Week 3 (2/25/21–3/3/21) — Pre-Thesis

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For this week we were tasked with creating a prototype for our idea. I’ll admit, it was difficult to sort of think through the idea fully, but the prototype has become a way for me to rest my assumptions that I’m making about the problem.

As a reminder, here’s what I’m looking into: How can technology be used to implement personalized (adaptive & experimental principles) learning in an accessible way?

To start off, I sort of generalized the problem a bit with regards to how education in some instances is not preparing students in an equitable manner. From there, I connected that to two primary reasons: teachers have to much on their plate to develop lessons that meet all students unique needs (ELL, ESOL, IEP’s, etc) and that schools lack the necessary resources to stay up to date with innovative learning practices and resources for the students. These root causes came from the result of a few interviews I’ve conducted with teachers I’m working on this project with, and from previous interviews/literature review relevant to this topic.

My solution aims to make the process of creating personalized content simpler for teachers, while also providing modern online learning pedagogical approaches to improving students retention of knowledge. As such, I thought about what a MVP would be. And I decided instead of creating a platform (which outside of the actual development of it, seems to be more of the easier part) but to pull out a lesson that is sometimes difficult for students to understand within science and create an outline for what one standard would be along with a description of the accompanying materials.

For the purposes of right now, I’m going to use Florida State Standards for the prototype, just because I’m most familiar with them:

SC.6.L.14.3 Recognize and explore how cells of all organisms undergo similar processes to maintain homeostasis, including extracting energy from food, getting rid of waste, and reproducing.

Traditionally, you’ll see with this standard that teachers will have students make models of an animal or plant cell and compare the two, they might use videos to introduce parts of the cell and explain each function, you could also just simply explain the functions and have students jot down notes. All are good ways to engage with this standard. However, there are notably a few issues with even these lessons. For example, what if you don’t have the materials needed for students to create a model of a cell? What if you have students with cognitive or auditory issues that are not able to engage with the video? There’s a lot of problems regarding accessibility to this form and thus in learning the standard. Teachers would then personalize the lesson so that students could engage with the content and sometimes this works while other times it does not. So for my prototype I want to propose an alternative within this format:

Lesson 1: Parts of a Cell

• Video —Interactive Video: the video will introduce students to parts of a cell and how they function, throughout the video using gamification, students will be asked questions that takes them through a personalized journey of learning about the cell. Based on whether the question is correct or not students will get another stab at the game and be presented with similar questions that ensure that each part of the cell has been presented to the student and that the students understand how each part of the cell works. The teacher will have a dashboard that provides an overview of students progress and notes any concerns to certain portions of the standards that might need to be followed up with students.
• VR/AR Experience — Visualizing the Cell: students will be presented with a VR/AR experience that allows them to dissect the cell and explore how they function within real-world contexts. Throughout the experience, students will be asked questions in which they will respond and the experience will also adapt based on accuracy. The goal here is for students to immerse themselves into the cell and get a clearer understanding of the parts and it’s functions as shown in the previous portion of the lesson.
• Experiment — Create a Model Cell: as an offline activity, and similar to what many teachers have done before students will build out a their own model of a cell noting the differnent parts of the cell and its functions. It’s important to note here that hands-on learning is really effective, and I’m not arguing to remove hands-on learning, I’m just saying it’s use can be integrated more successfully in terms of accessibility. Students can use tech to create their model cell or physical items — this would be up to the teacher and the resources of the students.
• Testing/Reinforcement — Game-Based Quiz: as a reinforcement tool students will undergo and interactive journey related to the topic of cells where they will address certain questions that will allow them to complete an activity and retain game-based points. Again, teachers will have access to a dashboard that notes the process. The important thing here is positive reinforcement regardless if a student got the question wrong or right, the goal is not to punish the student, but rather the ensure the content is understood through adaptive testing.

There are a few questions that I’m effectively asking based on this outline for this particular lesson:

• Whether VR/AR experiences and adaptive-based questioning system can be used effectively and whether it helps students learn about the subject?
• Whether students need hands-on approach to engage with the content and learn about the sections?
• How accessible is the adaptive environment and whether teachers will still need to adapt/modify content based on students needs?

There are also somethings I still haven’t figured out:

• What type of data teachers would need from a lesson that completely takes them out of the picture?
• How much will teachers need to be involved within the games development in order to ensure students are learning content?
• To what extent should game-based educational styles be used to where it could potentially become boring?
• How to reform the role of the teacher as more of a facilitator and social support, rather than a direct instructor of knowledge?

And just because I think we might’ve had to develop something physical, I did some edits to a prototype I created awhile back that I would also use as a similar tool regarding the teacher dashboard. Here teachers could view insights for each student based on the lessons progress, this is something that was quickly done in Figma. I will say though, I’m not particularly concerned about UI though but rather concerned about how to address the questions I listed above, at least at this point.