Running Head: Assignment #5

My Final Synthesis & Self

Assessment

Cole Anderson
32916025
University of British Columbia
ETEC 565A
Submitted to: Dr. Natasha Boskic
August, 9, 2017

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Running Head: Assignment #5

My journey and experience with ETEC 565A has been an invaluable educational

experience in both content design and pedagogical self-reflection. When I reflect on the

various assigned small group activities, my personal flight plan, technology selection,

and creating an online course prototype, this reinforced why I saved ETEC 565A until

the last semester before the start of 590. However, early on in the course, and much to

my chagrin, the professor did warn us that a course such as this should be taken by

itself and not in combination with any other courses. Despite the warning I had planned

out exactly what courses I wanted to take through the entire MET program and so I felt I

had no choice but to follow through with my pre-arranged schedule.

Overall I found many of the topics regarding the cost of time management, how

to choose an educational platform, and the various pedagogical articles to be very

educational from a self-referencing perspective. The articles that were read all related to

my current teaching assignment load in the Surrey School District. I wanted to have a

chance to reflect and to continue enhancing all the skills and knowledge as I had

already previously gained from the other MET courses and my personal experience.

However, I did find myself becoming increasingly frustrated and agitated with some

certain aspects of the course as I felt I was being limited and bounded to certain models

or expectations that didnt match what my original goals nor visions were for the

assignments. Despite my frustrations I was experiencing these emotions were

educational for me because it taught me that even with the vastness of the internet

there are limits. There has to be limits because in education it is imperative that

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Running Head: Assignment #5

students and educators must operate within a scaffolded structure. This was a reality

that took me a very long time to accept and understand.

It was in fact the Anderson and Elloumi article, Towards a Theory of Online

Learning that initiated my initial thoughts towards the potential of scaffolding to any

digital learning management systems (LMS). In the article the authors discussed how

no matter what the educational research may or may not state on any topic or pre-

conceived thoughts it forces every educator to look at education in the big picture and to

critically examine their current practice. When an educator self-examines their own

practice I noticed there are four "overlapping lenses" for would constitute as effective

learning. Those lenses are Community-centred, Knowledge-Centred, Learner-Centred

and finally Assessment-Centred. There was one particular line in the Learner-Centred

description that really stood out to me and it was, A teacher makes efforts to gain an

understanding of students prerequisite knowledge, including any misconceptions that

the learner starts with in their con-instruction of new knowledge. (Anderson & Elloumi,

2008) Despite the name of this theory the exercise of comprehending the needs of the

individual student, school, and even the staff has to be viewed as a collective whole and

not the individual groups.

Understanding and developing the required tools and skills to view the collective

whole at the school has a fundamental challenge because with online learning tools

there is no face-to-face interaction. This is a challenge that represents a paradigm shift

not just in education but towards society as a whole because humanity we crave and

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Running Head: Assignment #5

desire to have that face-to-face interaction. Replicating that face-to-face challenge

continues to be missed by any social technology and society hasnt reached a digital

saturation point where this is the normal form of communicating. Understanding this

limitation for LMS will have a profound and immediate impact on my individual course

designing and planning.

Using LMS and exploring how to implement LMS was the focus for assignment

#2 as I was assigned to work with Ed, Mandy and Mable. Our hypothetical scenario was

the Athabasca University ad Hoc Committee rubric selection process. Even though the

time for the group assignment was short we were still able to organize three meetings

via Google Hangouts in the span of two weeks. This assignment taught me the

importance of LMS, SECTIONS and the First People's Way of Learning because up to

that point this were just acronyms that I had memorized. At the conclusion of this

assignment I was beginning to understand the First Peoples Ways to Learn, LMS and

SECTIONS and I took that experience and insight into the initial planning and concept

designing for the course on LearnDash.

At the beginning of this course I had the desire to obtain through first hand

experience how I could include three of the eight core components to the SECTIONS

model that Chickering, A. W., & Ehrmann had outlined. It was my desire to use the

SECTIONS model in conjunction with the First Peoples Ways of Learning to create an

online course prototype because some of the SECTIONS outline was administrative

while others pedagogical. Originally in my personal flight plan I wanted to completely

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Running Head: Assignment #5

build new modules for the new British Columbia Social Studies 9 course as my

assignments for this class. However, at the end of the course I decided to change the

focus entirely and instead built a course around Globalization and Social Studies 11.

This change of focus and content was mainly driven by the fact that Social Studies 11 is

the course I have taught the most. When I did an honest and thorough self-assessment

Social Studies 11 had the most amount of materials and essentially had the greatest

amount of resources and experience to experiment with. The truthful underlining reason

for the switch was the required time commitments as the original proposal cost of time

commitment was beyond the time commitments I was able to devote towards ETEC

565A.

Through the use of the SECTIONS model I gained greater understanding

towards my stated goals for technology implementation, assessment and delivery in my

experience in ETEC 565A. The three aspects of the SECTIONS model I practiced and

experienced in ETEC 565A as outlined but paraphrased by Chickering, A. W., &

Ehrmann were as the following:

Designing a course that had an age appropriate technology for the ease of use.
To achieve that goal I used to very common platforms for secondary students

which was Twitter and YouTube. This experience gave me the chance to

experiment with some ideas I have been thinking about in recent years but have

not been able to implement until now.

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Running Head: Assignment #5

I designed a course on LearnDash to be a blended learning model and where

students would have a digital module to complete in combination with the

traditional brick-and-mortar classroom. I used the technology which had been

built into LearnDash already to create a level of interaction such as the three

quizzes that would have a measurable quantifiable academic assessment at the

end of each week. Each quiz was to ensure the students were actually

completing all of the required steps each week, while participating in the weekly

Twitter chats, and before the end of the week assignments were to be started.

An area where I did encounter some initial struggles in the beginning design
phase was how to incorporate the element of speed. Speed is the

implementation time, along with maintaining any and all of the required OS

updates to the various platforms. This is a reality that any educator who is

designing digital platforms materials should be aware of. Ultimately this is a

concern I cannot control and thus it does not concern me. If this was a concern I

would then devote the required time and costs to make my own educational

digital programs.

In my original flight plan I stated I wanted to incorporate the First Peoples

Principles of Learning but to selectively choose only three of the eight elements to

explore and practice throughout the duration of ETEC 565A. This decision was

intentional because I wanted to maximize this opportunity before I transfer my

experience from this summer to my current teaching assignment course load at Lord

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Running Head: Assignment #5

Tweedsmuir Secondary. Through my experience in ETEC 565A I did gain a greater

understanding towards the First Peopless Way of Learning with the following principles:

Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential and relational

Learning is embedded in memory, history and story
Learning requires exploration of ones identity
Referenced: FNESC (2015)

An unplanned but pleasant synergy bonus of practicing and understanding of the

First Peoples Way of Learning was levied onto the meaning of our class forum

discussions. When I started my MET journey two years ago I originally thought the

discussion forums were just a way gimmick to ensure students would remain engaged

throughout the entire course. However, at the end of this course I realized now the

notable educational benefits to having a weekly discussions and educator prompted

questions. Even though there were plenty of topics and points of view which I do not

agree with it is still beneficial to have those discussions. The smaller group discussions

were a very useful strategy for me. I found that in the small group discussions there was

a far greater level of actual discussion happening on the weekly topics. It was a level of

discussion that didnt always happen in the larger class wide forum discussions.

At the end of the course it is a useful practice to think about what substantive,

comprehensive and detailed reflected next steps will be for me. How will my next flight

plan change and which technology may I include or not include in my own practice

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Running Head: Assignment #5

moving forward? To be totally honest my attention will not be focused on any of those

questions as of yet because I will be getting ready for 590 to start in September. Once I

have 590 completed I will give myself at least three years to decompress and truly

reflect upon my experiences in this course and all of the courses in the MET program.

That is when I will do a comprehensive and detailed reflection on what my next steps

should be. However, I do know there will be five guiding questions that I will reflect and

answer which are as follows:

1. Which selected learned technology did I find the most useful in a pedagogical

and personal perspective and why?

2. Which selected learned technology did I not find useful in a pedagogical and

personal perspective and why?

3. How can I commercialize and elevate what I have learned into my boutique

company, Soaring Compass Points?

4. How can use web enabled technology on the personal device so I can be a

trickster of knowledge to my students in a social studies constructivist

classroom?

5. Do I want to remain in Canada once this degree is finished or do I want to

explore what options might be available to me in either East Asia or in

Australia?

I will state that even though I value the educational experience in learning and

discussing the various technologies that were used in this class I will not continue using

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Running Head: Assignment #5

LearnDash once my MET journey is complete. It is my opinion and experience that

there are more suitable and better designed platforms that are currently available on the

educational market such as Edmodo. Edmodo is just a far superior product and platform

when it comes to any of the literature that I have discussed in this final synthesis.

Edmodo is a product that has a true global presence because the LMS is designed to

provide the impression that it is an acceptable social media option. Google Classroom

will never be a consideration in my current practice of the concerns surrounding

FOIPPA. This is one technology and market angle I believe is not yet fully been realized

however, I was originally very intrigued and enthusiastic with the idea of incorporating

Twitter to my class. But now that I've gone through the process of building it to be at

vital component in my content module I found that it was not worth the effort. The costs

of time both and creating and monitoring Twitter forums, creating lists and small chat

groups, is simply not worth my time. The desirable ease of use for students accepting

and participating in the Twitter based discussions will always remain in doubt.

In the end my experience in ETEC 565A was invaluable because I learned new

pedagogical perspectives while reflecting on my own current practice. Some of my

ideas were possible while others have now been abandoned due to the realities of

actuality implementing the technology. The requirements of still having a scaffolded

structure, even if it is exclusively digitally, is the reality and tradition of institutionalized

and globalized education today in the early 21st century.

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Running Head: Assignment #5

References:

Edmodo (2016). About Edmodo. Retrieved from https://www.edmodo.com/about.

Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. (Eds.) (2008) Toward a theory of online learning. Theory and

Practice of Online Learning, Chapter 2 (pp. 45-74).

British Columbia Ministry of Education. (2016). Building Students Success - BCs New

Curriculum. Retrieved from, https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca.

Chickering, A. W., & Ehrmann, S., C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles:

Technology as lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2),

3-6. Retrieved from http://www.aahea.org/articles/sevenprinciples.htm

FNESC (2015). The First Peoples Principles of Learning. Retrieved from

http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/abed/principles_of_learning.pdf

Province of British Columbia (N.D.) FOIPPA Policies & Procedures Manual. Retrieved from

http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/services-for-government/policies-procedures/foippa-manual

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