Standard IV Collaborative Practice 

Artifact Description:

In the course GDIT705 Cognition & Instructional Design (Spring 2020) with Dr. Misook Heo, I collaborated with Darnell Grate in the facilitation of a chapter from The Handbook of Multimedia Learning (Wiley et al., 2014). This assignment required us to facilitate the learning of peer classmates on the chapter of individual differences. We generated a learning activity and thinking questions for the learners to complete over a week. Then we gave a collaborative presentation during the class meeting in the second week. We briefly outlined chapter contents, summarized discussions on thinking questions, analyzed participation in the learning activity and shared the ideas on how we would like to improve our individual learning module project based on individual differences.

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Reflection and Rationale:

This artifact demonstrated my ability to collaborate with peers and subject matter experts to analyze learners, develop and design instruction, and evaluate its impact on learners. I collaborated with Darnell on learner analysis and how to integrate the contents in the chapter into the learning activity and thinking questions, and class presentation. For example, considering that our classmates are working professionals, we adopted a short but medium-level learning activity related to memory including the OSpan Test and an online game. In addition, many of our peers were not familiar with the research on individual differences mentioned in the chapter. Therefore, I extracted information from the original experimental research mentioned in the chapter and gave a detailed explanation of the methods used in the research in our presentation. Furthermore, the learning activity and thinking questions were designed to have an impact on learners’ understanding of individual differences in human memory. After the completion of the learning activity, many of them found the test either interesting or challenging. They were surprised about how their scores on the OSpan test differed from each other’s scores. As a result, we concluded that we need to take individual differences into consideration in instructional design in the future. This collaborative practice was valuable and beneficial for me as an educator to learn from the experience of peers and subject matter experts. I will keep adopting a collaborative and open-minded approach in my professional work.

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Reference: 

Wiley, J., Sanchez, C.A, & Jaeger, A.J. (2014). In R.E. Mayer (Ed.), The individual differences in working memory capacity principle in multimedia learning. The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning (2nd ed., pp. 598-619). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.