I will gain a detailed and evidence-based understanding of the appropriate and effective use of educational technologies in postsecondary contexts.
Goal #3
Goal 3 Main Page | Artifact #9 | Artifact #10 | Artifact #11 | Artifact #12
Format: Moodle/Articulate Rise
Course: ETEC 524 Learning Technologies: Selection, Design and Application
The major assignment in this course was the creation of a unit of learning in a platform of our choice. I had to select the most appropriate technologies to represent the learning outcomes and the content I chose.
I selected Moodle as my LMS because I am very familiar with it, and chose to create the corresponding walkthrough/explanation in Articulate Rise (below). You can also visit the Moodle course itself (choose ‘access as a guest’ at the login page).
Guiding Theories and Frameworks
A plethora of theories and frameworks come into play when designing an online course. One that I made use of for this artifact was the Multimedia Principle (Fletcher & Tobias, 2005) which posits that people learn better from words and pictures combined than from words alone.
This can be seen as a subset of Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (e.g., Mayer and Fiorello, 2022). Both rely on cognitive neuroscience to underpin their claims.
CAST (The Center for Applied Special Technology) takes a slightly different tack when it comes to their UDL principles (e.g., CAST, 2018), but the principles they define are also based in neuroscience and are critical in designing accessible resources.
Reflections
Although I have a lot of experience in creating online materials, especially in Moodle, being made to justify my ed tech choices (e.g. which Moodle activity to select for a given outcome) was a useful learning experience. It also acted as a technique for iteration in course design: I would choose a particular Moodle tool, and then when thinking about why I chose the tool, change my mind and select a different one.
Iteration is a key part of course design, a fact that’s sometimes lost in the ADDIE approach to instructional design (e.g. Branch, 2009). ADDIE is still prevalent in the corporate learning world, perhaps because of the cost of successive approximation/sprint development techniques, but I am finding that it is less and less useful as a design framework in postsecondary course development, where course design proceeds through various iterations and revisions. This artifact exemplifies this process perfectly.