This year I started teaching a Digital Literacy course. It covers many useful topics but the course was setup to be mainly text based (yawn). One of my goals is to use what I’m learning in the EDDL program to make my courses more engaging. So I took a lesson on Digital Health and Wellness out of my Digital Literacy class and revamped it. The media I added to this lesson consists of a video, 4 pictures and 3 audio clips. In addition to adding media, I organized the lesson into a 4 page book. I created 2 separate submission areas and a quiz. The media is found throughout all those elements. I believe the media I’ve used is pedagogically sound because it’s engaging, visually pleasing, contains clear audio, contains accurate information and is linked to the text in the lesson. It should be noted that I followed the 5 step plan for producing media discussed in the course readings: Develop, plan, produce, edit and distribute.
You can find my lesson here on my MoodleCloud site
Username: student Password: student
Text
The text was formatted so that it was visually pleasing and highlighted the main points of the lesson. I followed the principles learned from a great collection of resources put together in a summary by Keith Webster (2014) called ‘Text Design For Online Learning.’ Also, Meyer’s (1996) SOI model was discussed in the readings and was used to successfully integrate the text with my graphics. Some of the text features used include:
- Selected relevant information.
- Organized information into a coherent structure.
- Used a legible font.
- Font size choice of 9pt and larger.
- High contrast between font colour and background.
- Used different header sizes to show titles and categories.
- Used a bulleted and number list for examples.
- Used callouts to bring attention to the examples.
- Used colour to highligh importance (red=bad, green=good)
Graphic
In Webster (2010) video called ‘Graphics for Learning’, Meyer’s (1996) SOI model was once again discussed and guided my choice of creating 4 representational graphics. The photos I choose represent before and after real life situations and are used to model what I’m looking for in the assignments. Students need to analyze their images and point out what could be done better according to what they learned in the lesson. They then get to apply what they’ve learned and create a graphic of their own using the tips discussed. You need to take the quiz and submit it to see one of the graphics
Audio
One of my main focuses in this lesson was to put it together so that students who are poor readers would still be able to learn. The introduction video does this as well as the audio clips I’ve incorporated. The audio is clear, has no background noise and I made sure I didn’t speak too quickly. The recordings followed a plan and I used Audacity to edit them. I uploaded them as .mp4 files because it’s a widely recognized format. I set the first clip to play on it’s own so that students know what the audio files are for. All audio files are hosted in Moodle.
Video
The video sets up the lesson and I use it to engage my students with the content and instructor. They make a connection with their teacher by seeing what he looks and sounds like (the audio files do this as well). It is also used to explain how to do the first assignment and points students to a graphic that is an example of what they need to do. I used Window’s Movie Maker to create my video and uploaded it to YouTube.
References
Mayer, R. E. (1996). Learning strategies for making sense out of expository text: The SOI model for guiding three cognitive processes in knowledge construction. Educational Psychology Review, 8(4), 357-371.
http://ezproxy.tru.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=9703091191&site=ehost-live
Webster, K. S. (2010, January 26). Graphics for Learning [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5yd_M2xe78
Webster, K.S. (2014). Text Design for Online Learning. Retrieved from
http://courses.olblogs.tru.ca/eddl5131-jan17/week-2-text/text-design-for-online-learning/
