12 May, 2024

Reflecting On Context

This week’s readings and discussions have led me to reflect on how context (or at times lack thereof) have impacted the effectiveness of e-learning courses that I have designed in the past few years. In particular, I think about my previous role as an instructional designer working for a family of international schools. My main task was creating online courses to be available to students across all of the schools, and accessible to students across a fairly wide age range (for example, broken into elementary, middle and secondary).

This was at times a daunting task. And while myself and the other designers did our best, I feel like this set up was not conducive to creating courses with authentic context.

I wanted to revisit a course I created and look at it with fresh eyes. Knowing what I now know, what would I do differently to assure that there was some semblance of context in this course?

I have one of the courses I created in this portfolio site.
For a bit of background, this course was part of the Eco Schools series, which focused on sustainability education. This specific course, “Food and the Environment” focused on food waste and the impacts of food systems on the environment.

My Thoughts

This course was one of the earlier ones I created, and after revisiting it for the first time in over a year (and I think it’s been more than 2 years since I created it?), there is a LOT I would change. I also remembered that only the first half of the course is included in this sample. There was an additional “Take Action” section where students would take their learning and use it to take action at their school. I believe in this case there were suggestions like school gardens, vegetarian week, and something about managing food waste at school - maybe composting?

Anyway, focusing specifically on Allen’s (2007) model, I think I would approach this course in almost the opposite direction. As it currently is, this course follows the model we used for all Eco Schools courses: front-load the topic information (albeit in engaging and visually appealing ways), assessment (in the form of games or quizes), “Take Action”, and “Action in Our Schools” - where a school would submit examples of their action to be showcased.

If I were to recreate this course with Allen’s model, it would look something like this:

CONTEXT

Instead of front-loading the info and THEN suggesting actions the students can choose from, I would approach this course as more of a “choose your own adventure” model. Students could select different scenarios related to the topic (maybe they notice lots of food being thrown out at the school cafeteria, and wonder what they can do about it, or they’ve noticed all the farms in their area grow only corn and they wonder why, maybe a friend told them they’ve become vegetarian because “meat is bad for the planet” and they don’t get it).

CHALLENGE

The scenario students decide to follow would lead them to an area of the course where they could learn more about their chosen topic. This would be set up as a leveled set of challenges (things like matching, sliders, ordering etc) of increasing difficulty for students to take on to become masters of the topic. I would use the UN names here (this school family was partnered with UN/UNICEF, so that was allowed), and once the students completed their challenges, they would become “Green Guides” or “Veggie Vindicators” etc… depending on their scenarios. I would link to the UN site, or embed in the UN certificates.

ACTIVITY

For the activity, I would keep the “Take Action” section of the course. Students can take their learning and use it to inform tangible action within their school or local communities. I would still offer suggestions, but students can also come up with their own action ideas.

FEEDBACK

Feedback would happen in several ways: first, it would be throughout the challenge part of the course in the form of automated responses to quizzes and activities, and the certificates on completion.
Secondly, students would get feedback from their school’s “Eco Expert Teacher” throughout their action.
And finally, students can submit their action (through video, photos etc) to the online campus team for showcasing. Students from other schools can then respond to the action through the showcase forum.

I’m not 100% sure ALL of the above would even be possible using the authoring tools that were available, but this is more of a “if I could do anything, what would I do?” reflection.