Category: Assignment 3 – Final Review – Module 3-5 Blog Posts and Comments

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Module 3 Post

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In this module I was tasked with understanding generative AI and exploring its capacity for the classroom. We explored how new technology can be structured around learning and not vice versa using the TPACK and SECTIONS frameworks, so students can remain engaged with content while also not missing out on utilizing the newest tools. AI’s capacity for writing and generating information was also explored as a possible integrity issue which poses a problem for students and educators alike. AI seemingly appeared out of nowhere and left many people, educators especially scrambling to keep up and regulate it. But it doesn’t have to be a hindrance on learning, rather it can be an amazing tool to bolster learning if used correctly.

Generative Artificial Intelligence and Education

When I first became aware of generative AI I was a second year student here at UVIC. I recall a university wide letter being sent around to students warning us of the integrity violations you could accrue if you utilize any form of AI software for any means, anywhere from failing a course to being expelled were noted punishments. Since I had little knowledge of AI and I had been told its use in an academic setting was forbidden, I have never thought to use it towards the betterment of my learning, instead I learnt to avoid it and any AI-like platforms. I do understand where the university was coming from when it came to limiting the use of AI at that time, as very few regulations around the use of AI had been made. Nearly three years after OpenAI’s big release however, this has been the first class I have been in that has not only encouraged my use of AI, but has also taught me the skills to properly cite it as a source, and has given me basic AI literacy. 

I was able to explore tools in this class that I haven’t thought to touch or that i even knew existed such as Stable Diffusion below:

Fig. 1 “cute frog cowboy” prompt, Stable Diffusion, version Stable Diffusion XL, Black Technology LTD., 30 Mar. 2024, stablediffusionweb.com/.

The AI tool I decided to explore was Stable Diffusion. I am not an artistically inclined person, so drawing things even remotely like what this tool can generate is way out of my depth. I also happen to have a condition called aphantasia which means I cannot see images in my head, using stable diffusion was like outsourcing my imagination in a sense! I enjoyed the thrill of having no idea what type of images my prompts would generate, and seeing the final piece rarely disappointed! I will admit however, I was a little put off by having to use my personal email to use the Stable Diffusion application. I’m hoping that I can delete my account info from the site after I am done using it in the future. 

Generative AI, when used properly can be a fantastic educational tool, it can be used to summarize long form writing, generate ideas, check spelling and grammar, and create discourse to further discussions. It’s also an amazing tool for self expression and art when used correctly. I’m happy that in my time at university I have had the chance to be in at least one class where generative AI has been taught as a tool for learning, rather than villainized and pushed to the wayside.

SECTIONS Analysis for OpenETC

I decided that I would do a SECTIONS analysis on the OpenETC site utilized in this course, to see how it measures up to the requirements set for media in learning: 

Students: 

The students using this media are the EDCI 337 students and online people who happen on the blog and take an interest in reading through its content. In order to reach the blog a person will need to have an internet connection and a device to work on, this can be a personal device, a shared device or a public device. Access to a device may still be an issue for some students with limited funds or transport options. 

Ease of Use: 

The OpenETC site generator is easy to navigate and use because it uses WordPress to host its sites. WordPress has many online resources and tutorials for website creation, as well as in application tutorials for creating your first site. OpenETC sites are reliable so long as the student has an internet connection and the WordPress servers remain up. However, access and navigation throughout the sites may require basic internet literacy. 

Cost: 

OpenETC is a free to use educational website creation platform, as such the only monetary costs in generating sites come from the hours spent by users personalizing their sites. Since the sites are hosted using WordPress, it is likely future infrastructure will be supported in the long term, and maintenance will be performed on the backend when needed. There is a privacy cost associated with OpenETC. In order for students to sign up and create their own sites their school emails are used, which in the case of a data leak could cause their personal information to be compromised. The cost of a personal device to a student may also factor into the price of using this application for some students. 

Teaching: 

Student websites support teaching through the reflective analysis of ideas, which allow them to draw conclusions on their own and make connections to other aspects of their lives, schooling or thoughts. Based on the content of this course, a blog was the perfect form of media to use as it displayed the use of multimedia tools, but also acted as the ground where students would be implementing those same tools on their own sites. Desired learning objectives could then be measured through analyzing student blogs. Since most university students have access to a device with an internet connection at home or in a public space like the UVic library, the bar to entry of teaching using this platform was low. 

Organization: 

OpenETC is not provided by the University of Victoria, and is instead an open source educational website creation platform hosted through WordPress. It is available free of cost to the university, and therefore doesn’t have any support through the university. Although the library does not have information regarding OpenETC and wordpress, the internet has a plethora of information, and the OpenETC website also hosts information regarding the site building tool.  

Networking: 

OpenETC allows for websites to be posted directly to the internet, and thus anyone who wishes to access a site and who has a link can do so. Communication between people is facilitated on OpenETC by allowing those with sites to share posts on each other’s platforms. As the sites can be set to be viewable on the internet, people interested in a site’s content may also be able to reach out to a student or professor regarding their work. 

Security: 

WordPress as a site does hold some responsibility for the information given by students in order for them to create their sites, namely that user data will be securely handled when an account is made. However, as OpenETCs websites are fully customizable, students also bear some responsibility in protecting their own privacy, and not oversharing their details. 

According to the above SECTIONS analysis, the OpenETC site is suitable for use in this course, and inductive to learning for the type of educational content explored. 

Ethical and Academic Considerations

Every other week there appears to be another AI company being sued for the use of data to train their systems that wasn’t theirs to take in the first place. Just as stolen work has consequences in the real world, academic consequences for stolen AI work should be dealt with in a similar manner. Luckily for students, in order to avoid academic infringements there are now ways to cite AI sources. This has opened the door for students to start being able to use this new and exciting technology to further their learning endeavors, but not without caution of course. As was noted in this module AI does have a record of being incorrect 10%-20% of the time, thus students must be taught to be wary of the information AI gives them, and to do their due diligence. Universities appear to be slow on teaching their students how to properly use and cite AI which will affect them as they leave university and enter a world ever increasing in AI influence. Promoting the safe use of AI in schools benefits students, as once they are out in the world it will be at their fingertips. Barring them from this tool set out of ignorance or the desire not to use new technology will put them behind their tech savvy peers and force them to learn the technology at an expedited rate upon leaving for the job market. 

Given what I know now, and having finally experienced using AI technology in my learning environment after 2 years of it being out of my reach, I will definitely be using AI and other technologies to my own advantage during my learning journey, and the learning journeys of those I facilitate.

In this module I was tasked with understanding instructional design concepts such as constructive alignment and backwards design for lesson planning. I was also tasked with learning about active and passive learning, and reflecting on how lesson planning combined with active and passive learning and Miller’s concepts creates a landscape indicative to learning for students.

Instructional Design and Active Learning

Constructive Alignment and Backwards design struck a chord with me, they seemed like obvious concepts that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t had the forethought to use while creating the learning objective based lesson plans I had in the past. Not once have I thought to work backwards to ensure my learning activities worked towards my curriculum goals, but knowing what I know now I’ll be utilizing backwards design and constructive alignment far more often during future lesson planning.  For now however, I can only reflect on my past teaching experiences and evaluate where I did and didn’t go wrong without the use of backwards design. 

During my stint as a junior museum camp educator I found myself attempting to work towards many learning outcomes for the children I looked after, like learning about mining techniques, minerals and our general town history. I have felt the frustration of having taught information to kids and performed gamified quizzing based on my assigned learning objectives only to have them not understand what I had taught them, or forget the information entirely. I have fallen into having the kids create decorations and crafts after failed attempts at motivating them to learn, which I realized at the time isn’t indicative of learning or moving myself or them towards my objectives. Where I had some success was during the hands-on exercises we had at the museum, such as taking the children into the mine shafts and telling them stories about how minors would send in canaries, teaching them to gold pan and showing them the rare minerals which exist in the mountainside. All these activities seemed to create more buzz amongst the kids as well as lasting impacts on their knowledge, as opposed to the silence I would receive asking a question after a lecture about mining. Had I maybe worked backward from my desired learning outcomes, maybe I would have had the ability to balance the fun of active learning with passive learning to generate the most value for the kids while also hitting my learning targets. 

Given what I know now about backwards design and constructive alignment, I have attempted to create a lesson plan about the topic of growth mindsets: 

My experience with Active and Passive Learning 

For the whole of my highschool experience and nearly all of my university schooling I have been presented with the same passive content the writer of “To learn students need to do something”’s children were presented with, presentation slides, and the occasional offhand comments to write down key points made by educators. I have rarely experienced professors who allow for discussions and the utilization of students for demonstrative purposes. Although, I will note that in my experience, university professors are better at incorporating novelty in their movements during lectures than my highschool teachers (though this may have been due to space limitations). 

In the few university classes where I have had professors who have utilized a balanced amount of active learning and passive learning I have found that my engagement with the material increased, I made better connections to the topics, and my recollection of information increased. I recall a professor who would break up their flow after key points had been addressed during lecture, and would allow for students to talk amongst themselves for 5 minutes before posing a question and waiting another 5 minutes for us to deliberate on the topic. The class this  professor taught also happened to have the highest level of engagement I have seen from students during my time in university. Conversely, another professor I have had worked solely off of passive learning, they would read a slide deck for an hour and a half and then pose questions to the class at the end. This professor had very little class engagement, which it appeared she took to heart as the semester passed. Her questions began to come across as hostile as people would be disengaged and wouldn’t answer. Ultimately many people stopped attending that class, myself included. 

There is definitely a balance between active and passive learning, finding the right amount of core information to passively give students as well as allowing them time to disseminate the information and create connections is a skill teachers need for their students to flourish. After this unit, I’ve noticed that without fail, all of my favorite professors the past 4 years have managed to balance passive and active learning, and those I didn’t enjoy learning from relied solely on passive learning strategies. The concept of passive and active learning has been affecting me positively and negatively for years without my knowledge. Now I know these concepts, hopefully I can use them to my advantage during my time both as a student and as an educator. 

Active Learning and Multimedia

I decided for my active learning multimedia project that I would take my previous powerpoint and add review questions throughout, to test the viewers understanding of concepts as the video played. I tried to avoid simple yes or no questions, and attempted to get the viewer to engage with the material in order to know the answers to the questions, hopefully I was able to successfully do just that. 

I’m hoping that the inclusion of these review questions will allow viewers the time to create connections about the topic in their heads and apply the ideas to real life situations. I’m also hoping the questions allowed learners to draw comparisons to other forms of etiquette, like that which is performed in person. 

Principles of instruction

As someone not in the field of education, I had never heard of Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction. Though, while I was reading through the content in this module  I realized that once again the professors whom I have enjoyed learning from the most during my time in university consistently built their lesson plans off of the principles. One such professor I had for a class about algorithms started by teaching us the basic terminology for algorithmic structures, then she assigned us work creating and labeling an algorithm used for an automatic door, she then used class time to demonstrate common algorithms like the one we had made. We were forced to use our knowledge of the real world (how does an automatic door work algorithmically?)  and make connections to the terminology through our assigned work. She reiterated what we had learnt the following week in class by giving us more real life examples, time for discussions between topics, and demonstrations using student participants. Even though I took this class over a year ago I can still remember core concepts. 

Knowing what I know now about instructional design and active learning I will be altering how I design and think about my teaching processes in order to create better learning opportunities for my students and meet my goals as an educator.

In this module I was tasked with understanding learning through storytelling. I was reintroduced to the learning concepts around accessibility and teaching effectiveness, and given additional information on what makes a story compelling and engaging for learners so they can best absorb information. There is quite a lot more to efficient storytelling then I had first perceived there would be. Let’s dive into what I learnt about the art of learning through story. 

Storytelling

Before this module I hadn’t really realized how big of a role storytelling played in my own learning, I had always viewed myself as a visual learner in need of being shown practical examples in order to learn things, I realize now that I had nearly entirely discounted the words necessary for the visuals to be engaging and inductive to learning in the first place! Looking back on my highschool and university education I started to pinpoint the times when I had most retained information, often there was a story being told to go alongside the visual aids. Be it a personal anecdote or an entirely fictitious one, I’ve come to realize that the methods discussed in this module such as the humanization of the speaker, building of relationships with the audience and implicit messages aided in my learning and retention to a great degree. I was able to better utilize what had been taught if I had been taught it through storytelling. I was able to remember many more details and, by far, hearing someone’s journey allowed me to make connections to my own journey and experiences in a sense which only further cemented the points they wished to make. 

I recall a story which has stuck with me since I was a small child, about the dangers of crocodiles in Australia. The storyteller was talking about his own experience with crocodiles and how they very nearly took his life. The entire lecture was in a video format with animations to go along with the speaker’s story. I recall learning that day not to go too close to the water on riverbeds and to never go out walking alone, it’s a lesson someone else learnt that has stuck with me to this day. 

Keeping with the topic of my learning during this module, I realized that I had greatly underestimated the value of the human imagination during storytelling. Until it had been brought to my attention I hadn’t noticed that the stories I’ve been told allowed my brain to create connections, an example being the mention of blueberries and how I might now without meaning to, be imaging a blueberry, and/or how it might taste or smell. In storytelling visual aids are always a plus, as noted in the “7 Storytelling Techniques Used by the Most Inspiring TED Presenters” article, but I think the learners ability to synthesize the visuals and auditory aspects of learning into something their brains can comprehend and connect to may also be vastly undervalued by the learner themself. 

Twine for storytelling

Throughout the journey to create my twine “Pirate Adventure” there was only one thing I wish I had done differently, that being fleshing out the story component a little more then I had. I did have a rough plan for my story but that rough plan also led to an  issue I had with my twine as I attempted to link so many nodes together in different ways. Luckily I was able to rectify the problem, and I have attached a link to my completed twine below! If I do end up creating another twine in the future, I think I’ll write out the story from start to finish with all of the nodes accounted for instead of allowing new ideas to manifest themselves as I create the twine and tangle the logic.  

https://zxmx2npq.play.borogove.io

Educational Videos

With the advent of easy to create and accessible video creation platforms and our knowledge of how storytelling impacts learning, I can see why so many professionals are turning to the medium to enhance the learning of their pupils. Although we should be careful, we cannot underestimate how Mayer’s principles still play a part in our learning even in video form. Mayer’s principles are hidden but still actively utilized by videos intended for learning purposes, such as the use of segmentation in keeping viewers attention with short bite sized informative segments, the use of a focused narrative throughout as to not lose the viewer, utilizing visual elements and the inclusion of accessibility principles. I’m hoping that the video I created about the difference between country and downhill skis managed to do a good job of utilizing these principles while remaining engaging, although I fear that I may have tipped the balance between the use of Mayer’s principles and natural engagement at least a few times. 

I had prepared a rough storyboard about what I wished to talk about throughout my video, but I fear my lack of specifics may have left room for errors in how my video played out. I know now that when creating a video storyboard that I will need to be more specific in my intentions so I can avoid going off track or missing points I want to make that are integral to the video. Hopefully I can learn from this and create even more polished creations in the future!

Below is the storyboard I created for my educational video: 

My video will be posted as it’s own blog post with a separate reflection titled Assignment 2 – Video for Learning Purposes. 

Knowing what I know now I’ll be utilizing storytelling alongside educational videos more often when I plan to teach!