ePortfolio Reflection on Practice
1: Formulate a feasible and achievable plan for the design, development and evaluation of an eLearning project.
After travelling a few erroneous paths, I finally created my research question and objectives which would lead me to the goal of planning and creating an eLearning resource for Electronic Technicians. With over 25 years working experience in this sector and having being involved in a wide variety of roles from technician to technical trainer to supervisory and eventually to teaching and lecturing, I was in a unique position of to understand some of the hurdles facing novices in learning electronics. I was conscious the overall integrity of the project hinged on defining the research question. The literature review was fundamental in project planning, allowing for the formation of a methodology, which would best fit the target group, use the most pertinent data collection and data analysis methods and keep with the requirements of the publishing Journal.
2: Apply a thorough grounding in theory and practice of elearning in order to design and develop a well combined unit bringing together the appropriate use of eLearning technologies.
The Child Obesity resource was my starting point for identifying the appropriateness of eLearning in a real educational setting. The objective of the Instructional Design and Authoring Module is to instruct learners in order to develop competence in planning, design and development of eLearning activities or resources, this module allowed me to apply, in a practical manner, relevant learning and instructional design theories to eLearning. Enabling the development of a thorough understanding of the design, development, application and evaluation issues relating to eLearning. The practical skills gained here, in web and eLearning resource development and usage of tools for eLearning development such as podcasting, video editing and experience in rapid eLearning development proved invaluable in the planning, design, development and implementation of my final eLearning resource.
3: Work independently on, and manage, the development, implementation and evaluation of an eLearning project.
I believe my many years of industry and teaching experience gave me a degree of insight to what novice students of electronics required; this helped me to work independently in developing a practical eLearning solution to a problem I had experienced many times and over many years. The project necessitated the development of a broad range of technical skills using a diverse range of programs and tools such as Xtranormal, Dropbox, Yola, Articulate Engage, Presenter and Quizmaker, embedding of external apps and manipulation of audio content using programs such as Real Time Player. Multiple drives allowed the resource to develop organically, from the research methods used, to the literature reviewed, and to focus group results and the great advice gained from other technical and educational practitioners. The pressure to produce a realistic project plan is I believe one of the more difficult but essential project metrics, it is also beneficial in producing parameters constraining the scope of the project. The project plan proved its value in producing limits allowing timely implementation and evaluation to take place.
4: Conduct a critically focused literature review relevant to the use of elearning in order to develop a reasoned argument for the rationale and design of an eLearning project.
The literature review was an integral part of the M.Sc. applied project, allowing for the development of a reasoned argument for the rationale and design of the eLearning project, this combined with a clear research question and succinct research methodology helped in configuring reading. The process of researching and reviewing the required material, centered initially on a critically focused literature review of novice learning, problem recognition, specific areas in electronics, electricity and maths especially threshold concepts and the need to develop domain expertise. Due to the nature of the subjects research started off broadly based and subsequently narrowed down, allowed for the development of new skills and assurance in critical reading of source materials, reference articles and evaluation and interpretation of data.
5: Engage in research to evaluate the effective use of elearning resources within a higher education environment.
My research question centres on the needs of novice learners in the electronics industry, based on 25 years’ experience in the Electronics industry, and having worked in a variety of technical and teaching roles, I do not see the fundamental learner issues in grasping threshold concepts changing, however I do envisage that how these issues will be dealt with will change fundamentally. This new foresight has been gained directly as a result of the new field of knowledge opened up by my research on this project, when I initially studied electronics in 1982; it was a chalk and talk, textbook world with some lab work. Observing how students work in a modern setting is a different environment; the challenge is to often having to many competing sources of knowledge available, from a plethora of mobile apps, articles, links, u-tube videos, podcasts and blogs and being unable to select what’s relevant. This is where a well-researched and focused resource, developed especially for the needs of this audience is valuable, the evaluation of the resource confirmed its value to the target learners, by having at hands reach an information source for basic electronics and electricity especially aimed at hard to grasp threshold concepts.
6: Develop from the research evidence obtained from the undertaking of an elearning project, a reasoned argument and draw consistent and coherent conclusions.
The knowledge brought forward from Year 1 of the Masters in Applied eLearning, together with information gathered by focus group questionnaires and interviews, reinforced by the literature review, helped me to articulate a clear research question. As the project progressed, the body of evidence to support my argument namely “Will an eLearning resource with mobile apps improve student learning in the areas of Basic Electronics, Basic Electricity and Maths?”, became more substantial with the research literature reviewed, such as, (Card, Mackinlay, & Shneiderman, 1999) Explain how Interactive visualization tools help novice learners, and Mulder. Lazonder & de Jong (2010) offered supporting literature with their research report on the implications for supporting domain novices in inquiry learning environments. Further research helped to back up the content, design and pedagogical models used in the resource such as “A quiz is considered one of the most effective methods that can be used to Incorporate Active Learning strategies for an online environment”. “Active learning is probably not going to happen in an online environment unless the interaction is deliberately planned and the instructor encourages it”. (Moore & Kearsley 1996).
7: Reflect self-critically on the process and outcomes of a development and learning implementation project.
The process of creating an eLearning resource, can look relatively straightforward at the planning stages, my experience is that programs and the their limitations, such as the 30 day trail period for using Articulate, can have big effects on the flow of resource development, the developer often has to use multiple platforms, streamlining these platforms to work together sharing files in different formats causes further complications. It certainly had the effect of slowing down my rate progress, especially in ePortfolio development. Nevertheless I was pleased with the final eResource, and it worked as I had envisaged at the planning stage.
8: Communicate the work concisely both orally and in written form through an oral presentation and a journal paper.
I believe my Work in Progress presentation gives a coherent oral report, of the rate of progress of my project and outlines the planning for further development, design, implementation and evaluation. My Journal paper outlines the background to the development of the project, focusing in on why this project was selected, the analysis design, development, implementation and evaluation of the resource, and outlines its relevance to its target audience
9: Identify a research paper for the research.
I identified “Computers and Education” as the Journal most closely aligned to my eResource and journal paper, Tsai, C, C. Heller, R, S. Nussbaum, M. Twining, P. (2013). “ The Editors welcome any papers on cognition, educational or training systems development using techniques from and applications in any technical knowledge domain; curricula considerations, graphics, simulations, computer-aided design, applications including intelligent tutoring systems, hypertext and hypermedia; user interfaces to learning systems; and virtual reality in an educational context”.
References:
Card, S., Mackinlay, J. D., & Shneiderman, B. (Eds.). (1999). Readings in information visualization: Using vision to think. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufman.
Moore, M. G. & Kearsley, G. (1996). Distance education: A systems view. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.
Mulder, Y, G. Lazonder, A, W. & de Jong, T. (2010). “Finding Out How They Find It Out: An empirical analysis of inquiry learners’ need for support”. International Journal of Science Education Vol. 32, No. 15, 1 October 2010, pp. 2033–2053
Tsai, C, C. Heller, R, S. Nussbaum, M. Twining, P. (2013). Computers & Education.