Using various learning styles and intelligences in Online learning

Assignment 1
You are to submit a couple of paragraphs which describe the course you are planning to teach and the audience for which it is intended. Describe any ways you will plan to address the various learning styles and intelligences of your students and/or make an argument for why this may not be necessary.
Points to be assigned as follows:
Description of course and audience: 0-5 points
Specific ideas for meeting the learning styles and intelligence of students: 0-7 points
Professional level, clear writing: 0-3 points


ABC’s of Chemistry: Chemistry on fingertips
Introduction: A general Chemistry course is a prerequisite sequence for students in a variety of  science and health-related fields including pharmacy, chemical, biological and environmental engineering, exercise, nutrition, nursing and natural resources. There is a strong need to introduce online interdisciplinary courses so that, students can earn the required college credits saving time, money, and resources. Other online chemistry courses offer general chemistry and organic chemistry as two separate courses. But the course ABC’s of Chemistry: Chemistry on fingertips will serve as one for these two courses. This course is designed to help students learn basic concepts in chemistry entirely online and will be delivered through the university extension program utilizing the Blackboard learning system. This asynchronous and instructor led eight-week long course would help learners to learn a new skill or enhance the existing ones. Learners are expected to spend roughly six to seven hours each week to complete two course lessons, released every Tuesday and Friday. In order to monitor the progress of students in meeting course objectives and professional standards, classroom participation in discussion forum, assignments and final self-reflection using evaluation tools (rubrics) will be used. Each lesson has an assignment at the end.
Target Audience and pre-requisites: This course will attract leaners who are interested in learning that can be done at home and fitted around work, family, and social obligations. The high school juniors and seniors, looking for a jump start on taking college courses, will find this course extremely useful. This is also a bridge course for refreshing the students who wish to pursue for a degree in Chemistry. This is an excellent college prep course and requires a solid foundation in 10th grade level of reading and math.
Course content: In this Chemistry course, learners will gain an understanding of origin of chemistry, explore the nature of matter and analyze the properties of liquids, solids, and gasses. Learners will be introduced to atomic structure, quantum theory and chemical bonding. They will further examine the concept of solutions, solubility, and the colligative properties of solutions; chemical reactions, and chemical periodicity. But that’s not all:  learners will also study organic chemistry, laws of thermodynamics, and even electrochemistry. ABC’s of Chemistry is transferable for 3-credits. In this course learners can be certain of quality instruction, personalized assessment, and tracked progress.
Plans for meeting the learning styles and intelligence of students
In an online course the instructor can have learners with different learning styles and multiple intelligences. Thus, it becomes important that the instructors adequately invest time in preparing and structuring course material, assignments and other tasks. One of the biggest advantages of the online environment is that a learner centered course material can be designed to match individuals’ learning styles. The constructivist model recognizes learners as active individuals, constructing knowledge as a result of a variety of interactions: learner-text; instructor-learner; learner-learner, etc.
The aim of this course is to provide an optimal and user-friendly format for students with differing intelligence and learning styles. Thus, the course will reach more students effectively because it would provide access to a larger variety of quality resource, teaching important concepts in multiple ways. Assessment criteria would be such that it would let students use their stronger intelligences.
For visual learners- The course will contain videos, interactive flash tutors, activities with fall back scaffolding, virtual labs, pictures, tables, demonstrations, handouts, and mind maps.
Auditory learners: The students who learn best through hearing (aurally) will find video clips, virtual lectures, interviews, seminars, giving of reports and speeches, power point w/audio component and video conferences useful.

Tactile and kinesthetic learners- Learners will have the virtual lab using drag and drop technology, some interactive flash animations and 3D graphics. Discussion boards and collaborative learning will help them build the community and give them real world experience. I also plan to use some kind of haptic technology.
Assessment: Various learning styles and MI will be taken into account while designing exercises for assessment. The exercises will include fill in the blank, multiple-choice questions, identification of terms, variety of short answer and essay questions, diagrams, flow charts, drag and drop exercises, writing assignments and self-reflection. Peer editing, where students examine each other’s work and reflect upon their own learning, will be an integrated part of the course.


References:
1. Levenburg, N. Implementing the Constructivist Learning Environment. Mini lecture 5, EDUI6701.
2. Bravemann, S. (2004, December). Two, Four, Six, Eight, Let’s All Differentiate
            Differential Education: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. New Horizons for               Learning Retrieved June 29, 2006, from http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/differentiated/bravmann.htm

MS OTL- 6702

Hello everyone
I am Savneet Singh from Bellevue, Washington. Bellevue is a satellite of Seattle and lies between Lake Washington to the west and  Lake Sammamish to the east. I’m not working at this point of time but I used to teach English and Environment Studies to grade three and five for two years. Later, I worked with seventh to tenth grade students for three years, teaching chemistry and environmental science.
I plan on using my experience of teaching Science to develop an online college-level chemistry courses which can satisfy prerequisites for a variety of the science and health-related fields including, pharmacy, chemical, biological and environmental engineering, exercise, nutrition, nursing and natural resources.
The memorable experience that I would like to share is from grade 11. I remember that, that was the week of submitting final projects for physics. I was pretty much busy with that throughout the week and didn’t do my math homework. On the Saturday of the same week, there was a parent teacher meeting. I thought that my Math teacher Ms Renu is going to complain about my incomplete home work. But, to my surprise, Ms.Renu didn’t mention anything about it in front of my mother and father. Instead, she gave a positive feedback and praised my hard work and performance in the class. I wasn’t expecting this at all. After this incidence I started loving Ms Renu and never went to my math class with an incomplete homework. I learnt that teacher’s positive attitude initiates a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events and outcomes. It can even change a student’s life.

Journal entry:Mindset list 2015

After reading ‘The mindset list 2015’ , I found that it is not very appropriate for student who come from culturally different background. For example, I have spent a significant part of my life in India, so I couldn’t make much sense of many points mentioned in the list. I don’t know much about John Wayne Bobbitt, Arnold Palmer and some others.

Although, I enjoyed reading the list. This also brings the memories back of an elder teacher in my primary school, who was in her late fifties. She always talked about the things that she experienced when she was in her school. Sometimes, she used to give examples of the things those were obsolete for us and I have to ask their meaning either from my parents or grand-parents! We never enjoyed her class. 

 

Many of the mindset list points are not relevant for the people outside USA. I think Beloit people go by political, cultural and social history. As you wrote in one of the responses that- In instructional design, Know your audience, is key. The list looks incomplete. The list is also "narrow", in the sense, that it doesn't apply to most freshmen in the world except for some global facts such as:

· There has always been an Internet ramp onto the information highway

· “ Yadda, yadda, yadda” has always come in handy to make long stories short.

· Video games have always had ratings.

· Chicken soup has always been soul food.

· Dial-up is soooooooooo last century!

· Women have always been kissing women on television

· Unlike their older siblings, they spent bedtime on their backs until they learned to roll over.

· Music has always been available via free downloads.

· Grown-ups have always been arguing about health care policy.

Moderate amounts of red wine and baby aspirin have always been thought good for the heart.

There are some more similar global facts those hold true for people of many countries in the world but I’m afraid not all. The world is not just USA, UK, China or India. There are still countries in Africa, Asia and Australia and the Pacific, where people might not have seen a computer yet!

But, this is an undisputed fact that the global facts mentioned in the Mindset list are a kind of touchstones, and the world is changing at a fast pace, so should be the education and the educators themselves.

The mindset list in my eyes

The Mindset List for the Class of 2015 is a great piece of writing, imagination, creativity and actuality. It recognizes the need to change the curriculum, teaching styles and instructional technology with the time. In a way, this article implicitly conveys that teaching whether inside the four walls of the classroom of a primary school or a complex management course, offered online, has to take care of the needs of the learners’ social, cultural and economic background. The teaching methods and the teacher have to be dynamic, ready to accept and adapt to the changes occurring ‘out there in the world’. This is strongly required because the teaching content has to go parallel with the learner’s life. We can’t simply forward whatever we learnt in our classrooms as students.

Today’ s primary school children might not have seen a typewriter ever! They are living in the era of touch screen where they don’t even have to move their fingers a lot for coloring a picture. (I’m talking about the Leapfrog’s leapPad). A typewriter can only be a part of a history project.

Similarly, a landline phone and TVs with the rotary dial can only be seen in pictures. I remember, we had a red land line phone with dial and a heavy receiver in 1980’s when I was a primary school student and by the time I graduated high school in 1999, I had my first cell phone Nokia 3210. Within, ten years the communication industry took a wide turn, from landlines to mobile phone. With the further advancement of the technology, the smartphones are not only used for making a call to friend, but they do multitasking loaded with thousands of features and apps. So, the statement made in ‘The Mindset List’- Dial-up is soooooooooo last century!- is just appropriate.

Thus, if we understand the mindset of our students/learners, we can cater to their needs and develop the best course for them. The cultural differences also matter a lot. For example, if I want to develop an alphabet recognition game/activity for pre-schoolers and label ‘B’ is for burger and ‘P’ is for pizza, this game/activity won’t work well in a country where these food items are not eaten (many African and Asian countries). Kids won’t be able to relate to these examples. They would understand bamboo for ‘B’ and paper for ‘P’, which is very much around them.

My comments on Justin, my classmate's mindlist review:

This is a very detailed and impressive reflection. You have really taken up things those are or were important part of our lives. The list tries to remind teachers that they should closely watch on the references and the examples used while teaching. Yes, the mindset list makes us feel “old”but also prompts that the time accelerates. There is only thing in this world that never changes and it is the ‘change itself’.

Amazon can only be an online store where you can find anything and everything for the class 2015. Some of them might not even know that it is one of the largest rivers of the world. I, somehow have a different opinion on this. Consider a student’s response to the question what is Amazon, as“ an online retailer”, then, as educators, this is our flaw and not the student’s. If we get such an answer, this means our geography lessons and projects weren’t effective enough to teach them the facts.

I hope you somehow agree to this!

The course for me

The whole MS program, for me, is going to be a big stepping stone. Unlike my other classmates, those are already engaged in some kind of educational profession; I am a stay at home mom from last 3 years. I have to take care of my two and a half years old who needs my constant attention and spends whole day with me. So, I plan to finish of the course and then look out for some job opportunities in e-learning.

I was most  surprised by the kind of strict schedule posted in weekly course schedule. Frankly speaking I wasn’t expecting this kind of timetable. I have done a few online certificates and the deadlines were extended, so I could easily finish my work. But, then I realized the instructor’s welcome note itself says that-“ This is a fast-paced course. We have designed 10 weeks of learning into a 5 week course”. It cleared the fact that there is a strong need of such a weekly plan.

I liked the welcome note and the description of using blackboard itself. The steps were pretty clear and they are repeated at appropriate places so that students don’t have to go back, read instruction, come back and apply. This helped in moving smoothly and quickly.

I am little concerned about making team. I won’t say that I don’t  ‘like’ it but, it’s just that , M not sure how will I go about it. For example, finding team members, selecting representative and all..

As a future course designer, I would like to simplify the discussion board layout so that it is easy to understand and not many threads are located on the same page. The pages for the threads should be separate according to the subject they deal in. For example, there can be a page for tech help which has thread related  only on the same topic. Another one can focus only personal profiles. I think, it would help in an easy navigation.