Week #10: Collaboration

The overarching question of this week's screen cast and readings was, "how can we effectively support collaboration among learners?"  As teamwork is becoming increasingly more popular, it is important to understand cooperative and collaborative learning. Especially, in the corporate context, because teams can take more time and resources to complete a task than an individual IDs should be well aware of the decision points and factors which may enhance or deter collaborative learning.   In my previous experience in working in teams, I've learned a lot more with more diverse teams than homogeneous teams.  However, I remember having a hard time coming to consensus quickly on many aspects of the projects.

There were two  question that popped into my head while reading and listening to the screen cast:

1. Is leadership considered an aspect of collaborative learning?  Are the individuals who have higher social skills considered a leader?
2. How do collaborative learning in different contexts differ?  Since one of the learning outcomes of collaboration is academic achievement, can collaborative learning be applicable in diverse contexts?

Lastly, our team will not use collaborative learning in our project, because the learning outcomes of collaboration does not align with our project's learning outcomes.

MC

Weel #9: Reflection

As the time is ticking and our team is struggling to move on with our project, we made a big decision to limit the scope of our project from career development to networking.  The overarching goal of our project is to teach learners how to network in structured and unstructured settings.  Our audience remains the same: IST master's students.  Thankfully, we are able to use some information we've gathered the last couple of weeks for our original project.
Now that we have more direct learning goals, it will be easier for us to have our learners reflect upon the learning material.  For instance, we will have questions  at the end of each module to aide the learner to reflect upon what was learned in each module.  The questions will be mostly situational, due to the nature of our subject.  One question I had while watching this week's screen cast: Are some approaches/ techniques of reflection more  appropriate for certain learner characteristics, such as age?

MC

Week #8: Scaffolding vs. Job Aid

In last week's screen cast Dr. G posed an interesting question, "what is the difference between scaffolding and job aid." Scaffolding and job aid are both incorporated in the instructional design process to assist the learner to accomplish a task. Although, both have similar qualities, they differ concerning the goal, task independence and support.  I thought a Venn Diagram would explain the relationship between scaffolding and a job aid, because they share similar qualities yet differ in its capability.  Below is my understanding of the similarities and differences of scaffolding strategy and job aid.  Let me know your thoughts!

Week #7: Storytelling

Stories have been at the center of human consciousness for a long time. People tell
stories, and the stories they tell shape who they are. People hear stories and remember
those that resonate deeply with them … Good education requires good stories. (p. 5)
-Robert Schank

This week's topic on storytelling enlightened me on how to appropriately utilize the principles of storytelling to design effective instruction.  As the quote above states, good storytelling engages learner to meaningfully interpret various experiences.  According to Jonassen & Hernandez-Serrano (2002) stories should be used:

• To convey or make meaning
• As a cultural communication tool
• To affirm commonalities or mark distinctions
• To create memories
• To frame interpretations
• To understand
• To support arguments
• To facilitate vicarious interactions
• To facilitate authentic exploration

Although our project will not be utilizing storytelling principles in our website, during class we developed a story of how our website can transform/ impact a user's life.

We were given an iPad as a possible tool. However, my teammates and I lacked knowledge in how to utilize this device so we disregarded this tool, due to the time constraints.  Instead, we had a team member narrate a story while myself and the third member acted out the story.  The storyline consisted of two girls living in a parallel world: one girl living a successful life with the help of our career website, and the other living a less successful life without the website.  Our story would have been more effective with the use of music, sound effects and captions.  Despite the lack of our technical expertise and time constraints, overall my team did a great job producing a story.

Reference: Schank, R.C. (2005). Every curriculum tells a story. Retrieved November 1, 2008, from
http://www.socraticarts.com/about/SCCwhitepaper.pdf

Week #6: Evaluation and Assessment

Evaluation occurs throughout all the stages in the instructional design process.  This week's screencast and reading was focused more on evaluation in the design and development phase.

One of the biggest concerns I have with my team's project is that since we are dealing with a process performance issue, rather than an instructional one, I am not sure how to develop an evaluation for the project.  As our intervention will be an online website, we will employ a website usability test.

The process performance problem is the unclear process of IST Master's students preparing for the careers upon graduation. Therefore, our project's aim will be to better illustrate the process to IST Master's students so that they can better prepare for their future. 

Considering the informational nature of our project, is it possible to evaluate the learners? Also, if you can't evaluate the performance, can the intervention still be considered valid?

Week #5: Public Service Motivation (Motivation)

In my undergraduate studies as an Arts Management major in the School of Public Affairs, I took a course on Managing Behavior in Public Organizations.  A part of this course dealt with motivation in organizations, more specifically, in public service organizations.  Since this week's topic was motivation, I wanted to share what motivates people who work in the public service.  Most of the context covered in this course (and IST) discusses instruction in a educational and/or business context, and I thought it would be interesting for my colleagues to learn about motivation in a context they are not as familiar with.  This post will provide a brief summary of the findings and its implications from Wise & Perry's article, "The Motivational Bases of Public Service."

What motivates public personnel?

1) Rational motives
Public personnel usually have a desire to represent some kind of special interest, and a personal identification with a policy or program goal.  They also have desires for personal gain and personal need fulfillment.

2) Norm-based motives
Public personnel usually have a desire to serve the public interest, and achieve a sense of duty to the community and display a unique sense of loyalty to the government. 

3) Affective motives
Public personnel are usually motivated by the individual's emotions. They usually believe a particular program to society has deep importance.  Moreover, they have a sense of patriotism of benevolence. 

Findings & Implications

1) Tying rewards to performance is more challenging in public organizations compared to private organizations.
2) In public service, there is a perception of a weaker relationship between performance and extrinsic rewards, compared to private ones.
3)  Public managers and employees tend to value monetary incentives low, and have a higher level of public service motivation

In addition to the motivation principles we learned, when designing instruction or job structure, motivation for that specific context should be taken into consideration.


Perry, J. L., & Wise, L. R. (1990). The motivational bases of public service.  Public administration 
review, 50(3), 367.

Week #4: 5 Color Scheme Tools (Topic of Choice)

In R541's list of what an infographic is, many have metioned the importance of selecting consistent and choosing appealing colors. Moreover, one of the questions which surface in class this week was, "how do we choose the right colors?" Understanding color theory and principles may be important learn. However, for those who don't necessarily have the time to read about such information or simply don't care for it, I have complied 5 helpful tools to help you choose the right colors for your infographic.

1. Kuler
+ I personally love this site, because you can download the color palettes as a plug-in for Adobe tools such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.  A good place to start is by looking through the "most popular" and "highest rated" color themes.

2. COLOURlovers
+ This tool is like a Pinterest board for colors only. You can create your own colors, or be inspired by the palettes created and shared by its users.

3. Pictaculous
+ This tool lets you upload an image, and generate a color palettes from the image. Pictaculous is also integrated with Kuler and Colourlovers, and generates a list of color scheme suggestions.

4. ColoRotate
Very similar to Kuler. The website provides some information about color.  The palettes can also be integrated into Adobe applications, and is iPad user friendly.

5.  Hex Color Scheme Generator
+ Do you have a color that you'd like to use, but not sure what would go with it? This tool can generate 3 additional colors that match the color that you selected.