As a high school science teacher, I love the opportunity to reinvent myself every August. My annual ritual involves thoroughly assessing my classroom procedures, my lesson plans, my technological and digital resources, my physical desktop, and even my professional wardrobe. Nothing is immune from the chopping block if it is deemed inefficient, ineffective, or outdated. I get to start every school year with a fresh, hopefully more streamlined and powerful approach.
This school year, I have at least three reasons to evaluate my practices with especially objective eyes: I am incorporating social distancing practices into my classroom, I am floating between the first and third floor, and I am simultaneously teaching both remote and face-to-face students. In short, I need a road map for rewriting almost all of my classroom practices. Fortunately, my final graduate program courses are bringing me some answers. The timing couldn’t be better.
What the research is telling me.
My current course tasked me with reading and reflecting about three instructional design articles: one chosen by my professor, one chosen by a peer, and one chosen by myself. When considering problem based learning, Savery and Duffy (1995, p. 36) emphasize “the importance of a learning community where ideas are discussed and understanding enriched.” Petrovic-Dzerdz and Trépanier (2018) further consider how the learning community concept applies to one of my current dilemmas: transferring face-to-face content to an online format. I was encouraged to read their assertion that “even more social activity (can be incorporated) in an online environment than in the physical classroom” (p. 272). Finally, Scheffel et al. (2019) provide specific, concrete steps for transferring face-to-face content to a blended or virtual format with their proposed DC4E instructional design model. Taken together, this collection of seemingly disparate sources speaks loudly to provide me with justification for and the beginning pathway to an interactive, online learning community this school year.
What I need to know more about…
I desperately want to continue the discussion, debate and hands-on learning that have characterized my previous face-to-face classrooms. After reading these three articles, I know I must investigate further how technology can encourage and facilitate an interactive, scientific community. For my graduate instructional design project, I will need to master the forum and questioning capacities of the Canvas LMS. For my high school teaching assignment, I will explore corresponding features in Schoology. For both, I can search out and vet web-based applications such as Kialo and Wakelet that contribute to community building and critical thinking. Scheffel et al. chart how to practically shift face-to-face curriculum to online; I need to plan how to shift not just my curriculum but also my face-to-face scientific community to online.
How this will impact me…
By striving to combine my face-to-face and online students into a single educational community, I am committing to a social constructivist approach. My students (as learners that will partake in my instructional design) will gain meaning from the collective effort of the class. To increase the success of this project design, I will need to provide a framework for student collaboration and exploration. I will need to build in flexibility to anticipate student learning paths deviating from the expected. I will need to develop assessment tools that forgo traditional objective questions and instead provide open-ended opportunities for demonstrating concept mastery.
I get to start with a fresh, hopefully more streamlined and powerful approach.
References
Petrovic-Dzerdz, M., & Trépanier, A. (2018). Online hunting, gathering and sharing: A return to experiential learning in a digital age. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(2), 271-281.
Savery, J. R., & Duffy, T. M. (1995). Problem based learning: An instructional model and its constructivist framework. Educational Technology, 35, 31–38
Scheffel, M., van Limbeek, E., Joppe, D., van Hooijdonk, J., Kockelkoren, C., Schmitz, M., Ebus, P., Sloep, P., & Drachsler, H. (2019). The means to a blend: A practical model for the redesign of face-to-face education to blended learning. In Scheffel M., Broisin J., Pammer-Schindler V., Ioannou A., & Schneider J. (Eds.), Transforming learning with meaningful technologies. EC-TEL 2019. Lecture notes in computer science: Vol. 11722 (pp. 701-704).
Grrowing Ideas 