Leveraging Digital Tools for Instruction Outside the Classroom: Community Engagement Project, EDTC 6102

It’s been a wonderful opportunity to invest time and energy into a project which ultimately helps me do my job better.  Though I am not currently a classroom teacher and do not have typical instructional responsibilities in my day to day work, I do constantly convey important information about the WA State teacher certification process to prospective educators, a process which can often feel overwhelming and convoluted to many would-be career changers. I feel confident that I’ve put together a blueprint for a meaningful, engaging informational session which will help students navigate the first steps of the certification process with confidence and clarity, ultimately helping them discern for themselves if becoming a teacher is the right step for them professionally at this time, and if so, how to make that a reality. Not only that, I’ve been able to think creatively about how to leverage digital tools to make the session interactive, student-centered, and practically useful to those who attend.

Lesson Plan for 60 Minute Information Session

This lesson plan is intended for a Group of 10-20 prospective graduate students using a virtual teleconference platform like Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, etc.

Note: some hyperlinks may not be accessible to all due to permissions settings

Introduction 
10 min.
Students will be notified of my intention to record the session and their associated rights (turning off video, etc.).

Introduce Self and Learning Objectives of Info Session:
Objective 1: learn how someone becomes a teacher in WA State and determine personal readiness to begin the process.
Objective 2: learn what program options are available at SPU and which program is best-fit for personal context
Objective 3: learn what steps to take next with an application to a teacher certification program

10 Signs That You Should Become a Teacher, opening reflection video
Interactive Presentation
20 min.
Google Slide Deck
Students will be provided with access to the Google Slide Deck in advance of the information session so that they may conduct research ahead of time or follow along independently, clicking on hyperlinks, etc. in their own browser window. I will also use it to structure the presentation of information in the session.  For those who do not choose to follow along independently, hyperlinks for interactive elements will be provided directly in the session chat.

Within the slide deck, students will be introduced to SPU’s various graduate teacher certification program options.Students will be given the opportunity to stop and reflect on what feels like their best-fit program halfway through, before new information about the application process is introduced.  They will also be given the opportunity to ask clarifying questions at this point via Jamboard.

Students will then be given detailed information about application requirements and due dates, including specific information about the endorsement verification process.  This is also a time where I intend to help students understand and navigate the various information systems which they will have to engage with throughout the certification and application process (online application, standardized tests, etc), and to what extent they’ll be expected to provide personal data in digital spaces.
Formative Assessment 10 min.Prospective students will then have the opportunity to review and test their understanding of the material via a brief, 15-question Kahoot Quiz.  This will also serve as a formative assessment tool for me, the instructor, and may help point out areas that need further clarification. There will be time to pause and address these areas while going through the Kahoot Quiz.
Performance Task 
10 min.
Students will then have the opportunity to curate a personal To Do List outlining their next steps towards an application (and thus, towards becoming a teacher).  This is a performance task that helps students indicate their understanding of the material covered in the information session, but it is also meant to be a practical, relevant takeaway for each attendee.

Students will be able to make a copy of this Google Doc Template which contains a scaffolded “word bank” of application requirements.  Students will be able to copy/paste from the word bank in order to create their own, personalized To Do List, paying special attention to their specific program needs, endorsement requirements, and chronological order (i.e. which items need attention first). I will also provide the Google Doc Template in an alternate format (i.e. Word document) for any students that need it after the session. 
Self-Assessment & Reflection
10+ min.
Shortly after providing students with the Google Doc Link, I will provide a link to the final Sticky Note Q & A w/ Jamboard so that students may ask any needed questions while they construct without interrupting the thought processes of others in the session.  They may also choose to drop questions privately to me in the chat depending on the immediacy of the need and/or group appeal of their question. 

After the allotted 10 minutes passes for list construction, I’ll also offer a final few minutes for students to review their lists and ask final questions that need resolving on the Jamboard, OR live in the video conference, time permitting. The session will be recorded and the recording will be provided to students after the information session via email. This allows students to go back and review as needed.

Throughout this session, students will have the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding through application and self-knowledge.

  • Application: as students create their own, personally curated “To Do List” they will be able to apply their understanding of the session material by creating a useful tool that will guide them moving forward.  This includes discerning which information is most relevant to their particular context.  Students will be able to effectively navigate the various information systems which they will have to engage with throughout the certification and application process, especially in regards to the information they provide during the application process.  This also brings to mind the fact that students will literally apply to a program as part of their next steps towards becoming a teacher.
  • Self-Knowledge: students will be invited to reflect on their motivations to become a teacher, whether now is the time to take steps towards becoming a teacher, as well as what kind of program would be best suited for their needs. There will also be ample time for students to grapple with what they do not know, or what is confusing for them in this process.  The decisions they make moving forward will be rooted in the self-knowledge acquired from this session.

I do believe that the most helpful reflections on this “lesson plan” will come after I’ve had the opportunity to put it into action for the first time in a professional setting, likely in Fall of 2021. That said, One area for potential improvement that I can already identify is the curated “To Do List” platform.  Though I found some potential tools that I was interested in which might be a bit sleeker/less cumbersome than using a Google Doc, the ones I came across were not open access or would require a full account set-up in order to use them. This wouldn’t translate well to the timing and context of this particular lesson, nor the student audience (i.e. prospective students attending an information session, not students enrolled in a class).  Thus, for now, I have the Google Doc format as a bit of a place-holder.  I’m quite open to tweaking this section of my lesson in favor of a better tool later on.

In summary, this particular project was a wonderful exercise in thinking about learning and instruction on a macro level and the many ways they take place outside of a formal classroom environment. Digital tools may be leveraged in a myriad of ways to help us do our jobs better, and this was an opportunity for me to think creatively about how to bring that home in my own context. I look forward to using this session format in the next recruiting cycle!

Global research collaboration and the pandemic: How COVID-19 has accelerated networked learning in higher education

Image courtesy of https://www.polyu.edu.hk/web/en/about_polyu/global_network/

According to the National Science Foundation (2019), one out of every five academic research articles are written by authors hailing from more than one country. This fact suggests that the value of international research collaboration was recognized and sought out well in advance of the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, but perhaps it’s only just the beginning.  Reasons to pursue global collaboration in higher education include reaching wider audiences and increasing the impact of published research, reducing bias and broadening perspectives with a diverse research team, and leveraging the ability to offset domestic skill shortages by collaborating across national borders (Lee & Haupt, 2020).  Networked learning in higher education can also encourage new levels of creativity and innovation in all kinds of disciplines, and it expands the potential for authentic global and cultural learning experiences in an increasingly connected world (Cronina et al., 2016).  These benefits apply to even the most scholastically “productive” countries like the USA and China (Lee & Haupt, 2020).  That said, understanding that international collaboration in higher education was valued–at least to a certain extent–prior to 2020, I am curious to explore how recent changes in technology and cultural shifts in academia during the pandemic have worked in tandem to build upon this trend, potentially accelerating technology’s impact on global research collaboration and cooperation into the future.

With the onset of COVID-19, scientists and researchers from every corner of the world scrambled to understand the virus and seek a cure. Information sharing among countries quickly became essential, especially for those countries that were hardest hit early on (Lee & Haupt, 2020).  Though socio-political tensions between countries–and even domestically within countries–were hardly in short supply in 2020, the demands of the pandemic shifted priorities such that many international corporations and research institutions began working together rather than competing with each other to produce a vaccine, and large-scale exchanges of medical and public health data, including possible solutions, was (and still is) shared internationally using digital and online tools (Buitendijk, 2020).

When it comes to information sharing, one way of measuring an increase in international collaboration is through a country’s participation in open access publication platforms.  Open access journals and publication platforms remove barriers for accessing information and research since they do not require payment or subscriptions in order to be read and cited.  Sometimes the cost of publishing is absorbed by these open access platforms through philanthropic efforts, sponsorship, or submission fees paid by the authors, etc., but the bottom line is that there’s typically little profit to be made by academics, researchers, and authors who publish in open access platforms. Thus, the motivation for researchers–either individually or nationally speaking–to publish in an open access platform is often more altruistic in nature, placing higher priority on the sharing of information than any potential gains or notoriety received from publishing, monetary or otherwise.  According to Lee & Haupt (2020), countries with lower GDP who were more severely affected by the pandemic were the most likely to increase participation in open access publishing and international research efforts. It would follow that decisions to increase open-access participation was also meant to illicit reciprocal behavior from other countries, and indeed, the majority of all “knowledge producing” countries increased their participation in open access publishing during the pandemic: “For each of the top 25 COVID-19 research-producing countries, there was a noticeably higher proportion of open-access articles on COVID-19 than during the past 5 years and on non-COVID-19…publications during the same period” (Lee & Haupt, 2020, para. 26).

In addition to the public health concerns that have motivated scholars and researchers to participate in more information sharing during the pandemic, it must also be said that the act of collaboration has gotten exponentially easier in recent years.  In a 2010 publication, Iorio et al. discuss the use of digital tools designed to facilitate international collaboration and interaction amongst higher education scholars.  In this specific case, domestic teams in five different areas of the world were attempting to complete an integrative design task which required synchronous virtual meetings, a way to exchange ideas, brainstorm, and problem solve in real time (though not necessarily synchronously), as well as an appropriate digital repository for their work (building plans, model mapping, cost estimates, etc.) which could be accessed frequently by the members of each team in their respective countries.  The article focused its efforts on reviewing the virtual reality platform Second Life. To me, Second Life now feels woefully insufficient as a project management platform, at least according to 2021 standards, but at the time, the authors found Second Life to be a comparatively “appealing choice” due to its options for customization and tools such as virtual white boards, voice and text chat, scheduling agents, etc., all in one centralized, virtual location. Second Life aside, the authors noted that “To date, very few technological options exist that provide all of [the needed] functionalities to distributed networks. Commonly used tools such as email, instant messaging, and teleconferencing do not provide a framework for interaction that fully satisfies the demands of geographically distributed projects.”

Sample of a virtual meeting room in Second Life; image courtesy of https://marketplace.secondlife.com

In short, Second Life was more or less the best this research team could find in 2010. Since then, there’s been a massive influx of virtual project management/collaboration platforms introduced to the market.  Consider the list below of some of the “big names” in collaboration software along with their launch dates:

This list represents nine, powerhouse collaboration platforms, all of which rolled out between 2010 and 2020, and many of which depend heavily on the power and popularity of cloud storage or cloud computing (which was also expanding significantly during this time frame).  And please note: this list is hardly exhaustive.  There are many more out there (and counting!), and even the ones on this list are constantly being updated and expanded.  Each platform or collection of tools on this list boasts its own strengths and weaknesses (the exploration of which is not the point of this post), but there can be no doubt that no matter the platform, it is easier to make the choice to communicate, collaborate, and innovate with people all over the world in 2021 than it was even ten years ago.  Of course, not only have the tools themselves gotten better, but the pandemic has accelerated digital tool adoption for purposes of collaboration at an extraordinary rate, popularizing already existing tools (e.g.. Zoom teleconferencing) in unprecedented ways, such that millions, if not billions, of students and professionals in myriads of settings worldwide are collaborating and problem solving virtually across distances in ways they were not one year ago.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into stark realization the fact that we need ‘global solutions to global challenges’ (Buitendijk et al, 2020) and that we need not relegate the phenomena of increased global collaboration in higher education to a particular moment in time.  Instead, we might view this as an opportunity to challenge the model of competition between higher education institutions and place lasting value on diversified bodies of knowledge production, dissemination, and consumption (Buitendijk et al, 2020).  We might also recognize that a philosophy of collaboration makes it possible for students and lecturers in all types of higher education settings to have more equal roles in creating content, sharing resources, and asking/answering important questions (Cronina et al., 2016).  As centers of research all over the world, universities have a crucial role to play in helping humans to better care for one another on a global scale, teaching us to become “more empathic, less competitive, and more networked in our research and educational activities” (Buitendijk, 2020).  Let us not lose the momentum of this moment to embrace a new norm in higher education, maintaining a sincere commitment to, and value of, community-minded research and collaboration across borders.

For further discussion on this topic, consider viewing this 60-minute webinar, “The impact of COVID-19 on University Research and International Collaborations” offered through the UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education. The webinar was recorded in August of 2020.

References:

Buitendijk, B., Ward, H., Shimshon, G., Sam, A., & Sharma, D. (2020). COVID-19: An opportunity to rethink global cooperation in higher education and research. BMJ Global Health. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002790

Cronina, C., Cochraneb, T.,  & Gordonc, A. (2016). Nurturing global collaboration and networked learning in higher education. Research in Learning Technology, 24

Iorio, J., Peschiera, G., Taylor, L., & Korpela, L. (2010). Factors impacting usage patterns of collaborative tools designed to support global virtual design project networks. Journal of Information Technology Design in Construction, 16, 209-230. https://itcon.org/papers/2011_14.content.08738.pdf

Lee, J., & Haupt, J. (2020). Scientific globalism during a global crisis: research collaboration and open access publications on COVID-19. Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00589-0


National Science Foundation (2019). Publications Output: U.S. Trends and International Comparisons. National Science Board: Science and Engineering Indicators. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20206/executive-summary

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