Assignment #2 Online Lesson Outline, Assessment and Reflection

Sheza Naqi 80812118 ETEC 530: Constructivism Strategies for e-Learning Instructor: Dr. Diane Janes University of British Columbia March 31, 2013

Naqi 2 Lesson Outline: Interwar Years Themes

Description Following World War I, Canada sought to return to a period of normalcy. Canadians experienced cultural conflicts as customs and values changed in Canada during the 1920s. The mass media, movies, and spectator sports played important roles in the popular culture of the 1920s. Lifestyle and expectations changed as Canadians enjoyed prosperity and new technological conveniences. The role of women in society fundamentally changed with the Persons Case. The 1930s brought new hardship to Canadians with the drought in the Prairies and the crash of the Stock Market, which ushered in the Great Depression. Students will explore the transition between the 1920s and the 1930s by completing a research-based WebQuest on the life and times of the 1920s and 1930s, and use the information gathered to create collaborative concept maps for their unit summative activity. Students develop questioning, concept-mapping and critical-thinking skills. Prior Knowledge & Skills1 Experience in developing relevant questions Experience in distinguishing between fact and opinion

Planning Notes Locate or create a sample concept map on Mindomo. Locate web resources on technologies from the 1920s. Be prepared to help students deal with questions regarding use of Mindomo concept-mapping tool.

Method of Delivery: Moodle Learning Management System

Duration: 2 4 hours Online learning activities can take longer than the traditional classes with face-to-face interaction. Teachers should consider increasing the amount of time they think is necessary to complete the project if the work is going slower than expected. It is vital that teachers be sensitive to their students needs and demonstrates flexibility in their plans.

Constructivist Instructional Model (CIM): Identify learners' views and ideas (prior knowledge)

(Matthews, 1994).

Naqi Lesson Outline

Teaching/Learning Strategies Lesson: Interwar Years Themes Starter: o

Invite students to explain what the term 1920s and 1930s mean to them in a Glossary activity.2 After students share their ideas, release the unit summative activity, Interwar Years Concept Map which begins with a review of the major events and themes from the 1920s and 1930s that have been studied over the course of the unit, e.g., prohibition, Winnipeg General Strike, Bloody Saturday etc.3

Interactivity 1: o Students engage in a WebQuest, where they search through a number of resources related to the social, political and economic aspects of the 1920s and 1930s searching for events/moments/inventions that changed the lives of the people living in this time period.4 Students choose one of their findings and post it in the Defining Moments of the 1920s and 1930s discussion forum and must include an image and description of the event. Some examples may include: invention of the radio, popularity of the automobile, Stock Market Crash, Talkies, Persons Case etc.

Interactivity 2: o o Students watch a screencast, which models how to make an online concept map on Mindomo. The model concept map should focus on the defining moments of the 1920s and 1930s. Provide students with a list of linking words and phrases to connect concept bubbles, e.g., changed, helped, harmed, influenced, provided, reduced, increased, contributed, improved, caused. o Working in assigned cooperative groups, students create a concept map that illustrates clear interrelationships/connections between applicable themes of the 1920s and 1930s, e.g. political, social, economic, political, cultural, religion, arts, legacies, key figures/people, historical importance etc. See Appendix for full assignment and rubric.5 Students identify

CIM: Create opportunities for the learners to explore their ideas and test their robustness in Predict-Observe-Explain (POE): Learners test their predictions and explanations by making

explaining phenomena, accounting for events and making predictions (Matthews, 1994).
3

accurate observations; Check observations against their predictions and explanations (White & Gunstone, 1982).
4 5

CIM: Provide stimuli for students to develop ideas and views (Matthews, 1994). POE: New understanding is reinforced through questions and activities (White & Gunstone, 1982).

Naqi Lesson Outline

important concepts and supporting ideas before adding the connecting words/phrases, depicting hierarchical relationships between terms, concepts and ideas (multi-level mapping), including subtopics and detailed examples.6 Students must present information in an organized fashion with clear themes / patterns and include relevant quotes, images and links to maps and scholarly websites. They should use interactive clip art, connectors, patterns, images and colours. Plenary: o Students post their maps to the Interwar Years Concept Maps discussion forum with a oneparagraph synthesis of the concept map. Each student is responsible for viewing all of the posted concept maps and commenting on at least two groups postings. Assessment & Evaluation of Student Achievement Ongoing assessment of literacy skills reading and viewing, writing, and oral language Assessment of cooperative group skills (group and whole-class discussions) through teacher observation/online tracking Evaluation of critical-thinking skills interpreting, summarizing, making judgments (concept map and synthesis paragraph) using a rubric

Conceptual Change Model (CCM): Students have pre-existing ideas, mental models, vocabulary,

etc. (correct or incorrect); Student must understand relationships between existing ideas and concepts and newly presented meanings for internalization to occur (Posner et al., 1982).

Naqi 5 Constructivist Lesson Assessment Criteria

CRITERIA Engage: Does the lesson capture the students attention, stimulate their thinking and help them access prior knowledge? Possible activities for engagement may include the following: Demonstration (teacher and/or student). Show an intriguing movie clip or live web cam Reading from a current media release or piece of literature. Explore: Does the lesson give students time to think, plan, investigate and organize collected information? Possible activities for exploration may include the following: Reading authentic resources to collect information to answer an open-ended question or to make a decision. Solving a problem Creating a graphic organizer Investigation (design and/or perform). Explain: Does the lesson involve students in an analysis of their explorations? Does it use reflective activities to clarify and modify their understanding? Possible reflective activities may include the following: Student analysis and explanation Supporting ideas with evidence Structured questioning Reading and discussion Thinking skills activities (comparing, classifying, abstraction, error analysis) Elaborate: Does the lesson give students the opportunity to expand and solidify their understanding of the concept and/or apply it to a real-world situation? Possible extension activities may include the following: Problem solving Decision-making Experimental inquiry Thinking skill activities (comparing, classifying, abstraction, error analysis) Evaluate: Does the lesson allow for evaluation at all stages? Does the teacher provide students with a scoring guide at the beginning? Do the scoring tools developed by teachers (sometimes with student involvement) target what students must know and do? Possible activities may include the following: Development and implementation of scoring tool to measure student performance during activities. PASS FAIL

Naqi Reflection: Incorporation of Constructivism in Lesson

The lesson plan, Interwar Years Themes was one I developed for the Grade 10 Canadian History course as per the Ontario Ministry of Education curriculum expectations. It is the last lesson in the unit, Canada in the 1920s and 1930s: A Time of Great Change. I have successfully taught the lesson in a faceto-face classroom once before but felt that it was not interactive or engaging enough to motivate students to make their learning meaningful. Although I noticed that my original unit plan did indeed include some aspects of the constructivist theories studied in this course, I have managed to make improvements to it in adapting the lesson to one that would be taught fully online, over the Moodle Learning Management System. Existing constructivist theories in the lesson have also been improved upon through a strengthening of their instructional applications. The lesson plan begins with the section, Prior Knowledge & Skills, which is in keeping with the Constructivist Theory. This section takes into consideration the fact that students will be able to learn the new concepts in this unit by accessing their prior knowledge and experience in developing relevant questions and distinguishing between fact and opinion. The constructivist model in this lesson has six steps: student instructions/explain situation, research, interpretation, create relevant product, collaboration and assessment. At the beginning of this lesson students are asked to explain what the 1920s and 1930s mean to them and are then presented with resources to scan for events/moments/inventions that changed the lives of people in the 1920s and 1930s. This task invites students to recall their existing understanding of the unit content. New knowledge pertaining to this concept is then shared with the students through primary and secondary sources containing images and descriptions of technologies, events and trends from the 1920s and 1930s, which they discover by participating in a WebQuest. A WebQuest can make a lesson interactive while putting more responsibility on the learners, which makes this activity excellent for online learning environments. This is highly beneficial for learners as it scaffolds their learning of new information and the knowledge is attained through a more engaging means as opposed to simply reading new concepts from a textbook. The research process is made into an active learning interactivity through the WebQuest Model, which has built-in problem solving issues such as locating relevant information and selecting appropriate terms for Internet search engines. Constructivist activities are designed to promote cognitive skills and learning the importance of being persistent when participating in problem solving situations. It is an exploratory stage that empowers learners to use a variety of investigative methodologies such as trial and error to become more sophisticated researchers. By posting their findings from the WebQuest on the Defining Moments of the 1920s and 1930s discussion forum, this constructivist activity accommodates the views of others and organizes students to produce something to be proud of posting to their peers. Constructivism is at work in this activity as the students make connections between what they already know of technology and what they have now learned through the research conducted on defining moments in the 1920s and 1930s.

Naqi Reflection

The teacher then provides detailed instructions via a screencast modeling the use of Mindomo, a concept mapping Web 2.0 tool. The students are asked to make a concept map on the defining moments of the interwar years, and post it to the Interwar Years Concept Maps discussion forum. Their initial post can be a reference point of information that will be compared to their understanding of the major themes of the 1920s and 1930s, which will be translated into a concept map. One of the reasons concept mapping is so powerful for the facilitation of meaningful learning is that it serves as a kind of template or scaffold to help to organize knowledge and to structure it. The links serve as a visual way to identify relationships between concepts. Students can utilize their research findings from the WebQuest and reading of course materials as resources to identify relevant concepts that can be aligned with an understanding of the interwar years. The next constructivist stage is interpretation, which involves translating knowledge sources into useable units of information. Students sift through the information that they have gathered and discern what will help them in creating their concept maps. Finally, the students will be required to actually construct their concept maps using Mindomo. A major benefit of educational software is providing a framework to help students learn more complex tasks through a scaffolding approach. The final stages of this constructivist lesson are collaboration and assessment. Students are given several opportunities to share their work throughout this lesson with their online peers and teacher. Collaboration fosters multiple perspectives and contextualization of knowledge. The students worldview will filter information and influence their observations and interpretation of knowledge. The key idea behind posting and responding to each other in the discussion forum is to allow and create opportunities for all to have a voice, which promotes the construction of new ideas. Integrating cognitive activities into the online setting is a practical way to promote relevant interactivity while effectively meeting course objectives. The concept mapping assignment and the discussion that follows offers excellent opportunities for students to share their insights and perspectives on technology. Students will post their completed work online which helps them see how others have designed their concept maps. A grading rubric will be used to evaluate the concept maps. The grading rubric is an affirmation of learner-centered education, which establishes a greater level of trust between the teacher and student. It is designed to establish a set of instructional expectations and standards for the concept map and are an instrument for student feedback that promotes assessment of learning. Rubrics are valuable because of their capacity to clearly reveal vital information to students that enable them to improve their knowledge and skill levels. If learners do not receive adequate teacher feedback and reinforcement, students will not always know whether they possess an accurate knowledge of the subject matter. A primary goal of education is to promote self-directed attitudes and skills while discouraging excessive dependency upon the instructor. Constructivism stresses student creation of knowledge, developing higher order thinking skills and working on meaningful projects. This lesson is constructivist

Naqi Reflection

in that it promotes students to be active learners interacting with a variety of resources, developing their understanding through experimentation, experience and evaluation.

Naqi Appendix 1920s and 1930s Summative Assignment: Interwar Years Concept Map

The 1920s and 1930s were a very important time in Canadian history. Many aspects of our lives today stem from that time period (political, social, and economic). To understand history it is extremely important to look at how specific moments affect and change the course of history.

Task: In teacher-assigned groups, using Mindomo, you will create a concept attainment map that demonstrates your ability to link the cause and affect relationships between WWI, 1920s and 1930s in terms of Canadas social, political and economic factors. Looking at major topics in the unit students will make links to show how major concepts, issues, people and legislation are related. Major topics to look at could be: The Winnipeg General Strike, Prohibition, the Suffragist Movement, economics, media and culture, social welfare, unions, Chanak Crisis, the Halibut Treaty; just to name a few. How are all the different concepts that have occurred throughout this period related and connected? This is an opportunity for you to think critically about what we have learned and how they are all related to one another. Important moments in history are all related to one another in some way; in this assignment it will be your job to analyze those links and connections.

Naqi 10 Appendix

Interwar Years Concept Map Assessment Rubric

Naqi 11 References Matthews, M. R. (1994). Science Teaching. New York: Routledge, chapter 7. Posner, G.J, Strike, K.A, Hewson, P. W & Gertzog, W.A (1982). Accommodation of a scientific conception: Toward a theory of conceptual change. Science Education. 66(2), 211-227. White, R. & Gunstone, R. F. (1992). Probing Understanding. London: The Falmer Press, chapter 2 & 3.