Feedback on the selected strategy

How effective was the selected teaching strategy?

I think the selected strategy that I have talked about it in my previous post was really effective especially after I compared its output with the contents of the given article “From Teacher to Facilitator” http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/74/from-teacher-to-facilitator. this strategy achieved students’ engagement in a real working environment which leverage their knowledge in computer’s hardware & software through the number of technical problems they have seen their which develop students’ critical thinking skills

How did I measure its effectiveness?                            

Two evaluation criteria were applied; first one was during the class as a group discussion was going on about participating in IT help desk and connect what they have learnt there with what was covered by curriculum in that area (computer’s hardware/software) and I did enjoy the feeling of being a facilitator, second evaluation criteria was a simple verbal quiz.
 

What is the down side of this strategy?

From IT help desk manager’s perspective; it might be another commitment and work load for her as students are special trainees whom need a special attention (attendance, motivating students, …..).

From students’ perspective; sometimes IT help desk will be very busy with customers and students might be affected by doing extra work; sometimes IT help desk will have less traffic and students might be affected (less things to do).

From facilitator’s perspective; more administrative work to be done in coordination of this activity with the IT help desk & students plus the probing of students’ attendance & performance at the IT help desk from time to time.

Am I willing to do it again?

Sure. I think this approach is like the flipped classroom in the way that students watch/observe the contents in real work scenarios (IT help desk in this case) and then do the homework in class through the group discussion and interviews with the facilitator.  

Trying a new teaching strategy

I did try a new strategy with my students in Computer Hardware & Networking course by sending them in groups to our IT Help desk (I really appreciate that initiative from our IT Service Dept.) to practice some concepts before I teach it, for example they learn from this working environment the different types of hardware and software used in computer by observing/practicing number of problem solving scenarios that is happening on daily based, that really helped me a lot when I was teaching these terms and concepts during the class. Plus students’ feedback was really good about this experience.

There were many tricky points in this strategy:

1-      I got my IT dept. chair approval & IT service Manger approval.

2-      5% of the total marks were given to this strategy (activity).

3-      A dedicated time need to be agreeing with IT Help desk.

4-      Attendence was taken by IT Help desk representative.

5-      You need to predefine which part of the curriculum will be covered by this strategy. (In my case it was only one chapter).

6-      It is a good strategy to warm-up students but you need to have a dedicated computer lab to pursuing on what was built during their IT Help desk engagement.

7-      It needs a lot of coordination to make it happen smoothly.

Another strategy that I would recommend for IT students is engaging some of them with any new IT project that is related to their discipline that is happening in our college (for example last semester we had engaged some students with our College wireless LAN project deployments).

Finally; I think learning by doing is the greatest teaching approach whenever it is doable.

Teaching Strategies

Let’s start with SOLO taxonomy; students are classified into five categories; first category is pre-structural student who do not have the basic information about the subject matter and I think Direct Instructional (DI) could be useful in this situation with some technology tools/techniques to present the curriculum, this could be applied for example in teaching English as a foreign language for our foundation student, this approach would be effective for providing information or developing step-by-step skills; second and third categories are uni-structural/multi-structural  student who have the basic information but from one angle or multi angle but only as a Surface Understanding as the student is not being able to put this information together to form a solid knowledge and I think interactive lecturing could be useful in this case to increase the students engagement inside the classroom in order to foster deeper understanding of the course content through group discussion and practice by doing; fourth and fifth categories are relational/extended abstract student who have the deep understanding in the subject matter and I think Problem/Project based (PBL) approach could be used to develop to achieve the deep understanding and build the critical thinking skills needed in real life environment.             

Personally; I would go with a combination of the above approaches (DI, PBL, and Interactive learning)   as we have different levels of students in our classroom and to align ourselves with a level-3 teacher who is concern is about what a student does and the product or the learning outcome of the teaching.

Regarding Bloom’s taxonomy; I think a combination of PBL & interactive lecturing would be an essential teaching approaches in any classroom if we want our students to gain the creating, evaluating, analysis, applying, and understanding skills; I think that Direct Instruction (DI) could be useful in remembering and achieving understanding.

Regarding Assessments; for formative assessments (just-in-time information on what students know or can do) I would go with Case study, group activity, and researches which a reflection to the teaching approaches using PBL & interactive lecturing (also teacher & students can pinpoint to the concepts those are not clear yet or misunderstood (metacognition)); for summative assessments (reflect students understanding during the course or a unit (module)) I would go with projects which a reflection to PBL teaching approach as exam should test the ability to explain, relate, prove, and apply (same as the teacher intention).

Aligning goals with my course

From a level-3 teacher perspective we need to focus on what a student does before/during/after teaching and to achieve that we need to use the proper teaching strategies as follows:                                        

● Deal with misconception to correct any misunderstanding before we start teaching new concepts; I start each module with the learning objectives (L.O) of it and what type of assessment & activities will be included in this module (unit) to explore these L.Os, then I go through Q&A session with my students where I ask them directly about some previously studied core concepts  that will be used to construct a new knowledge to correct any misconception and to know my students’ levels as some of them might need more efforts/help to behave in active learning way.    

● Apply interactive lecturing to make sure students get what we want them to learn during teaching.    Clicker, Discussions, Group activities are good examples in this area.  

● Built-in activities/quizzes/assessments/researches/project s within curriculum that reflects students’ understanding/applying/analyzing/evaluating/creating after the teaching

I am using a problem/project based teaching approach in my Computer Hardware & Network course that relaying on creating a case study scenarios and projects which emulate a real work scenarios which give an opportunity to the students to apply their knowledge, some of these activities are group based where each group can discuss & collaborate about certain topic and its application while some other activities are implemented individually based through simulation software and lab activities to ensure student’ understanding. Most of activities with marks and I use it as an assessment way especially the final lab project at end of each module (unit) which test students with the desired L.O (for example Module-1 final project is Construct a computer from physical components and recognize different hardware components and specifications which exactly aligned with the L.O.1)

I periodically give feedback to my students as we do a lot of Lab exercises where I can pinpoint to the area that both of us need to work it out together to enhance it.                                                                                           

This is really active learning model as students do some work in classroom/Lab other than merely passively listening to teacher; I think also lab activities/hands-on experience is a good thing in my course whereas students can measure their understanding (metacognition) and applying the concepts. Plus the assessment is really a reflection to the students’ activities and teacher’s intention.

Ideas for assessments

I think the whole idea here is to know what the students are learning, did they really understand what they have learnt, can they apply this knowledge in different contexts, and can they use it in constructive way?  

So we need ideas (ways) to measure (Assessments) the output of learning process. I would start with the classifications of assessments “Summative & Formative”.

How can we enhance the formative assessments? 

As you know formative assessments can provide “just-in-time” information on what students know or can do and I would suggest using the following ideas (ways) to achieve that: 

1- Case Study Quiz; ideally you can do it in interactive lecturing model where you can measure the understanding and applying it in real life scenarios. Actually I used this technique in my class where I present them a scenario for some IT company which has some IT requirements and let the students list how they can fulfill these requirements.(problem solving/critical thinking)                                                   

Tip: the instruction should also use many Case-study scenarios to cover the subject matter.                                                                                               

 2- Discussion board; where you can have verbal, written, and face-to-face discussions about certain topics, like the discussion board we have it in Moodle & BbVista.                                    

3- Group Activity; where you can have your class divided to groups and each group participate in collaborative activity, for example I assigned an activity to my class and I called it “Get the best Laptop” which depends on knowing the technical specs of PC parts like the CPU, RAM, Hard-disk, monitor,.., and budget. It was very useful activity (Quiz) for them as it makes them apply what they have studied to select a good laptop amongst variety of vendors.                                

4- Simulation tool; we are lucky as we have plenty of simulation tools in IT field those could be used to assess & train our students, for example I am using PC assembly tool where students reassemble the whole PC and it can be used as a training tool and testing tool as well. 

5-Researches: you can use this type to stress the deep understanding for students for the core concepts.

How can we enhance the Summative assessments?

As you know summative assessments tell us which students are having problems or developing misconceptions during the course or unit (module) and I would suggest using the following ideas (ways) to enhance this type of assessment:                                                                                          

1- Projects: Project-based learning is one of the greatest approaches that can be used with students as it prepare students to working environments through applying long term projects that simulate the real-life scenarios                                                                                                  

 2- Presentations: I think that one can replace the traditional written exams in IT courses in future,  it gives opportunity to the students to stress their deep understanding on core concepts as they need to present/explain it to audience (also anyone of audience can ask the student if she/he is not clearly understanding some point that cover by the student)                                                                                                                                  

3- Lab assessments: this is the favorite type for my students and for me personally, it really stress the hands-on experience for the students and it measure applying their current knowledge in solving problem from real-work industrial scenarios. 

Finally, I think that is fair enough that we teach/present the curricula in creative ways (not the traditional direct instruction lecture) using the interactive lecturing and project/problem based learning before we apply these ideas (assessments should be a reflection to the learning process).

 

What about your students

Learner could be a non-student or student or graduate person, old or young person, learner could be anyone who is seeking knowledge in any subject matter formally or informally.

The reasons for learning are varying from a person to another; for example, some people might be seeking knowledge in certain areas as it gives them the opportunity to have a good certification that would enable them to have a good job/salary/position in near future and learning process end for them with achieving this certification “Done, no more study for us. Said by this type of learners” (unfortunately; most of our students belonging to this type), another type would be the active lifelong learner who acquire knowledge to deeply understand the subject matter to apply it in different contexts.

Learner could be motivated by many things to make the effort in learning such as the enthusiasm to be the expert in this subject matter, competency with other learners, financial reasons, and applying this knowledge.

For my students; they learn the Computers’ Hardware-Software & Network, this course Contents introduces students to the essential components of a contemporary computer system, the learning outcomes of this course are: recognize & identifying various types of computer system and explaining the function of their components. Construct a computer from physical components and recognize different hardware components and specifications. Define the role of operating system and demonstrate the ability to install and apply the required configuration. Explain standard network models and demonstrate the ability to construct and operate a peer to peer network.

It is a blended course learning using an interactive lecturing and project-based learning. Students demonstrate what they have learned through hands-on lab activities and case study problem solving.

The assessment is mix of written exam (40%) which tests the understanding of core concepts and knowledge plus students’ projects (60%) which tests the ability of applying this knowledge in simulated real work scenarios.

 

 

 

Module-II Project

This is the time to put it all together in one document; here is the link for my project http://ahmad71173.wix.com/using-technology-in

I hope you like it J

Moodle Week-13 Task

Plagiarism

This article is really a valuable one. I think many Skills are already integrated with my course.

For example critical thinking is one of the important skills as the simulation tool (packet Tracer) can have many design scenarios (Solution-oriented scenario) with some errors in configuration (or missing configuration in some network devices such as routers and switches) to simulate the real working environment, students responsibilities is to find these errors plus completing any missing configuration, they need to make it working properly. We usually divide the class to five or six groups (each group is 3 or 4 students) and we assign to them some troubleshooting scenarios, the idea behind that is to let the students practicing what they will face in their future career, they need to work as a team in different areas to sort out all the problems and to make it up and running normally. During the troubleshooting cycle; students need to search internet and handbook or any other source, they start to analyze and evaluate the information and how to apply it to their scenario, which develop analytic thinking and application for students. From my experience; students really enjoy this type of activities (assignments/projects/..), they really get inspired by doing lab activities and simulation tools activities.

Understanding the big picture skill; this is the most important part in my course as it will help students on how to construct the knowledge from many different areas, I applied it using a mind map program which links the entire learning outcome with different learning modules. I have three different modules in this course (PC-Hardware, PC-Software, and Network Devices), the mind map was a helpful guide to students on how we can reach our final target which is building computer network (LAN) to share data and resources between different PCs by first building the PCs itself (Hardware and Software) and then using Network device (router, switches, access points) to connect these PCs to each other.

I think balancing between preventing plagiarism and learning to work together and construct knowledge collaboratively is really a challenge, actually we had a good brainstorming about that in Moodle discussion with many ideas like giving students assignments that fits with their competency level another idea is having oral or practical assignments rather than written one.

Moodle Week-11 Task

Teaching in 21^st Century

For the first article; I do agree with the author that today’s learners are digitally literate, mobile, always on, experiential and social, they have their own acronymic words that they use on their daily life communications; I do not agree with the author in his comparison between faculty & students which give a general impression that faculty do not use interactive networked learning and multimedia in their teaching approaches. I do agree with the author that new trend should be in collaboration learning within the team/group through the blended courses (face-to-face or online). I agree with him that technologies like wireless, video conferencing did help a lot in collaborative and mobile learning.          

For the second article; I totally agree with the author that learning by doing is the most effective way to learn; I consider it a real way to offer authentic learning to students. That is why I did choose to use a simulation tool in my project to offer my students a real world scenarios to achieve experiences and deep understanding with real work environment scenarios also they can reflect (metacognition) on their level of knowledge to know the areas where the need more information .

For the third article, I totally agree with the author that digital native and digital immigrants’ terms are context based terms and it has nothing to do with ages, I do agree that our peer-group influences the manner in which we use technology for socialization.

Generally; I agree that our role as a faculty is a facilitating/mentoring in learning process, developing the culture of lifelong learner to our students, using the technology that can be fit to achieve deep understanding to our students (simulations, video, audio,..), using a project-based which contain a real life scenarios.  

Moodle Week-9 Task

Gamification

Excellent article (http://elearnmag.acm.org/featured.cfm?aid=2031772) about using game mechanics to enhance eLearning; based on the concepts giving in that article I would say that my students “Target Audience” are really “wanting” this simulation tool as it give them the opportunity to practice most of  the lab  exercises and most of them are “liking” this tool. So it does worse “rewarding” for them to use the simulation tool which achieves students’ engagement and deep understanding “teacher’s rewarding”.

The simulation tool is built with a structural way to achieve short-term win (the easy parts assembly like computer’s power supply, DVD...) and long-term win (Assembling the whole computer unit), this fill in “Linear flow of Goal” model.

The simulation tool does have a “learn” section with written instructional “navigation” steps about the assembly process for each section in computer unit. Then another section call “test” is there to give a feedback to user about his progress (measure user progress) by letting him/her do the assembly in his own with different levels till last level of assembling the whole computer unit.

“Reward schedule” within simulation tool is not there, I think it is a good idea to have some reward points/coins but I can’t do it as I do not have the code for this simulation tool.

I think that some of the critical success factors of this simulation tool are simplicity and its user-friendly interface.

Moodle Week-7 Task

New technologies, new pedagogies

I did read two articles; one article was “Designing principles for mobile learning”, the second one was “using a smartphone to create digital teaching episodes as resources in adult education”

Both articles includes many ideas to apply in any classroom. For example, “Real World relevance” to engage learners with a real world contexts that have personal meaning and relevance plus allowing deeper understanding to be achieved. I think I can use this one in my class by creating more scenarios in my simulation software “packet tracer” based on best practice/Case-Based scenarios from real environments

Another idea would be using mobile learning in contexts where learners are mobile “Smartphones, mobile phones,…”. I think our LMS “BbVista” will release ipad/iphone version after sometime which could be used by our students to use it “in my case this will give opportunity to my class to access the PC hardware simulation tool using their smartphones!!!!!!!!!!WOW, I wish to have that version soon to apply this idea”. I think this will achieve many concepts "opportunities " of the “Designing principles for mobile learning”, it will make students use mobile learning spontaneously, they will have the time for exploration of mobile technology, they can use mobile learning both individually and collaboratively, and to use mobile learning to mediate knowledge construction.

Also as you all know that HCT will start deploying i-pad devices to all foundation students from next academic year which mean that m-learning will be deployed in HCT some way or another by customizing some learning applications and activities, I think that all of us need to be prepared for using the m-learning system in HCT in near future. "One of the challenges would be the training to teachers and students another one would be the availability of the LMS software to the new i-pad  and the customized learning applications". " many opportunities could be achieved using the concepts of “Designing principles for mobile learning”.

   

Moodle Week-6 Task

Follow-up to project progress

First, I would like to say that Face-to-Face meeting was very helpful for me to brainstorm about our project for this module; it was really helpful in giving professional ideas about using the selected technology and applying it inside classroom (as we always say 1+1=3).

I got a feedback from one of my colleagues (Oscar) regarding one of the simulation tools I have selected; the idea was to make it more generalized to more than one type of PC which was the starting point for me to think about using a similar tool for laptop as well as the one I use for Desktop machines. (Thanks to Oscar for his idea)

Generally speaking; the experiences of using a similar technology (Simulation tools in my case) by other colleagues in my college (HCT) was very positive as it help in project-based pedagogical approach (the technique I am using to teach my Course “Computers’ Hardware & Networking”), it extends the hands-on experience outside the lab boarders.

One of the questions that remain open for me is the “Limitations of simulation tools” which is really a challenging one for me, not all lab activities we can do it with simulation tools (bad news) but most of activities we can do it with simulation tools (good news). But as I was saying in my previous posts’ “that Simulation tools is going to give advantage in expansion of time and deep understanding but practical lab activities (hands-on experience) still a must in this course “as simulation tool cannot do it all alone”

I have already started the using of hardware simulation tool (to assembly the internal parts of PC like power supply, mother board, CPU,…) inside my classroom, some of the feedback I am getting from my students are below:                                                                                                  
 “WOW, it is working from home as if we are doing it in lab”.  “Sir, it is very good but still I prefer taking the lab’s keys from you and do it practically inside lab”.  “Sir, not all activities are covered, can you add more activities?”

I think balancing between using simulations technology and practical lab activities might be one of the dilemmas in near future as we are raising the bar about our expectations from technology.       

  

Moodle Week-3 Task

Module-2 Project

My Course Title is Hardware and Networking (Code Number: CIS 1103), this course introduces students to the essential components of a contemporary computer system.  

The learning outcomes of this course are: recognize various types of computer systems plus identifing and explaining the function of their components. Construct a computer from physical components and recognize different hardware components and specifications. Define the role of operating systems and demonstrate the ability to install and apply the required configuration of an operating system. Explain standard network models and demonstrate the ability to construct and operate a peer to peer network.

The assessment type is a combination of cognitive response (CR) through practical implementation of a project based scenario by the end of each module (60%) and Selective Response (SR) using a a BbVist exame (10%) and a final CSA exam (30%)

I will use technology in this course by using two simulation softwares; first one is PC hardware simulation tool that simulate the assembly of the PC (it identify each part visually, give a full description of each part, and shows how to assembly each part (to seek deep understanding)); second one is through a Network simulation tool (Packet tracer) that help students to design and simulate a small to medium size network contains the needed routers, switches, and PCs.

The advantage of using these technologies (PC Simulation & Network Simulation) is the engagement of students with a real life industrial scenarios where they can practice, create (innovate) new scenarios and share it with their colleagues for a collaborative activities. I believe as the article mentioned “it is learning with a technology to achieve the cognitive learning strategies and critical thinking skills”. This will acheive the expansion of time and place for students plus the deep understanding in subject matter.

Using technology is crucial in this course (CIS 1103), we need technology not only to convey the facts about the subject matter but also to enable students to practice/discover/understand these facts. To avoid learning from technology; The good point in this course is that students have their own PCs & Network Lab Room where they can apply the scenarios they designed using the simulation tool technology with practical activities which achieve “learning by doing” concept. 

Moodle Week-2 Task

Personal Learning Network

I really liked the article about Personal Learning Network (PLN). As it said; it is not something new; I used to have PLN group (face-to-face meetings) during high school/College days to exchange information and share knowledge about the curricula (Unfortunately internet was not available in my country at that time). Later on after my graduation from engineering college, I used to have a professional PLN group (face-to-face/email) with my colleagues/friends working within same field to share knowledge (unfortunately social networks/blogs/.. was not there yet). Nowadays; I have many PLN groups through social networking (Facebook/twitter/LinkedIn/..), majority of these PLN groups are mixed with professional knowledge and personal-social news/updates (LinkedIn is the only exception; it is really a pure network for professional profiles).

These PLN group really helped me in my professional life; for example, I had many situations where I faced a new technical problem to me and the PLN group was the source of solution to my technical problem; another example, in teaching-PLN groups helped me a lot not only to understand some concepts in depths but also introduced a better way to present these concepts to my students, it really provides me with helpful resources (like freeware simulation tools, useful resources, videos,….).

I have some good ideas about extending PLN groups; for example by having a group within HCT organization to exchange/share our experience/knowledge about teaching environment/classroom experiences/ …; we can have another PLN group within Higher education in UAE (HCT, UAE-U, Zayed-U, ..) for the same.

I consider my online post graduate is another PLN group for me where we use new technologies such as Google Docs, Google+, Prezi, Blogs, and LMS as tools that help us sharing, developing, and constructing knowledge.

Finally; I do believe that PLN groups is our way forward to build our network society in 21^st century. Also I do like the Open Educational Resources (OER); I believe this the way forward for our future educational system.

Regarding Team Project:
I am teaching Computer Hardware & Network course which I will use some digital narritive technology with it.

Moodle Week-1 Task

Education technologies

Hi There, Nice to meet you on my page J

A bit about me: My name is Ahmed Hamdi Abdel Monem Al-Sorouge. I am married to Yosra and have our roots in Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. We have three wonderful kids (two boys, and one girl) who are fond of breeding cats.                                                                                                                                                            I am a Senior Network Engineer at Dubai Women’s College (Plus I do part time teaching in IT for PM Students). I graduated in 1997 as an Electronics/Communication Engineer (Benha University-Egypt). I worked as an electromechanical engineer for eight years in different fields (Oil, Machines, and Industrial X-Ray); I was responsible for the training to new fellows/customers most of the time.  In 2005, I changed my career to IT field where I started my steps to get recognized certificates such as ITIL®, Project Management PMP®, and Cisco CCSP®/CCDP®/CCNP®.

Education Technologies: I am using two different educational learning systems, first one is BbVista which can be considered as the HCT official LMS (learning Management System), and the second one is MyITLab which is provided by Pearson org. I have a positive experience with both systems (especially the BbVista).

I totally agreed with the article regarding the importance and advantages the education technology have added to our learning mechanism like collaboration, fully utilization of time to learn, Depth of understanding (by providing multimedia links/format/simulations for the Curricula), and meta-cognition which I would add it as advantage to LMS if student can use it as a source to get knowledge and to test themselves “did they really understood, did they misunderstand something, did they had a wrong preconception about some topics, and ….”

Finally, I do not have any concerns regarding LMS "unless the internet is down J

  

Bb Vista Week-12

Lifelong learning is more than training.

Lifelong learner methodology is not applied yet from education system perspective.  Fortunately some steps started in Domain-oriented Design environment (especially in IT Education field) where is the integration between working and learning is taking place through some learning activities (like work placement, projects), these steps are not enough as the other elements like assessments still far away from the target of having lifelong learner graduate. I agree with the author in that lifelong learning is more than training.

From student perspective I believe that we have now many students who are really Lifelong learners, they acquires knowledge without boarder (location boarder (like Schools), time boarder (like work placement)), those students got it through their engagement in communities (internet groups, blogs...)   I am optimistic that new generation is self-directed in learning, they have most of 21^st century attributes in learning (like media literacy, technology literacy,…), they can be very easily adapted to any new  Lifelong Education learning system.

Knowledge society wise; student or learner is the main element in knowledge society and she or he is ready to build this society, they need only our help in building a new education system which deal with them as stakeholders and accept their adaptive feedback in designing the curriculum/assessments/environment/...

Fischer’s ideas are aligned with the characteristics of building knowledge society that use collaborative learning, self-directed learning, organization learning, and on-demand learning with the new media and innovative technologies to be adequately supported.