Learning with Technology

Category: EDCI 335 – posts

Post #4

March 9, 2025 / / 0 Comments

In this video, students are not forced to respond in any way. However, they are likely to do the things suggested by the video. For example, the video advises viewers to understand and look at nutrition labels. Learners who didn’t understand these lables would then be likely to feel a lack of knowledge and, when presented with an opportunity to learn more about nutrition labels, want to do so. Learners who do understand nutrition labels would be likely to pay more attention to them in the future.

After watching this video, we as instructors could give a small amount of explanation about the meanings of nutrition labels and how to read them. We could then ask students to look at food labels on several products from their homes to compare a variety of specific nutrients. For example, students could find three items that have relatively high amounts of calcium compared ot the daily recommended intake, and three items that have relatively low amounts of calcium. This would help students to develop their ability to understand and apply their understanding of nutrition labels. In an online course, they could submit images of labels with written or video documentation of their findings.

Each student could get feedback by comparing their findings with two others and selecting 2 – 3 foods within the group as generally the most nutritious.  They would, as a group, write a few sentences to defend their choices, using information from the nutrition labels.  Both the written justification and relevant food labels would be submitted. Online, they could use meeting technology such as Zoom to discuss as a group; they could use Google Docs to collaborate on the written justification; everything could be submitted on a Learning Management System such as Brightspace.

This activity would be manageable in terms of work for us, the instructors.  We could check to see that nutrition labels had been understood correctly by the group and the written justification demonstrates that the students have thought about the information.  Depending on the level, depth, and length of the course, the work would be manageable and worthwhile for students as well.  A shorter course might call for briefer and less time-consuming activities, while something longer would allow enough time to look more closely at nutrition labels. For larger numbers of students, perhaps pre-selected nutrition labels would make less work for the instructor since there could be less variation in information for students to work with.

Post 3 – Inclusive Design

March 1, 2025 / / 1 Comment

Blog Prompt: Choose one (or more) of your planned learning activities from your Blueprint and identify any barriers to student success. How can you alter or adjust your current plan to reduce those barriers?

Students to any course bring with them unique needs, abilities, and history.  This diversity, if not addressed, can lead to a large proportion of students having trouble engaging fully in learning within the course.  Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a framework created by CAST to address a diversity of student needs based on what is known about the human brain, offers guidelines to support student learning in a number of ways (CAST, n.d.).  Based on these guidelines, we can design multiple options for engagement, representation, and action & expression in order to increase access, support the learning process, and support executive functioning.

One of the planned learning activities we have in our Blueprint is to read an article and a webpage about healthy food choices.  Barriers to reading could include difficulty with language, literacy, or vision.  To reduce these barriers, we could encourage students to use translation or text-to-speech technology if they choose.  We could also offer video or podcast alternatives which cover the same content.  If the course is given in person, we might investigate to find out if any student needs alternatives for large print.  We could also offer the article and/or webpage in options written for multiple levels of English comprehension.  Finally, we could ensure plenty of pictorial support of the text, with captioned descriptions.

Additionally, there may be misunderstandings in the students’ conceptions of healthy eating, which could impact access due to bias and distracting ideas.  CAST UDL Guidelines suggest creating a supportive culture by exploring how biases can impact learning (CAST, n.d.).  This could be done in a short introduction to the reading, video, or podcast, acknowledging possible preconceptions or myths about healthy eating.

Another barrier could be difficulty in transferring learning from the article, website, video, or podcast, to application in meal planning for themselves.  We can support this by including explicit references and connections to this learning in future assignments.  We could also survey students ahead of time to learn about the foods they like so that we can use relatable examples to help make sense of the content during instruction.

References

Post 2 – Design Thinking

February 8, 2025 /

Design Thinking is a human-centred approach to problem solving, meaning that it revolves around meeting the needs of the people who require solutions.  The process consists of five phases (Dam & Teo, 2024): 

  1. Empathize – At this stage, the designer collects quantitative and qualitative data and considers both to gain a robust understanding of target users’ needs.
  2. Define – Once user needs are established, the designer can define the problem.  In real life, problems are not always well-defined.  For this reason, this stage may be revisited at any time, as user needs are better understood, to revise the problem.
  3. Ideate – The designer generates ideas to solve the problem.
  4. Prototype – A solution is fleshed out.
  5. Test – The prototype is tested for efficacy.

This process is non-linear and iterative.  Rather than follow the steps sequentially, any phase can be revisited to improve upon the solution (Dam & Teo, 2024).  However, the intent is to create working protypes early so that they can be tested and learned from (Belling, 2020).  The approach encourages the designer to understand users, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems with the end goal of improving products (Dam & Teo, 2024). 

Alignment

The Big Ideas of our Design unit are “variety and balance are vital to healthy eating” and “fad diets can negatively impact physical and mental health.”  In Health Promot J Austral, Romero & Donaldson (2024) include many examples of design thinking in public health education, which suggests that design thinking would align with our health topic as well.  We currently have planned an activity in which students learn to evaluate the healthfulness of a meal and create healthy meals to apply the understanding of healthful eating to make personal choices.  We could alter this assignment to involve design thinking by asking students to help a fellow student make improvements to their diet. 

First, they would interview the other student in order to understand their current diet.  Next, they would define the problem by choosing something in the diet to improve.  They would then ideate by coming up with some ideas of changes to make in order to improve the diet, and prototype by creating a plan to make those changes.  They would propose the plan and seek feedback from the other student to test the prototype. Is this a plan that the other student could realistically follow? Does it seem consistent with food guidelines as they understand it?  The student would use this feedback to improve their suggested plan. 

This process would require the learner to understand both the target user and guidelines around healthy food choices, addressing the first Big Idea of the unit.

References

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Post #1

January 22, 2025 /

Blog Post Prompt: Based on your reading, would you consider your current instruction style more behavioralist, cognitivist, or constructivist? Elaborate with your specific mindset and examples.

Many teachers develop their instructional style intuitively, based on how they themselves learned and how they believe people learn. In order to gain more instructional tools, it is useful to reflect upon the ways in which people learn and make connections with one’s own teaching style. In EDCI 335’s course reading, Learning Theories (2025), three major theories of learning are described: behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism.

BehaviourismTeaching based on behaviourist theories focus on helping students change their behaviour based on what they are taught. For example, a behaviourist would consider a student to be successful at learning 3 x 8 if the student can consistently respond to the question with 24.
CognitivismCognitivist teaching is concerned less with what students can observably do and more concerned with students’ thinking processes. A teacher using cognitivist strategies strives to help students develop skills for problem solving, reasoning, language, and mathematical thinking. For example, knowing that 3 x 8 is 3 groups of 8 or 8 groups of 3, and being able use that idea to solve problems is more important than simply knowing the result, 24.
ConstructivismConstructivism considers that learners make their own meaning from personal experience and reasoning. A teacher using a constructivist lens attempts to create authentic situations, similar to those in which the learners will apply the new knowledge, and guides learners to construct meaning and check themselves for accuracy, as in an apprenticeship.
(Ertmer and Newby, 2018)

Where Do I Fit?

When I consider my own current instructional style, I think I lean towards cognitivism. I like to present students with novel problems which allow them to show me their current understanding of concepts and the lines of reasoning they use as they attempt to solve them. As well, part of my explicit instruction is to point out similarities between the strategies they have used to solve problems with new strategies that can be useful. As a Math teacher, I feel that helping students be aware of ways of visualizing concepts and applying this understanding in their reasoning and problem solving is an important part of my job. Additionally, I include in my lesson planning plenty of time for practice with immediate feedback to help students effectively assimilate new concepts and processes.

Although cognitivism is a large part of my teaching, I also feel that behaviourist and constructivist lenses play an important role in my instructional design. As more students arrive in my high school classes not knowing facts such as multiplication tables, I have begun to incorporate behaviourist strategies like asking for fact recall during instruction and reviewing periodically so that less information is forgotten.

I have also heard from many people who say that they struggled with learning Math because the problems were so different from how they might apply it outside of the classroom. I try to construct authentic problems for my students to help them make those connections. As well, to allow students to create more personal meaning to their learning, I encourage them to work together on the problems and identify things they learn during the process, and I create opportunities for them to apply concepts and strategies in creative ways. I coach them in learning to validate their own solutions and make judgements about the quality of their solutions.

Overall, I feel that it is important not to subscribe to a single theory of learning, but to use the lens most appropriate to designing for what we hope our students will learn. In the BC Curriculum, we want our mathematics students not only to be able to calculate using established algorithms, but also to develop their reasoning, demonstrate understanding, make personal decisions, and reflect upon connections. Teaching each of these Curricular Competencies needs a distinct approach and requires us as teachers to be well versed in all three of the major theories of learning.

References

Learning theories. EDCI 335. (2025). https://edtechuvic.ca/edci335/learning-theories/

Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. (2018). Chapter 11 Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism. In Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology West, R. E. (Ed.). EdTech Books.

Featured Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com.

Introduction

January 11, 2025 /

Hello, welcome to Learning with Technology! I am EverythingSoup, which is a lot like something I make for my family at the end of the week. The soup has a little of this and a little of that, using things that aren’t necessarily often cooked together, but combines to make a dish that works.

Professionally, I am a secondary school Math (and, technically, Science) teacher. Having moved to “The Island” from the Lower Mainland a couple of summers ago, I find myself working in part-time contracts, and thought that the time I have spent not working could be put to good use in upgrading my teaching skills. I hope that I will learn a great deal in EDCI 335: Learning Design in Technology-Mediated Environments.

My interest in using technology for learning comes from a few different experiences. I spent a decade as a co-owner of a video production company, where I picked up skills related to the use of website, graphic design, and, of course, video production software. I also supported my children in Distributed Learning and Online Learning programs throughout much of their K-12 education. We found some learning environments to be easier to navigate and learn from than others. When I returned to classroom teaching a few years ago, I found that online resources and applications were being widely used in schools. At the same time, the classroom is still very different from online spaces and other digitally delivered programming. I look forward to digging deeper into the ideas and practices around course and environment designs for effective learning.

Personally, I am a quiet person. I am mom to two young adults and share life with my wonderfully creative and joyful partner. In my free time, I love to ballroom dance, go on hikes, or cuddle up with a good book.

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