Category: Assignment 1 – Blog Posts

This week, we learned about active learning and passive learning, which are two very different teaching methods. Active learning is an approach to instruction that involves actively engaging students with the course material through discussions, problem-solving, case studies, role plays, and other methods. Passive learning is a method of learning or instruction where students receive information from the instructor and internalize it. In comparison, active learning can effectively increase students’ learning motivation, make them more interested in learning, and promote their active learning.

Most of the courses I have studied have been through passive learning. However, through studying EDCI337 this semester, I have found that the majority of our teaching methods in this course are active learning. Every week, we learn new software or strategies and explore how to use them by ourselves. In this learning situation, I find that my memory of the course content is deeper.

Historia, the example of game-based learning in this week’s Read/Watch list is relatively low tech – how would you use multimedia tools and content to support and enhance the active learning? What would it allow them to do that they’re not doing right now?

I think Kahoot! is a great multimedia tool to enhance active learning. Kahoot! is an online game-based learning platform. It allows instructors, organizations, and parents to set up fun web-based learning for others. Instructors can use this software to create interactive quizzes to assess students’ understanding of course content, which can include multimedia content such as images and videos. It will undoubtedly increase students’ interest. Kahoot! can also be used to create polls and surveys, allowing instructors to collect feedback from learners on their learning experiences. This feedback can be used to improve game-based learning experiences and customize them based on student’s needs and preferences. It can also promote collaborative learning, allowing students to form teams and compete with each other. This can help students develop teamwork and communication skills, as well as cultivate a sense of community and engagement. Additionally, the most important thing is its gamification strategy, where Kahoot! incorporates gamification elements such as points, badges, and leaderboards to motivate learners and maintain their engagement. This creates healthy competition among students and can help learners maintain focus and motivation, therefore enhancing the effectiveness of game-based learning experiences.

Compared to the current situation, using this multimedia tool can have several benefits for students. Firstly, its gamification strategy can increase student motivation and engagement by creating a more competitive environment. This can lead to a stronger desire to learn and even encourage students to continue learning independently outside of class. Additionally, teachers can use this tool to create more interesting and interactive quizzes, making learning more enjoyable and effective for students. Finally, the tool also allows for easier and more efficient feedback collection from students, allowing teachers to make more informed decisions about how to improve their teaching.

H5P

I decide to use “Drag and Drop” for my H5P project. This is my project content.

What tools did you find useful in your explorations this week and how did you use them? Which ones were not useful?

Recently, I have heard a lot of discussions about artificial intelligence tools, and last week I learned about AI-related knowledge and tried using several tools. I tried using ChatGPT to search for a game introduction to help me remember the game process, which can assist me in thinking about related issues in my video game class. I also came across the issue mentioned in class. When I asked ChatGPT to find a few articles for me, it would fabricate an article that meets the requirements, including its introduction and URL. When I tried to confirm it with ChatGPT, it would admit that it was incorrect. Here is my experience using ChatGPT.

What might you use AI tools for moving forward? What would you not use them for?

For short analytical and computational problems, I believe using artificial intelligence tools is feasible as it can help us save time and increase our work efficiency. However, for questions that require our own thinking, I would not choose to use it. I believe we should not let AI replace our own thinking.

Storytelling

Through this week’s learning, I have discovered that storytelling is a highly effective teaching method. It can make learners more interested in the content and more focused on the subject matter. I would like to use this method to share my knowledge about how to use film cameras that I have learned this semester. Below is my script:

After setting up the film camera, the next step is to use the camera to take photos until the entire roll of film is used up. For my photos, I used a Jellycat toy as the subject.

Once the photos have been taken, it’s time to develop them in the classroom. The first step is to put the film in a completely opaque bag and roll it up before placing it in a black bucket. Next, two chemical solutions provided by the teacher are used to develop the film. After about half an hour of processing, the film is rinsed, dried, and blown dry. Finally, the photos are cut to the desired size and put into a bag. These are the basic steps for using a film camera.

Here is my storyboard:

In the week5 I learned the knowledge of how to make a good PowerPoints and infographic. Before I learned this content, I always made a mess of PowerPoint but couldn’t find the problem. After learning this week’s content, I found that I lost a lot of principles when doing PPT in the past. I also learned how to create my infographic in Canva. Infographics are a powerful tool for organizing and presenting information and telling a story. We can always see all kinds of infographics in our daily life, which can increase people’s interest in reading and watching. Canva is a website that helps people make infographics, it allows me to create my infographics more easily.

Infographics

I made a infographic of how to improve focus, the reason is that when I study, sometimes it is difficult to concentrate, it may be interrupted by some trivial matters or not managing time well, etc., I have been trying to solve this problem and make my study more efficient. This is my infographic.

Which design principles did you use to create your infographic in Canva? Which elements of a ‘good infographic’ were you able to incorporate? What other principles did you consider?

I think many principles are very useful, I used “Limit your color palette”, “Keep imagery simple” and “White space is a good thing” on my infographic. I think an infographic should not have too complicated color combination, which will make it look confusing, so I choose to use several lighter colors to make it more comfortable to read. Too complex images will affect the focus of the infographic, and people will pay more attention to the images rather than the content, so I chose to use a few simple and content-related images. I think “White space is a good thing” is the best idea, if an infographic is completely filled with various colors and content without any white space, it makes me feel a little disinterested, so I put lots of white space on my infographic. I think it also similar with “Leave lots of negative space”.

Lesson Design

For the design class, I designed a plan for a dessert making class. This is my lesson design planning template.

Generally, I used to take notes to record the content explained by the teacher, or record the important content in the ppt for later review. Most of the content is text. This has led to a very serious problem that there are very few ideas or content of my own in the notes, so that I can’t always find what I am looking for when reviewing.

After learning sketchnoting in the third week, I found that it is a very useful and efficient way of taking notes. Sketchnotes are rich visual notes created from a mix of handwriting, drawings, hand-drawn typography, shapes, and visual elements like arrows, boxes, and lines. It can better allow me to record what I have learned in my own way, and I will never forget the position of the note again.

I am a person who likes to draw very much, so sketchnoting makes me feel that taking notes is not so boring. I use this to take my notes in painting class this semester, this allows me to learn in a more intuitive way. It makes me no longer constrained to use the form of words to record what I have learned. The biggest advantage of this is that when I see what I have drawn, I can immediately recall the thoughts and practices when I recorded these contents. When I don’t look at the notes but simply recall what I’ve studied, these images can also appear in my mind to help me recall.

In The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning, Wolfgang Schnotz wrote: “What is multimedia learning? From a psychological point of view, the core of multimedia learning is the combined comprehension of text and pictures. This does not necessarily require high technology. Multimedia learning is also possible with printed books or blackboards instead of computer screens and with the human voice instead of loudspeakers. Multimedia learning is therefore not a modern phenomenon.” I think this is very similar to skethnoting. They both combine graphics and text to make it easier for people to understand the knowledge they need to learn.

This is my sketchnotes I did from my painting class and my health economic class.

Reference:

Van Merriënboer, J., & Kester, L. (2014). The Four-Component Instructional Design Model: Multimedia Principles in Environments for Complex Learning. In R. Mayer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology, pp. 104-148). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139547369.007

Hello everyone, welcome to my Blog. My name is Tiancheng Zhang, you can also call me Arthur which is my English name.

I’m a forth year economic student and this is my last semester at Uvic,I hope I can gradate successfully, since I putted at lot effort on my study. After finish my undergraduate program, then I can plan for my future, maybe about my future study or my career. I’m not sure what kind of job I want to do in the future. This is one thing that I have been thinking recently. During leisure time, I like reading, drawing, watching movies and playing video games. This is the view from me lying on the couch.

I have taken many online courses during covid 19 period. Last semester I have 2 online courses. The 1^st is econ 321, which is my Required Course, the 2^nd one is ahvs 311F, which is horror video game, and its really interesting. Personally, I like online study, it provide me more flexible time, I can study from home instead of driving to school, it is time saving.

The reason I choose this course is that I’m very interested in interactive and multimedia learning. I want to try a variety of learning methods, because I think it is an essencial part in nowadays education, especially in online study. I hope that through this course, I can learn relevant knowledge in depth.