Good Song

Choose media and emply learning theories into web-based instruction

Some issues needed to pay attention in the planning process, I think they are: who are the learners, what is the essential content, what teaching strategies and media should be used, what is the learning environment and planning to teach on the WWW. The sections of who are the learners and what teaching strategies and media should be used are the two parts I like mostly.
If I am designing an online course, getting to know the target audience will be the first step because all the following steps such as design the content, choosing the media and teaching strategies and others are all based on what kind of learners I am going to teaching. This is also called learner-centered. Then how to know these learners I am going to teach? According to the author, educators need to analyze the four areas about learners:
Analyze the general abilities of the class: allow instructors to observe how students relate to the content of the lesson.
Analyze the potential of learner interactivity: students may benefit from all kinds of activities that cannot be countered in traditional classrooms
Understand learner characteristics: which can lead to the high effectiveness of teaching and learning.
Help learners understand the context of the learning experience: there are three types of context: orienting context, instructional context, and transfer context.
In my future online class designing, I first need to think about the learner side and the content I am going to teach and then I will choose an appropriate media which match the curriculum and content. I think the media which I choose to deliver the instruction is not the most important, the most important things for online course designing are how to design the content according to the learners and how to choose one media that match the contents. I will keep these principles in my mind.
The attributes of media, teaching models and learning performance can help instructors a lot to understand the implications when I may need to pick one specific delivery or presentation medium in the future. The methods that used in constructivist teaching are very holistic, collab­orative, and also motivate to learners. The instructors are looked as a coach or a guilder in the process of teaching and learning in the constructivism theory. However, there is not a stable standard of the using of technology in different constructivist environments. The interaction is thought very important in the Social and radical constructivists’ opinions. But the information processing and interactive constructivists may think the information, facts, and contact involved in the teaching and learning are the most important elements.
The activities that represent this learning theory are various, such as:
• Proposing the real problems that existed in the world.
• Following the instructors or other experts in a certain area and apply their theories to solve problems and learn from the experiences.
• Working within an authentic problem context that reflects as much as possible the problem’s real context and characteristics.
Among all these activities, I think the “Importing the real problems in the world into education” is the best and I also would like to use it into my education process in the future.

THREE SUPER WBI WEBSITES EVALUATION III

Site: UW CSE142 online

Subject: Procedural programming, basic control structures, file processing, arrays and defining objects.

URL: http://www.online.cs.washington.edu/

This course site contains three links on the home page: CSE142, faculty information and other course online. The majority part is under the CSE142 section which includes course materials, schedule, lecture active, and lecture list four subsections. All the information includes hand out materials, course schedule, classroom assessment tools, quizzes, homework, homework solutions, exams and resources, are all here. The next section offers students lecture schedule and handout in both PDF and PPT format. From the lecture archive section, students can get the lecture in web, videos, and audios format. This section is also allowing students to download all the materials online. If learners want to check the lecture schedule, they can go to the lecture list section which is also the last section. It offers students the titles of all the lectures and the length of each lecture. This website uses a tree model to design the web pages and the offering of lecture in videos give feeling as they are facing to the instructors physically. Furthermore, the information offered in this site including the lectures, schedules, and other materials with details is very useful to learners to keep up with the learning pace. Another strength aspect of this website is the consistent of navigation menu which will guild learner through all the pages contained in this site.
There is an obvious weakness of this website is that the layout is not very clear. Same information is offered be different sections. For example, learners can download the lecture in PPT format form both the lecture archive and lecture schedule section which may cause learners to check both link and download twice. Another weakness is the file size is too big to download some times. All the lectures that can be both downloaded or viewed online, however, they are either too slow to download or to slow to watch online. I think the first, the download materials should me zipped and cut off several pieces before upload them. Second the video for online watch should be made into streaming format. Another suggestion is that combine the lecture archive and lecture list two sections together which will make the navigation more clearly. Also, it will be better if the designer can create a link only for learners to download the course materials for offline using. The same thing if composing another separate link for online viewing will make the layout of this website more clearly. The last thing I want to mention is that the font size is kind of big to users and looks uncomfortable. Especially, in the course materials section, font can be smaller and also make the page smaller. Do not need that much space between each topic. I do not think that is a good idea that using tables to display the contents. It will be matter if the designer can just all links right below each lecture titles.
Generally speaking, this is a good website that offers students enough information for this course. Multimedia technologies such as audio and video are also used in this websites. It contains all the important components for a course website. The consistent of navigation menu give users a clear and easy guideline and help them view through the whole site. This website will help the people who cannot attend the on-campus study and it also will benefit the students who have the difficulties with algebra studying. It is a good example of course web site.

THREE SUPER WBI WEBSITES EVALUATION II

Site: NROC – Introductory Algebra 1A

Subject: A multi-representational approach to algebra; understanding, writing, solving, and graphing linear equations; systems of linear equations and inequalities, quadratic equations, and rational equations.

URL:http://www.montereyinstitute.org/courses/Algebra%20IA/nroc%20prototype%20files/coursestartc.html

NROC Introductory Algebra course is an excellent course website. The whole site is divided into three parts: introduction, syllabus, and units. Course description and learning objectives are provided in the introduction section. The syllabus section is illustrating that the course will be taught in two semesters and the course outline in this semester are provided in a subsection under syllabus. The four units that offered in the first semester including 19 lessons and each unit includes four lessons. The majority contents of this course are in the units section. In all the lessons under each unit, there are three subsections: Readings (Objectives and Readings); Multimedia (Play Introduction, Play Lesson); Assessments (Chapter Test, Answer Key). All the lesson objectives, chapter need to read from textbooks and multimedia lecture can be found among all these lessons. Furthermore, learners can evaluate themselves through the assessment sect. Generally speaking, the whole course emphasizes a multi-representational approach to algebra, with concepts, results, and problems being expressed graphically, analytically, and verbally. It is really a good course website for algebra studying.

When I view this web site I felt comfortable and quiet which is the environment needed for study. When users go through the pages they can find that not only the navigation bar is consistent, but also is very clear and convenient. The header of this site is very simple, but it matches the whole design. White is the majority back ground color, plus the black text and green and red header, they work well together. The totally 19 lessons, also, are created in same style and have three categories: reading, multimedia, and assessment. Learners can figure out how to learn and where to start very quickly. Especially the multimedia subsection offers users very clear videos with audio which are also separated into several sections. Users can watch them online and the speed is very good. I also found that if the designers can add more sections to this website may make it more helpful to users. For example, some users may want to download these materials and listen to them in iPod, mp3 or some other portable devices which cannot be realized in this course. Also, if the designers can add another section for learning pace or something like schedule for learners to follow maybe better.

Undoubtedly, no course websites can be the perfect. There must be somewhere can be made progress. Plus different people may have different opinions to the same website. This website overall is a very good one. I like the design style and simple layout which make me very clearly know where to go, how to get there and where I am in the sites. It makes learning convenient, interesting and easy. Learners will enjoy learning through this website and this is also the goal for all the course websites: making learning more fun, convenient and efficient.

THREE SUPER WBI WEBSITES EVALUATION I

Site: MITOCW – Seminar in Historical Methods

Subject: Approaches used by historians writing

URL: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/History/21H-931Spring2004/CourseHome/index.htm

The MIT open course ware offers a series of courses online (over 1800 courses) and all these online courses are free. MITOCW is the first organization to post free courses online. This course named Seminar in Historical Methods is an online course offered in Spring, 2004. The course is designed to acquaint students with a variety of approaches to the past used by historians writing in the twentieth century. This course site is divided into seven parts: Course Home, Syllabus, Calendar, Readings, Lecture Notes, Assignments, Download this Course. The course home section introduce learners the description of this course. The syllabus is very simple and offering learners information about the assignments and grading details. In the calendar section, instructors are trying to make a schedule for learners. Reading section listed all the materials that need to be read for this course. Books information that need to be read in this class is introduced in the reading section and these books have made significant contributions to this field and have been selected to give as wide a coverage in both field and methodology. I think the greatest part is lecture note, because it provides learners video with audio format lecture which makes learners feel that they are in the real classrooms. The assignments examples in the assignment section is very helpful to the students who want to self evaluate their assignments. Furthermore, in order to give convenience to users, this course can be downloaded and viewed offline. As introduced in this site this course focus on the questions below: how historians conceive of their object of study, how they use primary sources as a basis for their accounts, how they structure the narrative and analytic discussion of their topic, and what are the advantages and drawbacks of their various approaches.
Clearly layout and navigation menu design are the reasons why I recommend this website as a super example of course website. This website has a very simple but clearly layout. Learners can find all the information they need from the seven sections as soon as they see the menu. The combination of background, header, foot design, color, font size and style give a viewers-friendly interface and greatly feeling. It can grasp the users’ attention at the first glance. The clear and reasonable layout designing includes a separate link for downloading the whole course which is an efficient consideration. All the lectures can be either downloaded to iPod or listen online through iTune media player. This offers learners more choices and makes learning more convenient and efficient. Furthermore, this website also offers lectures in video format which makes this web course almost perfect. And both the speed of the audios and videos downloading is very good.
To be honest, it is hard for me to find problems of the web design. In my own opinion, I prefer to add a little bit more graphics such as back ground, header or footer to make the page more active. I also think the instructor’s information is also needed. Overall this is a good website and interesting course.

An inportant m-learning devices: PDA and its potential in education

Personal digital assistants (PDAs) are becoming more and more popular nowadays, especially in business and industry areas. In education area, PDAs are more attractive for the small size, cheap price and powerful function. In education area, PDAs have other advantages, such as light weight, access to information, supporting many learning activities, infrared beaming support, unlimited by time, data transformation, communication abilities, and long time battery support. PDAs can also be improved in the future, such as employ more functions and more convenient to users. Some other aspects that needed to be improved are: PDAs are cheaper than laptop but not cheap enough for all the students. The problem is there is a theft risk for students to use them in schools. PDAs have very powerful functions such as games which may mislead students. In fact, some educators are worrying about PDAs will distract students from studying. Except these, there are also some other potential problems: low computational capability, without printing problems, lack of multimedia displaying problems, inefficient input operation and small screen. Some technical problems may be solved very soon with the development of technology such as low computational capability and inefficient input operation. Some other problems maybe exited all the time with PDAs like the distracting to students.
As Dr. Yuen talked in this article PDAs can be used many ways in education: used as multimedia textbooks with calculator, calendar, notepad and pencil. In fact, PDAs are like school bags to students; help students with organizing and managing time; easy accessing to reference materials; individual centered material managing; and other ways to use in classrooms. PDAs are efficient for students to learn and connect students to learning materials all the time.
PDAs can be used to enhance both teaching and learning. First, on the teaching side, PDAs provide communication opportunities between instructors and students all the time. Whenever students have questions or instructors have information to share, they can contact each other. PDAs make teaching anywhere and any time. Second, on the learning side, PDAs definitely helped students a lot more. Except the advantages that mentioned above, PDAs can do more: students can check assignments, schedule, lecture, and note anytime they need. Furthermore, they can do their assignment through PDAs and turn it in through the PDAs too. PDAs can also help learners to improve the usage of their time, whenever learners have a small piece of time want to study they can access all the materials they need through PDAs. Technologies represented by PDAs are bringing us a new ture of learning revolutionary.
This article is besed on Dr. Yuen's article: Teaching and Learning with Personal Digital Assistants http://dragon.ep.usm.edu/~yuen/teaching/it780/resources/pda-yuen.pdf