Firstly, I would suggest talking more about your learning theories and context in the overview of the resource section. And I think your description of learning theory is very detailed and well constructed, but the description of learning content can contain more information about how the instructor will convey the knowledge to the learners.

For the activities, I’m considering that there could be more interactive activities to enhance learners’ engagement, embedding some group tasks may be a good choice. And an online discussion forum will also be useful for peer interaction and feedback provides. In addition, perhaps you may consider to evolve some tools or applications to address student-teacher interaction. And I think the description of activities could be more detailed and include how these activities will meet each learning outcome.

I think your Interactive learning resource already has a great framework which just needs to contain more details. Keep up the good work!

Rather than instructor directly assign certain activities for learners, I think it’s better if learners can pick activities base on their own interests. This approach can not only make our learners be more passionate in the learning process but also will enhance student-teacher interaction and student-learning material interaction for learners after watching this video. After watching the video, learners will need to consider precisely what activities can trigger their passion the most according to our learning concept. Then they will need to complete a mandatory online quiz to pick two activities that they are most interested in. The instructor will decide two proper activities for learners and add them into the course content and learners need to have accessible devices for online meetings (by using apps like Zoom). During this process, learners will be able to improve their English skills from multi-dimension by completing peer-to-peer interaction and student-teacher interaction. Meanwhile, feedback is needed for being an important element of interaction. The instructor will make a commentary summary after each activity completed and list out suggestions that will help learners have more efficient and high-quality learning activities next time.

As an instructor, what I need to prepare for the decided activities is to figure out how to organize students during games and assign tasks efficiently. Also, I have to do my best to make every student engage in this activity. Under the consideration that this is an online activity and to make sure the efficient engagement of all learners, a large scale of participants will not be suitable.

Addressed Prompts:

1. What kind of interaction would the video require from your students? Does it force them to respond in some way (inherent)?
2. In what way are they likely to respond to the video on their own, e.g. make notes, do an activity, think about the topic (learner-generated)?
3. What activity could you suggest that they do, after they have watched the video (designed)? What type of knowledge or skill would that activity help develop? What medium or technology would students use to do the activity?
4. How would students get feedback on the activity that you set? What medium or technology would they and/or you use for getting and giving feedback on their activity?
5. How much work for you would that activity cause? Would the work be both manageable and worthwhile? Could the activity be scaled for larger numbers of students?

Because the learning design topic for our group is to enhance learners’ English comprehension, the planned learning activities are expected to be face-to-face interactions. So that learners can have more discussion and engagement during the learning process. But we are also able to assure the learning quality if unexpected events occur. Just like our current situation, all people are stuck at home and can only work online due to this pandemic. Then we will have to develop a learning approach that can make our learners all be able to work at home safely.

The first essential thing is that we need to make sure all of our learners have accessible devices for online learning. Considering who might not have computers or laptops, we will try to make our learning resources and software are also accessible on mobile phones to ensure everyone can work from home. To adapt to the new study form, we will introduce the software or website we will be using in advance to let learners take time to get familiar with them. And the majority of the learning content will be delivered by online meeting applications such as Zoom. By using an application like this, we can also divide the learners into small groups and give them time to have discussions during the class. The instructor will take turn to enter each discussion room to see if there are any questions during the discussion.

Furthermore, online learning requires a high level of learning autonomy. To make sure all learners can master the knowledge well, some assignments and quizzes will be assigned to them base on a phased process. But due to the particularity of this situation that we are dealing with, we will not assign a heavy work for learners in order to help them stay in a healthy mental status in consideration of that they cannot continue with their normal daily affairs. As instructors, we will keep following up with each learner’s learning progress and be ready to solve any problems that both about learning difficulties or anxiety caused by this pandemic.

Regarding to Yiwei’s post, it is a good point that the online learning content can be flexible according to learners interests under this particular circumstance. Learners can have more interaction with peers and develop more interest in learning content during this topic exploration process.

According to David W Johnson and Roger T Jonson (2005), some essential elements need to be met for efficient cooperation.

• Positive interdependence:  Cooperative learning will base on a situation that all members’ efforts connect with each other’s and all efforts will have influences on the group’s work. Also, a successful final outcome will benefit everyone instead of an individual.
• Individual and group accountability: Each member needs to be clear about what part they are handling and take responsibility for their own part. And the group needs to be aware of their goals and to make sure each member’s effort is measured.
• Promotive interaction: The interaction among group members, especially face to face interaction, will encourage each other and have a promotive effect on the working process.
• Appropriate use of social skills: Social skills are essential for group members to communicate and discuss during the working process.
• Group processing: The group will be able to determine what approach they will use and what improvement they should take.

The cooperative learning approach can be applied very well to our groups’ topic: enhance non-English speakers’ English reading comprehension ability. Because almost every person will have their own perspective towards the same article or movie. Thus, dividing learners into different groups randomly will let them be able to hear from the person who shares different ideas and have time to think whose idea is more relevant to the theme of the article. In the meantime, the group discussion process also gives learners an opportunity to communicate in English. This is not only a good chance to enhance English speaking but also has a positive effect on English reading. For group task, the instructor can give each group handouts which have questions about the understanding of the learning content. As instructors, we will evaluate their group works and give feedback base on whether learners are understanding the material in the right way.

 Reference 

David W Johnson & Roger T Johnson:  What is Cooperative Learning?

Last semester I took a course discussed about economic development (Econ 320) and I very much enjoyed it. Instead of just conveying concepts by explaining them and organize the information into PowerPoint, like most other courses do. The professor also assigned us several articles and videos to look over as tasks. Those articles and videos are very informative, which included such as argument paper indicates different measurements of income inequality, TED talks about how world population and poverty are changing throughout history, and documentary of first nations’ situation, etc.. Even though these leaning materials are not testable but those mentioned facts about economic development caused my curiosity and interest in this topic. Also, much information from those materials have changed my preconceived opinions about global economic development, and even those opinions have seemed like common sense to me before. This kind of findings gives me motivation to learn and the motivation is exactly what drives me to finish reading or watching. After that, we also have to write down our understanding and findings from the materials for the in-class discussion as groups the day after. At last, we will summarize what we have gained after group discussion.

If we consider course teaching from a theoretical perspective, I think the professor was both a cognitivist and a constructivist. The cognitivism approach was applied by conveying the course materials combined with extended materials stage by stage. The knowledge from extended learning materials are related to presented testable concepts but were conveyed in a different way. After finishing those materials, we will not only gain a better understanding of course content but also will have an update to our prior preconceived knowledge about economic development. And for constructivism strategy, the course materials were used as a premise to let us know how those economic concepts and definitions can be applied to or interpreted in real-world scenarios. And the professor always says that there does not need to be only one true answer for most economic questions. So, group meetings will allow students to know others’ different opinions from peer interaction. After all, I think proper extended learning materials are also quite important for learners to develop interests in the learning topic.

After reading Xiaoqing’s post, it’s good to know how she applied three learning three theories to her own learning experiences. And I also agree that my learning experiences were primarily conveyed by a cognitivist approach. I think maybe learning under cognitivism has already become the most practical way for learners currently.

Hey guys, this is Cc. My major is Economic and if everything goes under expected I will graduate next year. For personal hobby traveling is what I’m most interested in. I like experiencing different countries’ local cultures and also really love meeting tourists from all over the world and share impressive views together during the journey. I hope that we can get through this particular time very soon and be able to travel again.

Looking forward to working with all of you!