Final Project Wrap-Up Blog Post

Create a cumulative blog post synthesizing what you have learned in this course by applying the work you have done step-by-step each week to your bigger picture.

What you apply this to will be what you have chosen to use as your example in the first week, it could be: a course/lesson/workshop/tutorial you need to create for the future, instruction or instructional content you have created in the past, or use a made up example.

1. A description of your environment: your teaching scenario, learners, purpose or end goal, and timeline. Are you teaching face-to-face or online? Is this a tutorial or a course? A one-shot library instruction session? Be specific. [from week 1]
   
   • A one-shot library instruction for EDUC 1300 classes for first-time in college students. The class is face-to-face, but I'm expanding it to include online instruction for distance students and supplemental/reinforcement for the f2f students. The students include developmental students, fresh out of high school students, and adult learners starting and/or returning to college. Their technological experience also varies wildly. The end goal is to have students be able to follow the ACRL standards for information literacy: find, use, and analyze information.
2. Your learning outcomes. These should be based on the needs and expectations of your environment. Are these outcomes appropriate for your learners? [from week 2]
   • Students will be able to formulate effective search terms to use when searching the databases and online catalog.
   • Students will be able to identify the most relevant title from an online catalog search for a given topic.
   • Students will be able to identify the appropriate database(s) to search for a given topic.
   • Students will be able to determine the most relevant article(s) based on an evaluation framework
   • Students will be able to identify the parts of a citation.
3. How will you assess your learners? What formative and summative assessments would best fit in your teaching scenario? Do they align with your outcomes? [from week 2]
   
   • Students will be asked during the instruction to do verbally provide appropriate keywords and appropriate/relevant search results based on the given criteria. A pre and post survey will be given to determine what level of knowledge the students had/have in performing these tasks.
     
4. Learning theories and other instructional approaches to implement. What learning theories best support your outcomes? How might you leverage these theories to develop content and assessments? [from week 3]
   
   • While I think all three theories may support the outcomes, both cognitivism and constructivism are most closely aligned with the goals/outcomes.
   • Cognitivism: brainstorming appropriate/relevant keywords, creating keyword strings, organizing results by both relevance and chronology.
     
   • Constructivism: the students analyzing the search results and choosing the most appropriate/relevant results based on the assignment requirements puts the students in an actual real world situation. An extra step I could add would be to have them compare their "best picks" with one or more other students to share, debate, and defend their search strategies and results.
5. What tools will you use to deliver this content and have learners interact with your instruction? What might work best and why? [from week 4]
   
   • I'm using Articulate Storyline to create an interactive learning experience/module, offering students opportunities to read, view, listen, analyze, answer, and review content information and develop their research skills
6. Reflect on what you have learned. What has been most useful? What do you feel you are still struggling with? How has this course changed how you approach instruction?
   
   • Backwards design seems so obvious when you learn about it, but for me it was a novel approach and solution to a fundamental 
   • Writing goals/objectives that follow the statement, "A year (or more) after this course is over, I want and hope that students will _________," has really made me look more at the big picture and focus less on the minutia of what I'm covering in a one-shot class. I'm going to look for alternative ways/times to cover the minutia that while is important in the short-term, is not what I what students to leave the college with on the road to their next college/career, etc.
   • Quality assessment is still a struggle in a one-shot session, but I think with more buy-in from teaching faculty and the ability to contact students later in the semester this can be alleviated.
   • I knew absolutely zero about learning theories before this class, so this is an excellent start for my personal professional development.
   • Don't bog students down by forcing them to learn new software/technology unless it directly relates to the goals/objectives. New technology for the sake of new technology is an unneeded burden on students and can/will impact successful objective achievement, and later assessments.
7. Finally, did you find any of your coursemates' blogs particularly helpful? Link to any particularly useful posts or entire blogs from your peers. What have you learned from your peers? Did you add any additional resources to the Zotero group that you find exciting or interesting?
   • I was only able to review a handful of blogs due to the sheer volume of posts and the short time span available with work and all, but it did make me consider that perhaps I do too much myself (I'm very OCD) and should network more with people in the same situation as I. There is no need for all of us to reinvent the wheel when with collaboration we can all work faster, more efficiently and more creatively.
8. [Optional] Were you able to incorporate aspects of critical pedagogy into your instruction? What are you excited about in regards to this? What do you find most challenging? Or conversely, if you are not supportive of critical pedagogy: why?
   
   • There simply wasn't enough time for me to review the material and with no formal background in education I think it's the type of information that can't and shouldn't be rushed.

Week 4: Technology, Tools, and Wrap-Up

What technologies (old, new, or emerging) might be most appropriate for your final project?
- While a library tour is not part of my current project, I can't help but mentioning that I experimented this past spring with taking our paper & pencil scavenger hunt and piloting the hunt using iPads. Yes, it did work, and yes, it may have added a bit more dimension to the experience, but in the end I decided that it really wasn't better. Sometimes a pencil & and piece of paper are the most effective and effecient tools.
- As to my current project, I'm piloting using Articulate Storyline because I'm trying to have the learning experience be as interactive as possible. Allowing for reading, viewing, listening, analyzing, answering, and reviewing the content information and developing research skills.

Does your final project align with any of the trends represented in the Horizon Report you reviewed? 
The one trend that most closely aligns with my project is "Prioritization of Mobile Content and Delivery." As I'm making an interactive module to present the material, it's mobile implementation could be far reaching, both to face-to-face students and online students.

Now answer the first two questions posed in Consider section of the 5-Step Ed-Tech Integration Model from the How to Choose article.
Consider:
Will this application/tool enhance, improve instruction or motivate learners?
- Yes, it allows for instant feedback, review, assessment, and followup.
What similar applications/tools are there to consider?
- I tried SoftChalk, but found it lacking in design, interactive options, and responsive capabilities.

Week 3, Part 2: Student Motivation

Write a brief post addressing how you are going to motivate your learners/students, and align your response with the information drawn from Small's article on motivation.

My hope is to motivate learning by impressing upon them that...
- the skills learned in the one-shot instruction are applicable to all research they might take on in both their academic and personal lives. This idea is presented on page 6 under Instructional Motivation Models.

Hopefully I'll come up with more over time, but this is what I stress to all students now in my instruction classes.

Week 3, Part 1 - Learning Theories

In your blog, discuss which theory/ies might be most applicable to your instruction and outline a specific activity/assignment/exercise that would facilitate learning according to that theory.

Ok, assumming I'm understanding all the theories correctly (and given I've only spent about 30 minutes with them), I can see how each of the three theories apply to my one-shot library instruction, though I still have questions.
- Behaviorism: leading the students through website links repeatedly to reach the online catalog and/or electronic databases. Having the students search the same word in various ways, as well as using word truncation, to explain the nuances of the catalog/database search limits. Creating citications is pretty much rote memeorization so it would seem to fall in here as well. Using badging/levels in online versions of the one-shot instruction would also fall under behaviorism.
~~Question: how might the idea of requiring "level completion" before moving on to the "next level" affect outcomes.
- Cognitivism: brainstorming appropriate/relevant keywords, creating keyword strings, organizing results by both relevance and chronology.
~~Does the delivery method affect cognitive learning? Surely the pace of the instruction would have some bearing?
- Constructivism: the students analyzing the search results and choosing the most appropriate/relevant results based on the assignment requirements puts the students in an actual real world situation. An extra step I could add would be to have them compare their "best picks" with one or more other students to share, debate, and defend their search strategies and results.

Outline, design, or wireframe that activity in a way that makes sense to you so you will be able to design it more in depth when you have time.