Week 5: Needs Assessment

1. Under the Problem model, if it is determined that the cause for poor achievement or endowment is due to learning, and instruction has not been offered, analysis should proceed to Step 1 of the Discrepancy Model.
2. The three factors that instigate need assessment are:
• When there is a problem that clients are not satisfied; students are dropping out of school; service standards are down.
• When there many be something new that learners need to learn: New Website interface requiring new income tax filing procedures; new equipment added to MRT top up station allow Credit Card payments.
• When there is no big problem but the organization wants to evaluate its learning/training systems.
3. Following the Innovation Model may lead to the realization of certain goals not well accomplished.
4. Facts about Discrepancy Model and the Innovation Model of needs assessment:
• Both the Discrepancy Model and the Innovation Model have goals.
• Discrepancy Model's goal is to correct a performance deficit or a learning problem; the Innovation Model's goal is to address a new need.
• The use of the Discrepancy Model or the Innovation Model comes after the Problem Model.
• Analysis at the Innovation model may lead to existing goals to be reexamined through the Discrepancy model.
5. The three sides of Needs Assessment :
• Discrepancy model
• Problem model
• Innovation model
6. Discrepancy model -- Cause of problem is related to learning and past instruction has been given

Resort to other solutions -- Cause of problem is not related to learning and instruction but past instruction has been given.

Innovations Model -- Cause of problem is related to learning and no past instruction exist.

Week 4: The Concept of Learning Design Authoring and Technology Integration.

1. Triangle denotes Resources; Square denotes Tasks; Circle denotes Supports.
2. According to Oliver (1999, 2001) and Oliver and Herrington (2001):
• learning supports are schedules, instructions, procedures and scaffolds
• learning activities are problems, investigations, projects and role-plays.
• Assessments are in the middle.
3. Affordances of digital tools are:
• perceived actionable properties
• actionable properties
• perceived actionable properties and the amount of perceptible information.
4. Learning design as an approach to E-learning design ascribes to the philosophy of "learning by doing" is true.
5. The letters of the ADDIE model of instructional design denotes (chronologically):
Analysis
Design
Development
Implementation
Evaluation
6. The analysis stage of E-learning design is concerned with:
• finding out the learning problem
• finding out what "new innovation" is to be taught
• finding out the learners' prior knowledge
7. According to Oliver and Herrington (2001) and LittleJohn and Pegler (2007) the three structural components of learning design authoring are:
• learning tasks, learning resources and learning supports
8. The purpose of having a typology of affordances is:
• Facilitate the mapping of tool to task in learning design authoring
• Serve as a means to describe technology integration
9. The typology of tools according to Conole and Fills (2005) are:
• Information-handling tools
• Productive tools
• Adaptive tools
• Assimilative tools
• Analysis tools
10. The purpose of having a typology of task and tools is to facilitate the mapping of tool to task in learning design authoring.

Week 2: The Three Main Learning Theories

1. It is important for E-learning designers to be able to describe theory-bases of their field because:

- Theories are the source of principles from which the prescription for learning design is drawn.-

- It helps them to make pedagogically informed decisions when faced with new and unfamiliar situations.

2. Drill and practice approaches are generally not suited for (1) Issue-based problems & (2) Design problems.

3. Cognitivism and Behaviourism as pedagogical approaches are not against the lone thinker, whereas Socioculturalism is.

4. In socialcultural pedagogy, the unit of analysis is the whole system of people and objects and organization.

5. The reasons for extrapolating a learning task on the Octahedron is to:

- approximate the pedagogical approach

- make informed decisions when mapping an appropriate tool to task.

6. Behaviourist pedagogy:

- Sees the mind as a black box

- Is based on behaviour modification via stimulus-response pairs, controlled and adaptive response

7. Socialculturalism focuses on:

- on the activity system, not the individual.

- the interaction between people and the tools that the culture provides to help form their own view of the world.

8. Cognitivism focuses on internal knowledge structures, processes and representations.

Week 1: The conceptions of E-learning and two historical perspectives.

1. The problems of out-fashioned content and concerns about economy of scale associated with computer-based training (CD-Rom) no longer apply to E-learning today.
2. According to ROSENBERG (2001), the benefits of E-learning are: (1) Learning is 24/7, (2) E-learning is scalable & (3) Timely and dependable content.
3. According to ROSENBERG (2001), E-learning is a form of distance learning but distance learning is not necessarily E-learning.
4. According to Holmes and Gardber (2006), the drill and practice approach (which is characteristic) of Sydney Pressey's Teaching machine is NOT dead today.
5. Computer-based training (CPT) is: (1) Dull, (2) Page turner like textbooks & (3) Mirror drill and practice approach
6. Film was: (1) The first modern learning technology & (2) Used to prepare US service people for WWII
7. According to Rosenberg; Holmes and Gardber, film and television are considered to be in the history of technologies for learning
8. E-learning hinges on the perspective one takes although E-learning is predominantly a form of online learning.
9. The three perspectives of E-learning are: (1) E-learning as a basic concept of educational delivery or interaction via technology, (2) E-learning as particular computer-based and on-line method of educational delivery & (3) E-learning as an educational technique (pedagogy).

My Networked E-Self!

Page Addict History for 9 daysI think IVLE makes students use the internet daily and that accounts the significant amount of time spent on school online for the past 9 days. Well, the social networking is probably..Facebook only haha. But seriously, Facebook has helped me to keep in touch with many friends and also helped me to find many old time friends! I use E-mail (NUS webmail, gmail and hotmail) pretty often due to project collaboration and also because I use them to keep in touch with my good friends overseas!


Hooeey: Top Links Browsed by Time

Hooeey: Top Links Visited by Frequency

Hooeey: Browsing AnalysisWell, like I said above, I'm a nocturnal person, so my activity at night is so much higher than in the day!

Hooeey: Browsing Time

Google Web History
Honestly, before I did this assignment... I didn't know that Google has such a function, yes I'm really outdated! It's pretty cool cuz the times are so specific for each webpage visited!

Google Trends Summary

Google Trends Bar ChartsSee Monthly Search Activity
I think the reason behind such high search activity between Sep to Nov was because my boyfriend was doing his SEP in HK so I used the internet very often to keep in touch with him. Haha!

See Daily Search Activity
I stay in hall and there's internet connection almost 24/7 so that explains the fair spread of activity over a week

See Hourly Search Activity
Haha this just shows that I'm really nocturnal! But can't be helped when you stay in hall and everyone sleeps late!

Digital Ethnography

The following online tools have helped me in collaborating digitally with my group mates for a project!

1. Wetpaint
2. Diigo
3. Evernote

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"Wetpaint is a free wiki hosting service (or wiki farm) founded in October 2005. All wiki URLs are a subdomain of "wetpaint.com". Wetpaint targets non-technical internet users who want to collaborate online, and therefore attempts to include easy to use features, such as a three step wiki creation wizard. In March 2008, Wetpaint added social networking features. Wetpaint is free of charge and supported by contextual advertising. Established educational sites are ad-free upon request." Answers.com, retrieved March 9th, 2009.

I believe that Wetpaint can be used as an effective e-learning tool as it allows and enables students to collaborate online for projects, assignments, etc. Moreover, Wetpaint is actually quite interactive! There is live update on the homepage for each group/subject, poll can be used, and users can create their profile, 'compliment' one another and add friends!

Check out my Wetpaint project!
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"Diigo (DEE-go) is a Social bookmarking website which allows signed users to bookmark and tag web-pages. More exclusively, it allows users to highlight any part of a webpage and attach sticky notes to specific highlights or to a whole page. These annotations can be kept private, shared with a group within Diigo or a special link forwarded to someone else. The name "Diigo" is an abbreviation for "Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff" Answers.com, retrieved March 9th, 2009

Diigo is very helpful as it helps me to easily highlight anything I want, especially the main points. I can make sticky notes which can be either private or public! This allows me to quickly recall what I've learnt from the website, most of the times articles or journals, and aids in my research!

Check out my Diigo URL!
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"Evernote is a software application that allows users to capture information of various types, including text notes, mobile phone snapshots, printed and handwritten text within images, web clips, and digital ink. All data added to Evernote are run through a series of recognizers that make any text within the various note formats searchable. The application uses a continuous "roll of paper" metaphor for its user interface. Additionally, users may create folders, categories and notebooks."

Evernote is really powerful I must say because I can store almost anything I want. I can even organized what I found on the internet on different folders and likes. I mean, you don't even need to download and save them on your hard disk or computer! Save a lot of space, don't you think? I can even share with other people what I've researched by making my notebook public, save me time and money to print them out and distribute! haha.

Check out my notebook!
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I must say these online collaborative tools are really quite good. Help us to store information more easily and better still, share with others conveniently on the groups we've create on the sites. Also, I realised we seemed more helpful when it comes to cyber presence, as in we critically asked and answered questions which I think helps a lot in narrowing our focus and achieving efficacy! But of course, there are bad times like lag in communication and cooperation due to asynchronism of logging on to the website, it can be quite frustrating at times! Also, the large mass of information..sometimes cause indigestion of information, kinda hard to filter them altogether! Haha. But I'd say it's really a good experience! (:

Paint it like Wiki!

"Wetpaint is a free wiki hosting service (or wiki farm) founded in October 2005. All wiki URLs are a subdomain of "wetpaint.com". Wetpaint targets non-technical internet users who want to collaborate online, and therefore attempts to include easy to use features, such as a three step wiki creation wizard. In March 2008, Wetpaint added social networking features. Wetpaint is free of charge and supported by contextual advertising. Established educational sites are ad-free upon request." Answers.com, retrieved on Mar 9th, 2009.

I believe that Wetpaint can be used as an effective e-learning tool as it allows and enables students to collaborate online for projects, assignments, etc. Moreover, Wetpaint is actually quite interactive! There is live update on the homepage for each group/subject, poll can be used, and users can create their profile, 'compliment' one another and add friends!

Check out my Wetpaint project here!

Learning Design (Revised)

Previously, I did (or rather improvised) a learning design model with my group mates during tutorial. In the end, I decided to do a new one myself because I didn't quite contribute to the one we did! Anyway, just in case, the one we discussed in class is here. The one I just did is below:

Revised Assignment 1!

Summary of The ADDIE Model

An instruction design is a strategic planning of a course. It assists teachers and learners to connect all the dots to form a full and clear picture of teaching and learning events.

The ADDIE model consists of five stages - Analysis, Design, Development, Evaluation and Implementation. It is a tool that help people to think through a course's design. Although it appears linear, it does not necessarily have to be followed rigidly in a linear method. Following is a quick guide to the ADDIE model.

Analyze
Pre-planning; thinking about the course

• Design of course
• Audience
• Goal
• Objectives
• Identify contnet
• Identify Environment and Delivery
• Instructional Strategies
• Assessment Strategies
• Formative Evaluation
• Constraints

Design
Design your course on paper

• Name the learning units of Instruction
• Identify content and strategies for an individual unit of instruction
• Write instructions for the learning unit
• Name the menu items for a learning module

Develop
Develop course materials and assemble the course

• Based on design phase
• Build content, assignments, assessments
• Build course structure
• Upload content

Implement
Begin teaching

• Overview of course
• Expectations
• Initiate instruction
• Interaction
• Ask for feedback early on (formative evaluation)

Evaluate
Look at the course outcomes with a critical eye

• Did the students achieve expected learning outcomes?
• What have you learned?
• How can you make the course better?

The domains of learning

I was researching more on the domains of learning and managed to find more information.

Just to share! (summarized)

Cognitive Domain - knowing & thinking
It is knowledge or mind based and has three practical instructional levels including fact, understanding, and application. The fact level is a single concept; typical verbs include define, identify, and list. The understanding level places two or more concepts together; typical verbs include describe, compare andcontrast. The application level places two or more concepts together to form something new; typical verbs include explain, apply, and analyze. The mode of delivery in cognitive domain is usually a lecture/presentation and the evaluation contains both subjective and objective test items.

Psychomotor Domain - doing
It is skill based where the student produces a product. The three practical instructional levels include imitation, practice, and habit. This domain is steeped in a demonstration and delivery. The imitation level is a duplication of the demonstration under the instructor's supervision. The practice level is a proficiency constructing experience that is performd by the student without direct watch of the instructor. The habit level is attained when the student is able to perform the skill in twice the time the instructor or an expert takes. The delivery mode is demonstration and proficiency construction. A skill test is used for the evaluation. The knowledge to perfom the skill is cognitive.

Affective Domain - feelings & attitudes
It is based upon behavioral aspects and is possibly labeled as beliefs. The three levels are awareness, distinction, and integration. The verbs are generally restricted to words like display, exhibit, and accept and they apply for all levels. The first two levels are cognitive. Integration is behavioral and it requires the learner to evaluate and synthesize. The content normally involves discussions. The testing in the first two levels will be cognitive, whereas the third level will require an affective checklist.

Learning Design: Using Adobe Photoshop

Before modification,

E-Timeline!

Visit Dipity at http://www.dipity.com to create an interactive and audiovisual timeline of the topic with your own title. Text, photos, or videos, either your own or from different online services such as embedded You Tube videos, Twitter, RSS feeds, Blogger, Flickr, Picasa, Last FM, and more.

I created a timeline of my own, you can view it at:
http://www.dipity.com/timeline/The-Automated-Household-Machinery

To use timelines in critical and creative way is not simple because it is a new medium and most of us don't have experience with creating such presentations. The multimedia element in the timeline makes the whole thing even more complicated which proves again how difficult it is to do critical work (written, theory based, summary) with interactive presentation (timeline).

Roland Barthes' Ideal Textuality

I think hypertext is a form of e-learning because...

Ideal text is one that is reversible and makes readers active users instead of being passive by allowing them to become producers of their own interpretations and meanings. It contains hypertext that are made up of blocks of text, of which some lead to other data/forms of data through electronic links. Hypertext makes references and finding references much easier.

Read more about Ideal Textuality in the comic strips I made below!

What are the Prominent Words in a Text?

Use Tag Cloud to aid in finding the prominents words in your long readings now!

From Answers.com:
A tag cloud or word cloud (or weighted list in visual design) is a visual depiction of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, used typically to describe the content of web sites. Tags are usually single words and are typically listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag.

BUT... (in my opinions) They are not so helpful.
[See both tag clouds above: First one is tag cloud of the original text and second one is tag cloud of the summary I've written for the text]

The words “Applicatio-Media-Theory” are the prominent key words in my cloud. The words omitted were “author-bardzell-Jeffery-book-claims-primer-read-work-expect-experience”.

Omitted words appeared in the original tag cloud clearly because of repetitiveness.

“Media” and “theory” are dominant in both clouds because they are the main topic of the article.

Both tag clouds are ill representation of the text. In the original, redundant words were listed as prominent, evidenced by the appearance of synonyms “book, work” and the author name. While in my summary, it fails to note other key points in the summary (“usefulness” is one word that should be included, which would immediately indicate the subjective bias of the author towards the topic.)

The Theories of Learning (Assignment 2)

Blogs I've read:
http://leeweining.blogspot.com/
http://iheartnm3204.blogspot.com/
http://tiff-elearning.blogspot.com/
http://jadorebridget.wordpress.com/

Blog I've commented:
http://iheartnm3204.blogspot.com/

*****

One of this week's tutorial questions is "In your opinion which theory promotes 21st century skills and why?" Initially, my answer was the Sociocultural approach. But after a deeper and critical thinking (hey, doesn't this reflect Cognitivism? haha), I came to a conclusion that learning is too vast an act, process or experience of gaining knowledge and skill. One theory is not enough to envision and predict the subjective effects of learning on people. Learning has different dimensions and I believe that is the reason why the three theories are developed. However, I feel that they should not be independent of one another but be cohesively used when we try to understand learning as a whole. In the survey Alfred conducted not long ago, nine possible problems were listed out for each theory to apply to. It has helped me to see the three theories and their difference more clearly.

When I think about Behaviourism now, two keywords appear in my mind instantly -- Rewards and Punishments. I feel that most of us have pretty much experience or rather exhibit Behaviourism since we were very young. When we behaved ourselves or perform well for our spellings, our parents bought us candies and toys. Likewise, when we misbehaved ourselves or underperformed in our tests, our parents gave us a good and long earful. Our parents don't even have to be a professional educator and they know how to apply Behaviourism, perhaps subconsciously on their part. Behaviorism can be applied to teaching and learning of rule-using, algorithmic and puzzle problems. All three problems require test and trial in order for us to reach the end result. Learning rule-using is close to what I mentioned above about the candies and earful we got from our parents when we do things differently. Therefore I feel that Behaviourism, to me, is the fundamental of learning where we become aware of what are the basic 'right's and 'wrong's before we advance to higher learning.

Cognitivism...to me is individual critical thinking. I feel that Cognitivism is a crucial theory of learning because everyone can be taught the same things but not everyone can think and assess things in the same way. Unlike Behaviourism where learners are deemed passive, Cognitivism makes us all active learners, makes us different from one another! Also, if Cognitivism doesn't exist, we will have difficulties explaining why some people still commit crimes and why wars are still take place. Behaviourism only explains how we acquire the knowledge of right and wrong but cognitivism explains how we might still act/think another way, against the knowledge of right and wrong. Cognitivism can be applied to the learning of trouble-shooting and diagnosis-solution. For trouble-shooting, we can all find out what the problem/trouble is but how we deal with it might be different. To sum cognitivism up: We are not just receivers of information, we all see, think and react differently and that's why conflicts happen.

Sociocultural Approach (SCA) is these three words together "others-context-self" and they mirror the aspects "social-experience-reflection" in the diagrammatic representation of learning came up by Conole, Dyke, Oliver and Seale. Also, we learn from the readings that in SCA, the unit of analysis is bigger than the individual learner, it's actually the whole system of learning. At first, I find SCA interesting because Behaviourism and Cognitivism are about ME, well logically speaking, we are the learners afterall right? But I come to understand that learning is close to nothing without others (social), context (experience) and self-assessment (reflection). Don't our lives get more complexed and complicated as we grow up? I know what is right and wrong (behaviourism), so what? I think about this matter in this way (cognitivism), so what? As we grow up, leave our comfort zones and enter into more complicated environments, it's inadequate to learn what is right and wrong and/or know how to think critically. We need to learn by interactions with people, thinking critically and in the right context. Issue-based problem is therefore best applied with SCA as we need to consider who we are interacting with, what situation it is and what we think is appropriate for this situation. Then, based on these considerations, in what ways/how we should deal with the issue.

Behaviourism, Cognitivism and Sociocultural Approach together gives a cohesive picture of learning and in my opinion, they shouldn't be viewed independently. They are like steps from simple learning to complex learning!

E-learning!

Before the first lecture, I had no idea that E-learning has such vast definitions. I guess E-learning is used interchangeably under different contexts and situations. To me, I think E-learning is a type of learning whereby the medium of instruction is computer based/technology and the process is web based.

I tried to recall whether I had gone through any E-learning when I was in primary school and even secondary school but I could hardly think of any. I could only vaguely remember trying some grammar and mathematical exercises in primary school and learning basic html coding in secondary school. But when I talk to my little cousins now, they tell me how they always use computers to do their assignments at home and learn in the computer labs in school. I was very impressed when I heard my seven year old niece telling her elder sister "Just google it to find out!" (about some games). I think I didn't even know how to use a computer, let alone GOOGLE something back then!! But I guess this is a sign of technological advancement.

I realised we have all been using computers so much for our school work I sometimes find it nostalgic to just use a pen and paper to produce a handwritten assignment! If I were to definite E-learning as computer-based only, I think all NUS students are proficient E-learners by now... I'm sure many are going to use IVLE as an example of E-learning so I'm gonna say FASS GAPS and CORS are actually pretty good examples of E-learning. There are so much plannings and research done during these two significant online exercises.

I do agree with Prof. Low that E-learning should not only revolve computer technologies alone but also design technologies. I guess the element of design is largely to avoid the alienation of learning in E-learning. But I understand from the readings that the design technologies are being compromised because of computer technologies and also that there is a lack of emphasis on design technologies. I really think that design technologies shouldn't be neglected! Because there is already no face-to-face interaction in E-learning, we will probably lose social skills and become such uninteresting people after depending the computers too much for E-learning!

Also, I think we Singaporeans should really appreciate the high accessibility of internet. The high access has made E-learning possible for us. But of course, we should not take it for granted that everyone has a computer and internet access at home. This is where we should take a step back and look at E-learning from an even bigger perspective -- Digital Divide. The rich have effective access to information technology, acquire the proper skills and benefit from E-learning the most while the poor will lag behind due to imbalance of resources and skills.

Alright, I think E-learning really has many issues for us to discuss. Till then, take care!