A Worked Example Project - A Screencast about Aggregate Demand

This week I created a worked example for my EDTECH 513 class. A worked example happens when a teacher takes students through the step-by-step process of completing some kind of instructional activity, anything from working out a problem in mathematics or economics to formulating a more freely flowing paragraph. Using screencasts of worked examples are a great way for teachers to differentiate their instruction especially for students who needed a little more time to digest concepts than the regular hours of school allowed. A screencasted, worked example is like a digital extra-help session for many students.

I created a animated and screencasted PPT presentation about "Aggregate Demand." it is one of the major concepts in the AP and IB Economics courses. In my worked example, I begin by defining and discussing "Aggregate Demand," and then I explain a little about why aggregate demand behaves the way that it does. Then I get into the graphing component, which is the actual activity that students will have t be able to replicate on future examinations. I end the video linking students to a Google docs worksheet that allows then to practice their new-found skills in applying the concept of Aggregate Demand.

Throughout the video, I try to consistently use contiguity and personalization principles by being very careful to chunk related visual together and to avoid an overly-academic tone to my narration. I am also very careful to avoid redundancy throughout the video. I hope you enjoy the results.

Let Us Speak Together: A Digital Story for EDTECH 513, Week 07

This week I created a digital story for my EDTECH 513 class. We have been exploring a phenomenon called the Personalization Principle, which embodies the idea that e-learners will better embrace e-materials if they feel some kind of attachment to the materials and/or the author(s) that produced the materials. In that vein, we were asked to produce a short digital story to add some color to our teaching and digital classrooms.

I decided to tell the story behind a poem I wrote in the winter of 2006. I was visiting my children in the Sultanate of Oman at the time. They lived there with their mother who was a teacher at one of Muscat's (the capital of Oman) international schools. I visited them two to three times per year, and on one of my visits, we went down to the beach. As the kids and I played in the sea, an Omani family of five approached us. I was quickly abandoned for the three Omani kids, and I struck up a conversation with the father of the family. The poem I read is about my reflections of our conversation.

Digital stories are a quick and efficient way to add local color to our teaching materials. If we are in an e-learning situation, digital stories are a great way to let our personalities some through. By having students produce digital stories, we can also get a stronger sense of their personalities. Digital stories are also a great way to differentiate our assessments by giving students an opportunity to demonstrate their learning in a non-traditional format.

Questions and Answers about the Coherence Principle, Week 06

What is the Coherence Principle and its main constraints/criteria?
The idea behind the Coherence Principle is that all lesson material should relate closely to stated lesson objectives and goals. This means that lesson materials should be devoid of extra or additional material added for the sole purpose of making the lesson more appealing to the visual, listening and/or reading audience. Studies indicate that learning happens more efficiently in the absence of extraneous background noises/music, graphics and even words. Common sense tells us that extraneous material increases distractibility, and the research indicates that added, irrelevant information overloads neural channels, especially given that humans have been shown to have limited capabilities in short-term processing when responding to visual and/or auditory stimula (Mayer, 1999). The studies are limited however, to controlled experiments under closed conditions with novice and usually older (university-level) learners. More research in conditions other than those just cited is needed.


Describe one example of successful inclusion of the Coherence Principle that I have experienced in my own instruction; also describe one unsuccessful attempt.
As I have mentioned before, I host a YouTube channel devoted to lessons involving various topics from AP and IB Economics. Models and graphs being fairly fundamental to the study of economics and the analysis of economic phenomena, almost all of my videos include a demonstration and explanation of a graph or economic model. The graphs are a positive example of the application of the Coherence Principle with respect to the inclusion of graphic images and narration.

I can recall a time however, when PowerPoint was a relatively "new toy" (and the world was young), that I used every audio bell and whistle (and typewriter audio clip) in my PPT presentations. I believed that the inclusion of such material kept my audience on their toes; quite the opposite seems to be the case.


Have you ever seen this principle violated or abused. Use citations from the text as necessary. 

Although the authors of our text no doubt intended it, they included an irresistible graphic about two morbidly obese people  as an example of interesting but irrelevant information (Clark & Mayer, 2008, p. 160). After seeing the graphic, I spent the better part of the next hour Googling "John Minnoch" and "Carol Yager," the two obese individuals cited in the text, thus proving the authors' point that irrelevant information impedes the learning process. Quite a few of the textbooks used in various middle school courses, if I recall, abuse this principle. A staggering number of websites do as well.


Discuss the relationship between the Coherence Principle and the other multimedia learning principles that have been thus far examined.
The Coherence Principle (CP) is very much related to the Multimedia and Contiguity principles in that the underlying assumption behind the CP is that multimedia is indeed being used. It extends the Multimedia Principle in stating quite clearly that the multimedia being used must be directly related to learning goals and objectives. In combining the CP with the Contiguity Principle, we conclude that contiguous multimedia elements must be highly related to one another.

The CP is also closely related to both the Modality and Redundancy principles. The Modality Principle suggests to us that audio narration is often more effective than on-screen text. The CP acts as a corollary here; the Modality Principle's narration must be directly related to learning goals and objectives. The Redundancy Principle new seems as a very specific example of the CP. When visuals are explained with BOTH printed words and narration, we have both redundancy and a violation of the CP. This is generally viewed as not a good thing.


Discuss the Coherence Principle to the fundamental theories of psychology as described by Clark & Mayer in the text. 

The biggest of psychology's "fundamental" theories that the authors take to task is the so-called "Arousal Theory," the idea that learners' interests must be piqued before learning can take place. The authors draw a distinction between having one's curiosity and interest stimulated by information relevant to learning and then irrelevant to learning, and so they agree with and disagree with some of the the tenets of this theory. They even quote Dewey, who seems to have been en early skeptic about the blanket application of the Arousal Theory (was the anything about which Dewey was not correct?!). Most of the CP seems to fit well with contemporary learning theory, especially the ideas of mental schemas and the human need to fit newly acquired information into an existing mental schema.

In another of our readings this week, Moreno and Mayer (2000) discuss the excellent fit among multimedia theory (of which the Coherence Principle is a part) with the dual processing theory (discussed above in question # 1) the cognitive load theory (discussed briefly in question # 1) and a contructivist learning theory where tudents actively create meaning by interacting with their surrounding environment.

What do I personally like or dislike about this principle? Explain. 

Extremely wordy or flowery explanations in any field of study have always troubled me. When I first earned my undergrad degree in education ( a long time ago), the field of study seemed to be absolutely laced with jargon backed by study after tedious study. Case in point: Madeleine Hunter's "anticipatory set" was just a misnomer for the "hook" used by journalists for years and years. Could Madeleine not have just used the term, "hook"? I found a lot of the jargon to be misnomers, and I thought that many of the studies could have been much more succinctly explained. This is what I like about the CP. It seems to indicate to us the importance of getting straight to the point and to avoid obfuscating seemingly simple concepts with flowery or highly technical phrases.


Are there any limitations or caveats about this principle that the authors did not consider. if so, what are they? 

To me the biggest drawback to the CP is the research backing it. Although the indications are there and seem to be quite strong, I still have questions about applying the principle to all ages of learners. Does the principle hold up as well for very young learners as it seems to do with university-level learners? This is not a caveat per se, but it seems to me that this is an area of educational application that is ripe for further study.

References

Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2008). E-learning and the science of instruction, 2nd edition. Pfeiffer: San Francisco, CA.

Mayer, R. E. (1999). Multimedia aids to problem-solving transfer. International Journal of Educational Research, 31(7), 611-623.

Moreno, R., & Mayer, R. E. (2000). A learner-centered approach to multimedia explanations: Deriving instructional design principles from cognitive theory. Interactive Multimedia Electronic Journal of Computer-Enhanced Learning, 2(2), 2004-07. 

Podcast for EDTECH 513 Week 05

This week I recorded my first-ever podcast. Here it is:



I recorded the podcast using the built-in microphone in my Toshiba Portege laptop. I created an account with Soundcloud to "host" my recording, and then I used a little HTML coding to embed the podcast here.

The idea is to create a podcasted series of lessons to coincide with an AP or IB Economics class. I already have a website for the class with reading materials, exercise files for each lesson that I teach and a range of video tutorials, but a podcasted series would be a great addition to the stiff already on my Econ teaching site.

In this first episode, I introduce myself and the podcast series, and I also direct the listeners to my teaching site. I then define 'economics' drawing distinctions between 'microeconomics' and 'macroeconomics.' I go on to discuss the concept of scarcity, discussing how that concept relates to the study of economics and the costs we typically study in microeconomics, I conclude by outlining three types of costs: explicit, implicit and opportunity.

I will say this, making podcasts is certainly easier that making screencasted videos!

Multimedia Lesson for EDTECH 513, Week 03

A screen-shot from the lesson

Multimedia instruction: a lesson on 'demand' for an AP Economics class

This week's assignment in EDTECH 513 involved the application of a couple of design and learning theories about which we have been reading. The first theory is called the "multimedia principle," and the idea behind the theory is that people have been shown to learn more efficiently when text is presented along with appropriate and relevant images. The second theory is called the "contiguity principle," and the idea here is that the images and text used in conjunction with one another in a multimedia piece must be perceived by the learning as being combined rather than being viewed as separate elements. When learners see images and text as being contiguous, they process the information presented more efficiently, and they are better to connect their learning to previously retained information.

I created a 15-slide Google Docs introducing students in an AP Economics class to the concept of 'market demand." I have embedded the presentation I created below.



The project corresponds well to two AECT Standards: 1.2 Message Design and 2.3 Computer-Based Technologies. Message design describes the use of images in order to convey meaning. In my presentation, I have used a variety of images to reduce students' cognitive loads and help them to retain information in a more efficient fashion. Because the presentation was created in Google Docs, it is assumed that the user will access and interface with the lesson via computer or hand-held device, thus fulfilling AECT Standard 2.3.

Creating My Learning Log / AECT Standard 2.3: Computer-Based Technogies

Until this assignment, I had forgotten that I had created a Blogger account a few years ago. Back in the days before beginning the M.E.T. program, back when I still had the time for leisurely writing, I kept a blog about my experiences in moving from a large international school in London to a relatively small, private, independent school in Memphis, Tennessee. As you can imagine, the move from London to Tennessee took some transitioning time, and the blog allowed me to cast some of my frustrations in a humorous light. It also helped me to keep my sanity.

Blogger represents an interesting facet of what technologists call “Web 2.0,” a collection of web applications that allow for the user to actively and directly interface with other users in a rich, virtual environment. Shared blogs, wikis, websites like Weebly and Ning, as well as social media sites like Facebook, all represent what we can call Web 2.0 applications.

One of the great aspects about sites like Blogger is that it allows a user possessing no skills in website production and management to register and then to create a very professional-looking website in which to house their thoughts, writings, photos, etc. Registration is simple and once registered, the user is guided through a step-by-step process to create a lovely new, and user-customized web-space.

Because I already had a Blogger account, I simply created a new blog for this class. That is another great aspect about Blogger: it allows for the creation and maintenance of multiple blog accounts. Because I live and work abroad, I chose a “travel” theme for my blog. I then updated my “About Me” page, which was about four years out of date; so it was high time that I updated it anyways. Registration and set-up accomplished, I am now writing my first post. It is that easy; and the results look great.

Now that I am posting, commenting and reflecting upon my learning, the site and its content reflect well one of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology’s (AECT) standards, that being the use of computer-based technology. AECT is one of the pioneering institutions in terms of research relating to instructional technology and technology integration. AECT had published a set of standards to guide educational technology programs, and AECT Standard 2.3 deals using a computer to make or transmit instructional materials.

Blogger can be used by a teacher to create materials for his/her classes and then simply share the blog link with students; students could also simply choose to “follow” their teacher’s blog. The teacher can also easily have students create and maintain their own blog to house their completed assignments and to reflect upon their own learning. There are quite a few possibilities in terms of integrating a site like Blogger into a classroom setting and thus fulfilling AECT Standard 2.3.