EDTECH-513: Reflection of Learning

The challenge for this class was held within the title, Multimedia, a phrase that I have dearly tried to stay away from for years. I have always had a natural ability for speaking in front of a group and writing without worry, but the thought of utilizing a technological tool would have me running in the opposite direction. No doubt, taking this course I was forced to face my fears but what really made a difference was two things, I can’t possibly be alone and I learned to let go of the technological fear by viewing others’ work. This made a huge difference in my outlook, the simple act at searching the Internet and examples that my classmates shared allowed me to say, “I can do this!” One other note, our text e-Learning and the Science of Instruction spoke to me in a way that alleviated my stress and gave me sound evidence that promoted an inquisitive nature that I sometimes fear.

Being that I feel that Edtech-513 has been one of the best thus far within the MET program, I must say that my artifact on the Modality Principle and applying the Redundancy Principle illuminated me as if I was struck by lightning. The reason for such an impact is that these concepts hit me at my core as an instructor. I have always had a tendency of being “wordy” and this recognition open my eyes to reevaluating many of my presentation slides. Ashamed as I am, because I do come from the land of “more is better” type of thinking, and yet Chapters 6: Applying the Modality Principle and Chapter 7: Applying the Redundancy Principle has opened the door for me to see the errors of my ways. In my quest to teach budding healthcare providers, one would think that I would prepare my lessons with the utmost care to try and minimize the potential for cognitive overloading by learners. What good is attempting to fill an empty vessel with large amounts of knowledge if that vessel develops stress fractures and leaks? The Haiku presentation gave me that chance to use large amounts of knowledge yet with a minimalist approach and improve the learner’s chances of retention.

Throughout this semester I have been constantly challenged and shaken out of my comfort zone. Nonetheless, with the completion of every project, I have found a new way I’m practicing my craft within my classroom. Pressed to choose one, I would have to say that screencasting would benefit me as a teacher and also give me more range in connecting with my learners. The Worked example concept combined with the technique of creating a screencast has opened a new portal that can never close. It is my hope that this tool will help propel a much clearer transfer of information to the students and allow me to be more adventurous when traveling outside my comfort zone.

The following is a view of the course syllabus.

Course Syllabus-Edtech-513

Project #5: Worked Example Screencast

For our last screencast project I wanted to get back to basics and present something that is usable by the learners outside of my classroom. Up until now, my students have only received assistance within the class or after school in tutoring sessions. I never really thought about putting something online until now and after this experience I can see there is no turning back.

Dr. Hall gave us a few examples of the project and one inspired me to parody math examples that deal with caring for ventilator dependent patients, the minute ventilation formula. One thing I have noticed about my learners is when having to calculate formulas along with using the results to apply therapy they seem to be easily confused. In chapter 10: Applying the Segmenting and Pre-training Principles we learned of breaking up complex lessons into smaller parts to allow the learners a deeper cognitive process. By doing this and creating procedural worked examples, it gives a more simple path for the learners to not only follow along step-by-step but also a means of understanding the concept all together.

For my project I used two unfamiliar tools, Screencast-O-Matic to capture the presentation and the software Painters Essential 5 utilized by the Intuos Art pen and touch tablet, thus giving me a crash course in how to use these two. What was most challenging was that the tablet I bought to utilize with the software was designed more of “art” instruction not presentation modes such as “whiteboard.” I will say though even having what looks like the wrong tools I was able to be familiar enough to get it to do what I wanted. Screencasting may be a practice that is not often a part of my repertoire, but one thing is for sure it’s a practice that I no longer have to fear, if anything, it will forever be welcomed.

Project #4: Digital Story

Yosemite- the Making of a Family Tradition from Frederick Reyes on Vimeo.

Designing a digital story sounded intriguing but at the same time the subject matter had me a bit unnerved because I wasn’t sure how I could integrate a short respiratory therapy lesson in such short time. After pondering for some time, I finally decided to get out of my comfort zone and create a personal story of our family vacation spot. In retrospect, I think it would have been easier to create a storyline that was professionally based. The level of difficultly stemmed from the desire to tell a factual story and give it the respect it deserves. Each photo was carefully selected with hundreds, if not thousands, to choose from. In the end, I am quite happy with the finished product, the sound track matches nicely with the narration and the photos flow smoothly to tell more than the spoken word. I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone, it allowed me to appreciate the learning of two new tools, iMovies and GarageBand, but more importantly it gave me an insight to my family history and stories I haven’t heard in a long time or a couple that I had never heard before.

Coherence Analysis

Coherence Analysis can be read here.

Lets be frank, it can be told with a certain level of confidence that a teacher’s life professional or otherwise can be considered cluttered; at least in the lessons that they teach. It is with every attempt to make life easier by making lessons, presentations, etc. simple to follow, but somewhere in the translation from the frontal lobes of the teacher to the eyes and ears of the learner something go awry, losing the learner to material that is not supportive of the instructional goal is the Coherence Principle. This principle states simply to create a learning environment (materials, presentations, lectures) that is straightforward and is not flowered by extraneous words, graphics and sounds that would take away from the learners’ chances cognitively learning.

So true, it is hard to imagine any educator that has not been swayed by the placing of seductive details within a presentation so as to give the lesson some much needed pizazz, yet unknowingly adding to the confusion of the learner and causing cognitive overload. Weeding, referenced by Mayer and Moreno (2003), gives insight into removing sounds, graphics or words that cannot enhance the instructional goal although there is claim that properly placing any one of these three within a presentation can “promote deeper processing” (Clark and Mayer 2011) yet, there is still no evidence proving the effectiveness of that input.

Instructing future healthcare professionals can be challenging, especially if the learners have had no experience within this field, as an instructor my role must be carefully planned. Making a priority of engaging the learners’ interest is important but how many times have I jeopardized that learner by attempting to “jazz-up” my lectures/presentations only to cause some sort of cognitive overload? Outlines and lesson plans still reign in preparation for a class but factors of the Coherence Principle should not go overlooked.

 

Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R.E. (2011). e-Learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning (3^rd ed). San Francisco: Wiley & Sons, Inc

Introduction to Respiratory Therapy: Episode One

Podcast: Introduction to Respiratory Therapy

Once again, for this section, my project has my ship sailing into uncharted waters; creating a Podcast.  The notion of creating a Podcast for my class never entered my mind but as I prepared for this task I began to see limitless possibilities.  

Wanting to stay within my own theme in which I teach, I decided to create a program that respiratory therapy students would be able to utilize as a resource of knowledge.  I envision this being a place where students can read about anything that they are instructed in the classroom but also what they are seeing within the clinical setting.  I did do some research on multiple levels and thus far I have not seen any “respiratory therapy” Podcast programs that would follow this format.  The “working” title of this program is RT Corner, which if my wife or anyone else has a better name to offer, I am completely open for suggestions, but until then RT Corner will feature topics that are included within the 15 weeks that the students and I are together within the respiratory therapy program.  I mention within my first episode that students, especially when confronted with something out of their comfort zone, sometimes have trouble adjusting to the pace and to the change of concepts and theories.  This program has the potential of being an incredible study-buddy for those that need that little extra that can make a huge difference in their overall performance.  

Being that I do have a wide choice of topics to choose from I thought I would simplify matters and keep orderly by starting as if I was ready to begin a new cohort by providing them with an introduction of the class. The title Introduction to Respiratory Therapy Episode One will give the learner/listener a little peek behind the curtain that just might take the nervous edge off when coming to class for the first day and the small assignment that they were given during the introduction will also give the learners the feeling that they already belong to the class.

The Podcast, for my situation, can’t provide everything, but it does give way for some creative ways of reaching the learners which gives a lot of power to them in deciding how they would utilize these resources.  

For accessibility purposes HERE you find the narrative form of the Podcast.

Haiku Deck

Haiku Project

This week I was asked to do something that is completely contrary to my natural state as an instructor, minimize my use of words within a presentation. Inherently, my natural instinct is to fill the slide with text, but being introduced to the modality principle and cognitive theory of multimedia learning convinced me to drop my defenses and give the idea of “less is more” a try.

Click here to have a view of my Haiku presentation. This program is user friendly and is designed with the minimalist of message in mind.

The Modality principle describes the notion of utilizing audio narration with graphics as opposed to using just text and images alone. The point of this recommendation is to minimize the overload that learners experience by trying to process words and graphics at the same time. Within our reading we are told of two processes of assimilating information, one being visual/pictorial processing and the other being audio/verbal processing, which if attempted to utilize both at the same time may create a cognitive overload that produces a decrease in the learners’ overall ability to retain information. This is an interesting lesson in changing ones approach from thinking that an educator’s point of instruction is to just provide information and it’s the job of the students to learn it, the filling of a empty vessel type of mantra versus the more viable approach of not over-taxing the learner through separate channels of processing and improve the chances of quality knowledge retention.

Project #1: Static Multimedia Instruction

Static Multimedia Project 1

Outline for Project

Title: How to Log in to the American Association of Respiratory Care and Start Using Research Tools

Instructional Objective: After viewing the tutorial the learner will be able to sign on the American Association of Respiratory Care (AARC).

Applying the multimedia principle by using Clarify made for an easy transition instead of utilizing written instruction where the directions possibly confuse the reader.   Never before had I placed so much emphasis on the relationship between images and words in the process of conveying information. It’s true that words are the epitome of thought but the conveying of that thought in an order in which it is assimilated and the utilization can be challenging for learners, especially the novice. The point really being is to afford the learner, being that learners do all acquire knowledge differently, a path that leads them to information that is likely to be understood for cognitive processing.

My particular learners, being introduced to the field of respiratory care, need the most guidance. These neophytes historically have shown difficulties transitioning their tract of thought from standard prerequisite type of classes to the specifics of physiological processes dealing with the lungs. Multimedia principles can be quite useful in this transition. Within my outline and multimedia presentation I wanted to convey a message of confidence, thus selecting graphics and words that would engage the learner to the instructional objective. The presentation has the necessary graphic types from Table 4.1 (Clark, R.C. & Mayer, R.E.) that would illustrate procedural steps that would be “resulting in the completion of a task” (p. 74.). These types of attempts, by using multimedia principals, have been proven to be important learning tools, especially with the novice being that they learned better with the use of text and illustrations, rather than text alone. The combination of choice static images along with text direction is a step that can help make those first initial steps of unknown territory more inviting and more receptive to active learning.

As it is illustrated by my presentation, I feel that the contiguity principle of learning is accomplished. The use of graphics and text are formatted to create a relationship with each other and the attempt was consciously made to avoid violations of this principle. Because the students are going to continuously reference the American Association of Respiratory Care for professional development and as a source of researching evidenced based medicine, this presentation will guide them from the log on process to the advanced search capabilities of the website. This multimedia presentation, no doubt, will be an instrumental tool for their growth throughout the program and given its approach will lessen any stresses about venturing into new territories.

 

References

Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R.E. (2011). e-Learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning (3rd ed). San Francisco: Wiley & Sons, Inc

Course Reflection of Learning

The challenge of this course was frankly getting over my fear of what was going to be asked of me within this term. Honestly, the extent of my experience with education technology, prior to this class, was minimal at best and getting over my fear was the greatest challenge. To be even more frank, every artifact that was given started every Monday with a small myocardial infarction, decreasing to an anxiety attack by Wednesday and ending finally on Friday with an ease and confidence that anything could be accomplished.

The combining of a research presentation with a format such as VoiceThread was a huge challenge, which of us really likes the sound of their own voice and not to mention the all the errors associated with the initial attempts in trying to get it right. Resources that were provided and some that I found on YouTube that had me focus as if I was talking to my audience instead of a computer screen made the task so much easier. Which brings me to my favorite artifact that was on the Digital Divide. This had a profound impact on me, first of all my knowledge of the topic was scant at best and after researching and compiling my data, it gave me insight as to not only do we have huge financial differences in this country but we have a continual growing technological chasm that separates these same classes.

I did mention that in the courses that I teach, the usage of education technology is minimal to nonexistent but I took my presentation on Blended Learning and made my case to my program director, the dean of students and the president of the college to implement a pilot program on one cohort of students that would allow me to continue lecturing in the traditional sense but also incorporate online learning/tutoring via Google Hangout and Google Docs to run concurrent with the students within the clinical setting. Thus far, although to soon to tell, the response from the students using the addition of online tools has been overwhelmingly positive. Simply put, the fact that I was able to quickly acquire this technology and then pass it on to my students makes me excited about what the remainder of the Education Technology program holds in store for me.

School Evaluation Summary

By far this was a very revealing artifact. When I started teaching three years ago, I felt that the school was more than adequate when it came to technology being offered. Being that I was technologically inexperienced at the time, I felt that the staff and the students had a good working knowledge of the available system but as I started using the tools offered the only question I had was, how do I use this or what can I do with this even if I did know how to use it? As I began investigating the areas covered in the Maturity Model I started to get the sense that there was a definite knowledge gradient between what technology and tools that were available and that of those who were capable of using it.

The greatest surprise that I found, as I expanded into asking questions to the staff and the students, was how much in common their opinions were. The overall expression towards the school’s technologic capabilities was the appreciation of what they think the system can do but feel limited in personal use due to the lack of in-service or technology support that surrounded them. As I discovered going through all the categories, my school has gone through so many changes to keep up with the times. But the point here is, can a school, having good intentions to solve or update its technological woes, expect to improve staff usage or enhanced learning without giving serious thought to the bigger picture of integrating wide technology support in its long term planning?

Please have a look at my summary of PCC and the survey.

The Use of Blended Learning in Clinical Settings

The NMC Horizon Report: Higher Education Edition, was a task in itself to read, I felt the best thing to do was break it up into parts. As tedious as the report may have appeared I really came away with insight to what has been established and what is potentially to come. My first impression was apparent with my affinity toward the subject of “….Students as Creators” section, being in the medical field I have found that the obvious answer to improving students understanding of fundamental concepts is to incorporate methods such as: collaborative, participatory, project-based, and peer-to-peer learning. BUT, the bigger problem that I feel that needs attention within my department is the lack of blended learning. It may seem like a copout to speak of something so general but how can I want pursue topics such as “social media and students as creators” when I can’t get on “hangout” because its restricted on our schools servers? So, I took Dr. Schroeder idea that was given in the instructions for this assignment and made a prototype presentation to deliver to my director of the respiratory program and the dean of students. The NMC report does offer a great deal of insight to the now, but my take was what am I going to with it for the future?

I have two items to share:

An artifact that analyzes items of blended learning and mixes it with my experiences within the classroom here.

My prototype presentation to hopefully enact Blended Learning within the Respiratory program, here.