Natalie’s blog post can be found here

Hi Natalie,

I appreciated your connection between universal design and Inclusive learning design! I also agree with your plan on recording your lectures and making sure that captions are available for all students, I also intend to do that with my group’s learning design. I like how you included multiple different components on how your group will support students with different needs. I also liked that you mentioned multiple different ways that you are going to support international students as well. Overall I enjoyed reading your blog post and the multiple different ways you have provided to support students!

Jingzhe’s post is linked here

Hi Jingzhe,

I really enjoyed reading your blog post about inclusive design! I liked how you mentioned that your employees would have to go through different training to adapt to new unexpected events. I think that especially when Covid-19 happened there were a lot of teachers that had to go through different ways to teach without having training on how to operate zoom or other changes that happened due to covid. For your current design do you also have a plan for students who have different accessibility issues like providing your lectures online with close captioning, or are you just offering your learning design in person?

Prompt: How can you adjust your planned learning activities to meet the needs of your learners if an unexpected event occurs? (for example, a pandemic arises and many of your employees must now work from home – how will you ensure that they can still do their jobs? What training will they need, and how will you deliver it, knowing they must remain at home?) This is a common discussion thread right now as many schools and universities have made the switch to teaching online.

I think that being able to design for inclusion is a key principle in entering any workforce in today’s society, especially in teaching. Covid-19 has been a good example of how society must remain flexible and supportive to provide people with equity. Universal design learning embraces this by removing the barrier, so we can identify what we need to do to support students instead of just labeling their struggles and adjusting to them. I think especially with my Pod’s topic being Study habits and strategies for academic tests, it is really important that the way we teach this remains flexible and highly adaptive since studying styles vary for different students. It is very important that students are able to learn in an environment that they are comfortable in as well as make sure that all learners can pursue a good quality of education with no barriers. I would make sure that teaching this would be done in person with a live stream zoom session at the same time so that students would still be able to ask questions and join in on class discussions. I would also ensure that the recordings are available after class with close captioning for those unable to attend, or for students to go back and use for a deeper understanding of the tasks. I would also adjust my planned learning activities by incorporating multiple means of representation, multiple means of action or expression as well as multiple means of engagement so that all students will have flexibility in their learning styles that will enhance their learning of the topic being taught. Additionally, by having a flexible teaching style no student is having their learning decreased or damaged. By having flexibility in the different types of teaching styles students can use these resources outside of the intended flexibility like catching up or attending therefore by having flexibility in teaching styles all students will end up better off than if there were no adjustments. Ultimately there is no way to predict unexpected events and I think that when these events arise the best way to approach the adjustments is to be as flexible and open-minded as possible because you never know what each individual is going through or how these changes have affected them.

Samara’s Blog #2 post can be found here

Hi Samara,

I enjoyed reading your post about experiential learning. I like how you related this to your final project and explained the role of how it will enhance learning within people, even if it doesn’t have a big role in your project. Personally I find that I love learning with a hands-on approach and being able to construct my knowledge about something using real-life experiences, I was wondering do you also find that you like learning this way?

Thank you for your post,
Catriona

Mirai’s blog is posted here

Hi Mirai,

I really enjoyed reading your blog! I definitely feel the same way about learning, I learn a lot better when I can relate to the example and the professor gives real-life examples. It sounds like you learn better with a constructivist learning style is this true? I find that with the classes that I have had that use active learning, I can better apply my previous knowledge to have a better understanding of the topic.

Thank you for your post,
Catriona

Gracie’s Blog is posted here

I really appreciated reading your blog post I found it really informative to learn what Direct Instruction System is. I love how you mentioned in which teaching scenarios it works super well but also what its limitations are. I found this really informative because It helped me to realize when I should try to use this aspect of teaching and during which topics. I really liked how you applied it to our project and gave an example of how it applies. I agree with you though that this system of learning would be hard with younger students, with shorter attention spans.

“Inquiry-Based Learning”

Inquiry-Based learning allows students to have a hands-on experience with what they are learning by becoming the experimenter.  This type of learning is hard to do with all subjects but applies well to science and mathematics since you can easily conduct experiments with a hands-on approach. According to Lazonder and Harmsen (2016, p. 681-718), inquiry-based learning has been one of the best ways for students to get a more effective and deeper understanding of the topic being handled. There are restrictions with inquiry-based learning because it is harder to use with younger children since they do not understand some key learning outcomes needed to understand tasks. These key learning outcomes needed are to develop a hypothesis to predict what will happen, the ability to do the experiment, the ability to provide evidence or a reason why this happened, and the ability to reflect and reason based on previous knowledge.  Additionally, many people like the Knowledge Quest Learning blog (2019) break inquiry-based learning into the 5 E’s; engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate, these 5 steps all allow the students to experience the hands-on steps while having a deeper understanding behind the answer.

This aligns with our chosen topic for our blueprint since we are asking students to try new study habits as well as reasons why their previous study habits were not beneficial prior to learn new strategies. When teaching new outcomes, we encourage the students to hypothesize how this study habit will affect them and use previous knowledge to apply why this study habit did or did not work.

This does have a place in our final interactive learning design since students need a deep understanding of study habits to understand how to use them. Additionally, study habits are something that needs to be practiced to understand if they work with your learning style, and the best way to do this is through Inquiry-based learning. Additionally, my group’s interactive learning design blueprint works with inquiry-based learning because you need to understand what the 5 E’s are to learn how to study differently and to affect your learning style.

Lazonder, A. W., & Harmsen, R. (2016). Meta-Analysis of Inquiry-Based Learning: Effects of Guidance. Review of Educational Research, 86(3), 681–718. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654315627366

Northern, S. (2019, August,30) The 5E’s of Inquiry-Based Learning. Knowledge Quest. https://knowledgequest.aasl.org/the-5-es-of-inquiry-based-learning/

Alecia’s post is linked here Alecia Post#1

Hi Alecia,

I loved reading your first post about learning how to drive! this is such a great example of how we all learn in different ways and how our learning style changes depending on what we are learning. I also found that a behaviorist approach was the learning style that I used when I first started to drive too. I find that when learning many of my daily tasks like driving, or even using money I was taught using repetition and feedback to reinforce how I learned these tasks. I find personally that tasks that are needed all of the time and are a part of my routine I learned best using a behaviorist approach, however more complex tasks that I need a deeper understanding off I use a constructivist learning style.

Thank you for your post,

Catriona

September 20th, 2022

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

Readings: https://edtechuvic.ca/edci335/why-is-learning-hard/ and https://edtechuvic.ca/edci335/learning-theories/

It is amazing to think about how we learn new things, sometimes things just click after repeated attempts, as Destin Sandlin suggests in his bicycle video. Other times we think we have learned something, so we do not attempt to question it we just accept the answer as Derek Muller suggests. For me and for other people I learn in many different ways, I tend to learn the best from constructivist instruction styles, however, I find depending on what I am learning different styles help me understand better.

Currently, I would consider my current instruction style to be constructivist. I understand a concept much better when I can relate to the topic and have experienced the learning outcome we are trying to understand. Once I can connect to the topic and have experienced it, I am fully able to understand the concept and have the background information to answer questions related to the topic. By experiencing what I am learning I can answer why things are wrong and the reasoning behind why something is right without just knowing due to reinforcement. Right now, I am currently in EOS 110, which talks about the ocean and atmosphere. Our professor has given us visual cues as well as real-life examples like using a fish tank to demonstrate water density to help us with the course topics. Due to the experience, I can understand not only the answer, but I can tell people the reasoning behind the answer and know why answers are wrong.

When taking physics, I struggled to understand the course topics I would think my answer was correct, but it would end up wrong and I would be confused on why. Like Derek Muller suggests in his video, I was getting these answers wrong because I would have ideas about the question so I would not pay attention to understand why it was wrong. To overcome this, I would draw a picture so I could visualize the question, or I would try a real-life example if possible. By using constructivist learning mechanisms I would be able to have an approximate guess of what the written answer was before even calculating the answer allowing me to check my work.

Muller, D. [Veritasium]. ( 2011, March 17). Khan Academy and the Effectiveness of Science Videos [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVtCO84MDj8

Sandlin, D. [ SmarterEveryDay]. ( 2015, April 24).The Backwards Brain Bicycle- Smarter Every Day 133 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0

• EDCI335

Hi everyone! my name is Catriona Borys (she/her), I was born and raised in Red Deer Alberta, but decided to move to Victoria for University. I am 20 years old and am the author behind “Unfinished Education”. I choose this as my title for my Website since I feel that even once we are done school and have received our education, we never truly finish learning and therefore never complete our education. With being in EDCI 335 A02 I hope to continue learning and hopefully learn how to enhance my learning through the use of technology.

I am currently in my third year at UVIC, and I am majoring in Psychology and minoring in Education. After I have achieved my Psychology degree I am planning on taking an after-degree in Elementary Education as I hope to be either a teacher or a school counselor after my education. 

I am excited to be going into my third year at UVIC and to meet everyone online!