Session 6: Response to Prompts

1. Describe an “Absorb” type activity for one of the objectives in your course plan.

According to William Horton “Absorb” activities “usually consist of information and the actions learners take to extract and comprehend knowledge from that information”. Some examples of absorb activities include presentations, readings, stories by a teacher and field trips. For one and all the other objectives that I mentioned in my course plan, I will be including an absorb activity by providing students not only with video presentations but also a word document that will include important theorems, definitions and formulas for each chapter. Geometry is a subject with many important definitions and formulas that need to be recalled constantly, having access to a text document will help students “absorb” the information with greater ease.

2. Describe a “Do” type activity for one of the objectives in your course plan.

“Do”activities are defined in our text to be activities  where, “learners discover, parse, decode, analyze, verify, combine, organize, discuss, debate, evaluate, condense, refine, elaborate, and, most importantly, apply knowledge”. Throughout my course plan I decided to incorporate a “do” activity which is group work. Since my course will be a hybrid class where students will meet in a classroom setting twice a week, they will be required to work in groups on a problem set that is assigned from the textbook. This “drill-and-practice” type of activity will, “help learners automate skills and improve fluidity of application”. I believe this type of activity that involves practice, communication and repetition is crucial for the learning of mathematics.

3. Describe a “Connect” type activity for one of the objectives in your course plan. 

Activities classified as “Connect” activities are important for students to exercise since they help them apply the concepts that they learned in previous and current lessons. I had a difficult time incorporating a connect activity for my students who will be taking this course due to the fact that this is the first course I will be teaching and creating, however I will see how I can manage my time to include a connect activity. It all depends on how well students are receiving the material and the time it will take for them to feel comfortable with the material. If I do end up assigning connect activities to my students it will be a group project that will require them to research careers where geometry and other math courses are applied in real world situations.

4. Choose one of the above activities and discuss the process you would use to create this presentation. For this task assume that you have no additional assistance other than the instructor who would be able to write content as you describe it and perform for a recording as needed.

An absorb activity that I included above was video presentations along with a word document that included theorems, definitions and formulas. I would follow the process mentioned in Dr.Newberry’s podcast, which works in three stages, preparation, production and delivery. This three stage process seems like the most efficient and appropriate because it does not overlook any detail. Throughout this process of producing eLearning resources I will work closely with the instructor since they are the experts of the course. For the audio in the video presentations, I would prefer it to be done by the instructor, since they are well experienced and will be able to explain the steps clearer and add any additional useful tricks and skills to solving math problems.

5. Discuss how would your approach for the above task would be different if you were directing the development efforts of a team that included a graphic designer, a video editor and a web programmer along with all of the tools that such a team would typically use.

The impact of having a graphic designer, a video editor and a web programmer would be positive and would result in a much more effective course. For the above task the process would be the same since I would not want to leave out any important detail, however, what would change would be the workload that would be distributed among each other and who I would work with in each step. When in the preparation stage I would probably work close with the instructor and graphic designer, in the production stage with video editor and in the final stage with the web programmer. Having a wide variety of experts and tools will allow me to create learning resources to best fit the needs of the students.

6. The text presents test types and presents a list of common types of test questions. In light of these, describe a test that would be appropriate for the class your team planned in the previous session.

For this course the main purpose for testing will be to measure the progress of learners, which is why I decided to have weekly quizzes and chapter tests. These tests will include a mixture of true/false, pick-one, fill-in-the-blanks, and matching-list, the type of questions will depend on what exactly I want to test. For example,quizzes will include 3-4 pick-one questions where students will be required to show all work, and all work/steps must lead to the correct answer. Chapter tests will be greater in length of course, and will include a test that test the comprehension of definitions as well and not just the students ability to perform the correct steps. To test definition and theorem comprehension I will ask students true/false, fill-in-the-blanks and matching-list questions during different chapter test, not all at once. For problems that require a specific answer the pick-one questions will be the most appropriate, again students will be required to show all work in order to receive full credit in order to avoid lucky guessing and defeating the purpose of the test, which is to test the progress of students.