EDU 533 Assignment 2 Instructional Strategies

Instructional Strategies

EDU533 Instruction Design and Development

Learner Related Sequences

The need identified in week 1 was the anticipated need of a middle school teacher to acquaint herself with the use of latest gadgets and technology because of the increased use of these gadgets and technologies in teaching. Education in the future could change drastically with newer technologies and popularity of online environment.

The objective from cognitive domain (anderson, l. W. And krathwohl, d. R., et al (eds.) 2001) is to help the middle school teachers understand that adoption of new technology is a necessity and it is important to master it before it cripples their career. The need from the affective domain is feeling the motivation to learn. Thirdly, from the behavioural domain the teachers can be helped to adopt technologies with a lot of interest and motivation if their need has been fulfilled well in time. Some champions of change (teo, t. 2008) could be identified who could be able to spread the word and ensure that some difficult employees can also be convinced in this regard.

Instructional Strategies

Just as the teachers need to use a large variety of instructional strategies in order to teach information in a variety of ways, it would be important to use a variety of strategies when we are teaching the teachers because they are students for the purpose of this exercise. It is important to use the right strategy at the right time. Varying the instructional strategy cam help bring variety and also improve the attention levels because the trainees wouldn’t know what is coming next.

The first instructional learning strategy in this regard would be the use of case studies to convince the middle school teachers about the way in which change can impact them positively or negatively. Successful cases of individuals who anticipated and prepared for the change could be shared and this could help take care of the cognitive objective of preparing a ground and prepping the teachers for the new training that they need to undergo or the new skill that needs to be acquired. The second instructional strategy would be to use labs which can help the teachers to learn about computers more by observing, practising, exploring and solving problems. It’s about gaining mastery through practical hand-on experience. They could be provided with instructions on basic computer skills and they would have to practice them.

The third instructional strategy is team learning by letting the instructors work in groups and ensuring that every group has an instructor who is better equipped with knowledge on computer usage than others. This can help bring the whole group at an equal level, it would be nice to let some amount of learning transfer happen within the group members because they might be able to connect better.

Learner Analysis

The learner analysis has revealed that there are challenges with regard to convincing the teachers and also keeping them adequately motivated regarding the need to acquire computer usage skills. The first aspect in this regard can be to let them know about examples of men and women who have gone out of their comfort zone and embraced change before the change made it difficult for them to continue their careers.

For instance, one case study could be that of the way in which Barrack Obama embraced change by using popular social media technology (Gallagher, S. 2012) to connect with the potential voters. If he has wanted. He could have used traditional, non-technology methods but he realized that he ought to ensure better user engagement and give the opportunity of participatory democracy. The manner in which this willingness to move with the new technology worked for him and for the whole nation is history. The trainees could be asked to write the lessons learnt from the case. They could also be asked about the ways in which they could apply the lessons learnt from this case in their real lives.

The second aspect of the learner analysis has revealed that efforts need to be made at increasing the motivation to learn. It is possible that even when the teachers have recognized the need to learn to use the latest gadgets and technologies, they might not be motivated enough to learn the same. The strategy in this regard could be to use something thought provoking like a jigsaw puzzle. This puzzle could have lots of common but important technology words that they would have to match with the gadgets that are likely to be used in the education field. The trainees will most likely not be able to successfully complete the jigsaw and this must serve as a motivation for them to learn the usage of the gadgets. Jigsaw can help cover more material in less time and can be used in later stages as well. It can help recapitulate the concepts and can enhance learning and increases retention.

This is how a sample jigsaw puzzle on power point presentations will look like after all the pieces have been correctly matched. Similar ones can be made on excel, laptops, ipads (Henderson, S. 2012) etc.

Furthermore, an example of the instructional strategy could be to use a pre-test to alert the students which are the middle school teachers in this case about the expectation from them and another function could be to make them realize the need for this training because they are most likely going to score very less in this pre-test.

The learner for this strategy has to be a mature and above average in person. The content structure should be such that the length of the instruction is relatively short and loosely structures. It is important not to be very rigid in the beginning of the exercise in terms of the manner in which the instructions are being given or the time for which they are given. The teachers just need to be poked a little and made to realize that need to pick up new knowledge that would help them stay relevant and important when technology becomes the most important means of teaching. As far as the task attributes are concerned, it is important that the trainees have some familiarity with the content in order to find the questions really meaningful.

Using open-ended questions like:

‘How can one convert a word document into a pdf file?’

‘How can one add pictures or videos in a power point presentation?’

‘Please enlist the steps to make a simple power point presentation slide?’

‘How can one add numbers in excel?’

‘If you were to teach a concept, how would you make use of technology in it?’

The trainees would be given the freedom to respond to these questions in short answers and some familiarity with the technologies would be assessed as against perfect answers. They would be encouraged to respond to whatever extent they can and with how much ever level of expertise that they possess. Basically these pre-tests must be a summary of the topics that would be touched in the training and are aimed at knowing the current levels of knowledge.

Delivery Strategies

The delivery strategy of ensuring cooperative group learning can work very well because of the concept of both individual and group goal achievement being incorporated into the process. In addition, social skills lead to team success and thinking gets built into the task. The middle school teachers can get more comfortable when they are working with their own colleagues to learn and they will also be able to shun the inhibition or resistance (barriers) to pick up new technology (Ertmer, Paul, etal. 2014). Group discussion and group learning also have the advantage of promoting self-awareness, self-motivation and of managing emotions. Even if one trainee is very sceptic and nervous about learning new technology, he/she will come across many others like him/her. This can help manage emotions and replace scepticism with the willingness to learn. They need to be made to understand the new trend of blended learning classrooms (Strayer, J.F. 2012).

The revised Bloom’s Taxonomy  
Remember What are speaker notes?
Understand Compare laptops with desktops
Apply Make a 5 slide power point presentation
Analysis Make a flow chart to show the process of converting a word document into a pdf file
Evaluate List some common problems one can encounter while using ipad
Create Create a curriculum using various technologies learnt

There is a revised version of bloom’s taxonomy which emphasizes the need for learning to be complete only after these things have happened: remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create.

The rationale for selection is based on the learner characteristics, behaviour, expected resistance and the expectations from the training. It is important that the learners are motivated sufficiently enough and this is why there is a need for a pre-test, the group activities can help learners find other similar learners like them and also help in self-awareness and self-learning. The case studies can help set the right examples and motivate the learners in the best possible manner.

When it comes to the labs they are crucial because the topic of learning is technology based and needs practical hands-on training apart from theoretical knowledge, an important aspect of the strategy is to keep the motivation levels going and to reinforce learning from time-to-time and preventing it from becoming a onetime affair. It is possible that the teachers might not use what they have learnt and this will slowly fade out of their memory as well. So, it is critical that the school teaching plans are also modified to incorporate the lessons learnt.

References

Ertmer, Paul, etal. 2014. Examining Teachers’ Beliefs About the Role of Technology in the Elementary Classroom. Journal of Research on Computing in Education. Volume 32Volume 32Issue 1, 1999. DOI:

10.1080/08886504.1999.10782269

Gallagher, S. 2012. How Team Obama’s tech efficiency left Romney IT in dust. retrieved from http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/how-team-obamas-tech-efficiency-left-romney-it-in-dust/ on May 14th, 2016.

Henderson, S. 2012. iPad in Education: A Case Study of iPad Adoption and Use in a Primary School. System Science (HICSS), 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference. 10.1109/HICSS.2012.390

Strayer, J.F. 2012. How learning in an inverted classroom influences cooperation, innovation and task orientation. Learning Environments Research. July 2012, Volume 15, Issue 2, pp 171-193

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