form into groups and email the instructor questions about the eras and later present the finding to the class. In addition, another plausible idea would be the instructor to require the students to create a cause and effect list that addresses the three cultural movements.

5. Now, this task would be different if I was directing the development efforts of a team that includes a graphic designer, a video editor, and a web programmer. The efforts of the online course provided by the team would be immense, well-structured, secure, and ready for any technological adds if instructed by the teacher. Firstly, the above task would still include the demo, but now the demo could possibly be an interview with professional through Skype meetings set up by the Instructional Design team. Not that the instructor would not be an adequate source for Skype meetings, but, we know that the instructor prefers traditional student interaction as opposed to online student interaction. The interviewees could possibly be professionals who have studied these dimensional eras and provide evidence that they truly existed through text, famous people of the time, and learning practices. In addition, when the demo is complete the instructor should require the students to list that steps that caused these cultural movements in the PowerPoint. Not only does this absorb activity stimulate the learners through visuals (PowerPoint), but the demo enhances the credibility and gives the PowerPoint more sensory feedback, which enhances recall knowledge from the text.

The goals of the team in this PowerPoint would greatly enhance the structure of the presentation drastically. The web developer, according to The development of online courses (2004), creates an atmosphere of confidence and illustrates content and interactive options available. In addition, an organizational template is used that emphasizes evident “learning objectives” [provided by the instructor] (par. 37). This absorb activity will inevitably be enhanced with the web developer who will, “help the instructor to use tools to make the course interactive, such as e-mail and chat utilities; working with the graphic designer to conceptualize the screens, backgrounds, buttons, window frames, and text elements in the program. This creates interactivity, and creates story boards” (par.37). The role of the graphic designer would include any technical drawings related to the PowerPoint, the development of templates, icons, and graphics to enhance the content presented. Great tools that could be used are Adobe Photoshop, a tool to format images, and Macromedia Freehand, used for creative design. The programmer would use specialized tools to increase the interactivity in the PowerPoint presentation. There are two tool classes: code-based programming language and graphical user interface (par.43). Open-source code-based programming language includes:

·         Hypertext markup language-page requests are sent to server and World Wide Web if needed in PowerPoint presentation

·         Java-enables chat, games, and computing

·         JavaScript-creates user interface and websites

·         Perl-programming language

·         MySQL-database language

Proprietary GUI web-development software packages include:

·         Macromedia-macromedia tools for software CDs

·         Microsoft .NET and Visual Basic-enables programs like PowerPoint to run

·         Adobe GoLive, Photoshop-manages web sites; enhances imagery

The Digital Video Editor would help in the presentation by helping to alter previously recorded footage. Popular software programs include Windows Movie Maker and Camtasia. There are universal components in any editing software such as “dragging and dropping”, transitions, sound tracking, and storyboard techniques. The editor has knowledge of audio, visual, and S-video inputs and outputs (Brown, 2006). A culmination of this Instructional Design team will create a successful, professional, and aesthetically pleasing presentation. 

6.  A test that would be appropriate for the online course we developed with guidelines taken from the instructor would be matching list questions (Horton, Consulting, Inc., 2011). First and foremost, we want to stick with an online test format that students will understand universally. The others just seemed too complicated. The pressure of taking a test is already a load. The last thing we need is for a student to not succeed on an exam due to its format. The matching list questions require learners to specify each item in one list to items in another. I believe it would work well for this foundational course where the three cultural movements, dates, and historical figures, etc., could easily be matched to an event. Basically, you drag a word/topic on the left to its answer to the right, with the assistance of an arrow. However, fitting in a few short answer questions or pick-one questions(with click-down boxes) would match typical multiple choice exams that the majority of the students have already used!

Resources

Brown, Z. (2006). Digital video editing. Educational Technology. 24 October 2012. Retrieved from

http://edtech.wetpaint.com/page/Digital+Video+Editing

Caplan,D. (2004). The development of online courses. Design and Development of Online Courses.

            24 October 2012. Retrieved from http://cde.athabascau.ca/online_book/ch7.html

Learning activities. (2010). [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from

            http://www.slideshare.net/gregaloha/learning-activities-4128807

William Horton, Consulting, Inc. Absorb, Do, and Connect Activities. 23 October 2012.

                2011. Retrieved from http://www.horton.com/portfoliodo.htm