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.