By reading chapter 9.6 Interaction, I have learned the different types of learner interactions that are critical to learners’ success with their learning experience online, which include learner-to-content interactions, learner-to-learner interactions, and learner-to-teacher interactions (Bates, 2019). Also, in one of Colin’s posts, he mentioned another interaction, learner-self interaction, which means the learners’ self-reflections on the content and their new understandings (Madland, 2021). The YouTube video I picked is about one of our essential questions – mean, median, and mode. This video requires students to have learner-content interaction because they are able to interact with information directly from the video after it starts to play. As a learner, I enjoyed video watching through my learning process because multimedia provides entertainment for learning with visualization makes it more interesting. Once you click on the play button, the video-related information would intake into your brain, which is time-efficient and convenient. The students can also pause, repeat, forward and backward parts of the course in order to fully understand the knowledge. Other than learner-content interaction, learn-self interaction is also required for my students. While watching this video, they may obtain a more effective way of memorizing mean, median, and mode than what they learned from their instructor. Then, they could connect the two memorizing methods and even come up with their own way of remembering them. After that, learner-to-learner interaction is involved as sharing their new ideas and the learning material by discussing them in the break-out rooms. If any disagreement or confusion comes up, then their teacher needs to be included to interact with students to clarify any concerns. The video itself does not force the students to respond, but as a learner, the students can reflect themselves from the video material and the class resources.
The designed activity is doing mean, median, and mode questions as practices to recall the information, discover relationships among definitions and formulas, and solve life-like problems that require identification of the issue and selection and use of definitions and even formula. The practice questions are combined with multiple choices and short answers. My students are able to finish them on their own first, and later form the group to talk to each other. This assessment is not for marking purposes. From this activity, the skills they can develop include mathematical and statistical thinking, problem-solving, and critical thinking. Once they formed into groups to discuss the questions, communication and collaboration skills will be developed. Lastly, they may ask the instructor for help via zoom meeting if they could not solve the problem by themselves. Besides, they have another option to post the question related to the class into a ‘workshop Q&A forum’ on the workshop home page, then the instructor or other students can answer the question once he/she has seen the question. By doing this activity, my students need a tablet, computer, or laptop with internet access. Then they can access the workshop to download the practice questions as a PDF file and log in to telecommunication or chat applications to interact with peers or their teacher. For students who stay in a blocked Internet country, make sure they can connect to a VPN server to access Google and other social media.
Once the students start to share ideas and ask their peers or instructor questions, this is the time for them to receive feedback. Knowing the answer to the question, which is always a number or a list of data set, is way less important than knowing the effective problem-solving process for resolving the question. Once the student fully understands this question, it would be easy for him to solve similar questions afterward. The technology that our students and the instructor need are a digital device accessing different types of networks. The students can explore the question and get feedback either from peers or the instructor.
During the whole activity process, the instructor aims to plan for activities ahead, such as managing break-out rooms. Additionally, the instructor supports the students if they have any questions about forming the group or any actual math questions. In the e-learning environment, this activity is manageable and worthwhile because the students get a chance to explore both self-learning and interaction with others. Because staying motivated is one of the common challenges for students in online learning, help them to get motivated is one of the most important things for the instructor to do (Klawitter, 2020). Making connections with classmates, such as sharing questions or perspectives is allowed students to stay motivated (Klawitter, 2020). Also, checking in the workshop home page to see course updates or questions in the forum is involved in distance learning. Even the number of students increased in the workshop, it is still a doable activity because student-to-student interaction with a larger scale of student-focused provides more opportunities for students to discuss ideas and share their thoughts.
From what I mentioned above, if my students cannot access video due to their internet connection, I am willing to record the video and upload it to the workshop for them. For my students who have a hearing impairment, the video’s auto-transcript is needed to be turned on for them. For t my students who are color blind, the multimedia is picky. I check with my student first to make sure they can see the colors in the video. If they cannot see the color, I will need to find a different video for them that represents the same learning material.
References
Bates, A. W. T. (2019). 9.6 Interaction. Teaching in a Digital Age Second Edition. Retrieved from https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev2/chapter/pedagogical-roles-for-text-audio-and-video/
Klawitter, A. (2020). 5 Challenges Students Face with Online Learning and How to Overcome Them. Meratas. Retrieved from https://www.meratas.com/blog/5-challenges-students-face-with-remote-learning.
Madland, C. (2021). Assessing Interaction. University of Victoria. Educational Technology. Retrieved from https://edtechuvic.ca/edci335/assessing-interaction/