Design Experiment 4: PBWorks

I have heard of wikis before, but this is the first week that I really gained an understanding and appreciation for the affordances for a wiki. I seem to say this about every platform that we explore in this course... but I had never heard of PBWorks before this week.

PBWorks is a wiki. Just like other wikis, PBWorks allows online collaboration. PBWorks provides products organized into Hubs depending on the need for the wiki (Agency, New Business, Legal, Project, Business, Wiki, Education) It works for large companies, small businesses, educational institutions, or anything in between. PBWorks allows groups to collaborate to share work and contribute to projects. Every change or update can be tracked and provide a group notification to keep everyone working on the same page.

I liked that PB Works EDUHub has some basic features and templates that can be used to create and support a classroom. There a template for a syllabus, assignments, activity tracking, and many more. The activity tracker specifically allows everyone on the wiki to see a running list of what is being done. This was my favorite feature, and would likely be what I use most.

I can see using a wiki when assigning group work to my students. Because this tool is so collaborative, it helps to ensure that everyone has the same information, and that everyone can see the progress of the project. Likewise, I as the teacher can see the effort of each student. I could assign a group project researching a country and give each group a wiki to help them organize their work. Each student can take a separate part of the research and presentation and while they are working individually, they can keep the group updated on progress and findings as the whole project comes together.

The theory of connectivism is definitely written all over the design of EDUHub, and any other wiki. Since people process information by forming connections, collaboration is a major way to increase learning. This theory discusses how learning increases with the use of technology and when information can be shared with people.

Design Experiment 3: Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseware

Khan Academy

I was somewhat familiar with Khan Academy's open resources prior to studying the site this week. A few years ago someone told my dad about some of the resources on the site and he was so excited to teach me, his higher education professional daughter, something about higher education that I hadn't heard about. So, I casually explored Khan Academy about 4 years ago. I am still impressed with all of the resources this site has.

As I viewed Khan Academy's web page this week I realized that the site contains a great deal of STEM related content. These subjects tend to be difficult for most students, so the fact that there are so many additional resources available is awesome. This would be an amazing teaching supplement for math and science teachers at all levels. This is not really my area of teaching, so I didn't explore that content too much. There was one small section of content labeled Grammar, which is more related to my area of teaching, Integrated Reading & Writing. I think Khan Academy's course content can help a lot in the flipped classroom. There are articles and short videos that can be assigned prior to class, and application problems and quizzes that can be done in class. I liked that the content is broken down by topic and into manageable chunks for each unit. The lessons are self-directed and provide students additional help if needed along the lesson. I think this format is perfect for adult learners who are independent learners. KA would also be great for diverse learners since the instructor is able to differentiate learning and assign specific work to specific students.

My critique of Khan Academy is that that lessons do not tell you how long they take. I had to click on each video separately to see the length of the video. As a teacher assigning certain content, I would want to know how long these lessons are expected to take so that I could plan appropriately for in-class and out of class work.

MIT OpenCourseware

Like Khan Acadmy, MIT Open Courseware had more STEM courses than anything else. MIT OpenCourseware, however, has variety of courses that are not STEM related. I thought the most valuable resources on the MIT OCW were the instructor insights for selected subjects. With the instructor insights a new (or seasoned) teacher is provided with not just content, but also necessary information to successfully teach the course. Some of the resources in instructor insight are: course overview, course outcomes, assessment information, student information, etc. So many tips, samples and examples, and strategies for teaching the course are included.


Khan Academy felt more like a CMS that instructor and students are used to navigating. MIT OCW felt more like a repository for content and resources for instructors or students who were self-teaching. I could see myself using either site in teaching in a flipped classroom primarily because there is so much content that a student can explore prior to classroom application.

Design Experiment 2- Edmodo for Critical Thinking

This week we explored Edmodo. Edmodo is a CMS that can supplement classroom learning for teachers and students. I have never used Edmodo for instruction, or even heard of it before this week, so I learned a lot just watching tutorials and reading reviews.

Edmodo is geared to the K-12 learning environment. The Edmodo app can be downloaded and used on mobile devices, just like Google Classroom. Among its unique features, Edmodo allows parents to have access to the course page for their child's class. This is different from Google Classroom, which does not have a parent access option. One of the most noticeable differences in the two course management systems is the look. Edmodo is set up for more social learning, and its interface even has the format of social media, particularly Facebook. Posts from everyone in the course can easily be seen and replied to in the daily feed.

One of the affordances of Edmodo is the look and feel of social media which nearly all students are familiar and comfortable using. Therefore, this CMS would be a beneficial tool in creating an assignment that required posting, sharing, and commenting. While most CMS have a discussion feature, Edmodo's interface makes it "feel" social.

Teaching critical thinking skills is important in all levels of education, but becomes a major learning outcome in college. One activity that helps to encourage critical thinking is to have students give short answer responses to prompts that require them to think and solve relevant problems.

An activity like this gives students the opportunity to think creatively and to express themselves (critical thinking and communication skills). Edmodo would be perfect for this learning activity as it gives students an opportunity to post a response to a prompt and enables other students and teachers to reply to that response. This can all be easily seen within the class feed. This allows engagement with the topic and helps students see different ways of thinking and approaching a problem.

Design Experiment 1: Google Apps

This week we explored Google Classroom. Although my area of teaching is higher education, I still think Google Classroom would work well as an LMS or a tool for online instruction and collaboration for my students. I loved that you can use Google Classroom on any device. This would work especially well for adult learners who would be able to use Google Classroom on their mobile device at any time. With adult learners, having a LMS that is Google based would be great because of its real world relevance- the world uses Google! Adult learners appreciate applicability in their learning.

For the design experiment this week I am going to explore using Google Scholar and Google Tasks in designing a learning experience for college students completing a basic social science research project.

For an assignment such as this, I would consider adult theory for instruction and application. According to the Theory of Andragogy by Malcolm Knowles, adult learners are different from child learners. Adult learners, for example, have real world experience to draw on as a resource for learning. They want to be able to incorporate what they already know into their new learning. Adult learners are also self-directed and desire input in what and how they are learning. A research project fits the typical adult learner. The project is mostly self-directed, and the skills gained from completing a research project will be useful throughout their college career.

The technology partners that will be used for this assignment are Google Tasks and Google Scholar. Students may also use Google Books for research purposes. 

Google Tasks

A research project is multi-faceted and would likely take an entire semester to complete, so Google Tasks will help keep students on track with all of the moving parts that make up this assignment. Google Tasks can organize the parts of the assignments according to due dates and by major tasks and sub-tasks. This organization is easy to edit, remove, or mark as completed. Additionally, task items from an email can be added to Google Tasks. As a result, email communication from the instructor can easily be added to the task lists to keep students on track with this project. Google Tasks also work together with Google Calendar which will help students easily view the timeline for such a project.  Google Tasks will add tasks to the calendar with due dates, and the calendar reminder will contain more details than a regular google calendar entry.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar will be the main resource for gathering information for the research project. Because Google Scholar only gives results for peer reviewed books and articles, it is more useful for scholarly research than using the regular google search engine which shows a bit of everything. Google Scholar has the ability to link articles together which is a really useful tool in conducting research. It can show articles which cite the one you're reading and also articles related to the one you're reading. Additionally, Google Scholar can filter results to show you articles more recently written. This is an especially useful tool when researching a topic such as technology since things change so quickly in that field. Finally, Google Scholar is able to correctly cite articles. This is useful in helping a student compile a bibliography or reference list for this project. 

There are many other Google apps/tools that I explored that would be useful for a college research paper. Some of these include Google Books, Google Docs, and Google Sheets. Enabling students to use all of them will be useful as they progress in their education. It also provides more tools to teachers to reach the diversity of learners.