StephanieM

Learning Pod: # 6

Peers’ Names: Yufei Mai

Interactive Learning Resource Topic: Chat GPT for Research

Identify components of the Interactive Learning Resource that might be missing (e.g., appropriate outcomes, alignment, interactivity, inclusivity, technology use and rationale, presentation, grammar, spelling, citations, etc.).

Provide a summary of The Interactive Learning Resource’s strengths and weaknesses. Draw out specific examples from your peers’ work to justify your feedback.

Provide general, specific, and practical recommendations to your peers on how to improve their Interactive Learning Resource.

https://learngpt.notion.site/ChatGPT-for-Research-deb54a630e994b14a8a18c9a6465963e

The video is excellent, and as the discussion progresses, I want students to write down what they want to answer in handwritten form on their iPad and add their insights and what they want to respond to. During the discussion, we don’t need to transcribe everything the other person says, which is a completely unthinking act. A highly passive mode of note-taking, which I don’t think is necessary at all. The notes we need are a learning tool that promotes understanding and memory.
So before you start taking notes, the first task is to understand the content. Students need to read the content they want to summarize and then repeat the content in their own words. Provide a summary of what you want to discuss. And place the summary at the top of the notes so that it can be easily viewed again and again. In addition to this, students should include 1-2 abstracts within their notes. The abstracts should be simple and direct, not a direct copy of the other person’s content.

At 6:30 of the video, an indentation is offered that is designed to be a clearer and more concise way of recording what is wanted to be discussed. Beyond that, I expect that the student’s notes will be organized and manageable. For better understanding and viewing, students’ notes should be clear and neat. Some students’ notes will be written very small, which is not correct, and I would like students to write in a larger font on their notes in response to the discussion. This will make it easier for me to check them afterwards.

Students should practice this at the next discussion after watching the video. After watching what your classmates have discussed, choose one of them and comb through the notes. And respond to the content of the classmate through the guide of note-taking. At the end of the discussion, students need to include their notes in pdf format and share them with me.

The workload for me from this activity is mainly on reading notes. The workload for this task, which is incremental depending on the number of students, is probably ideal at 60 students or less. More students may bring more workload, which will cause me to not be able to move forward properly to the grading of the next assignment.

Students will receive my ratings and feedback on bright space within a week of submission. Students can view my evaluations online and email me for a grading sheet if they have comments on the grading.

Overall, this is a very important part of improving students’ discussion skills. Students should focus on the important content summary and note-taking part before the discussion starts.

In my course, I will build the course with equity in mind. The first thing that needs to be included in my syllabus is a diversity, equity, and inclusion statement. When constructing the statement, students’ ethnicity, age, gender, social status, religion, physical disability, etc. need to be considered. In addition to this, not every student in the course can participate in discussions in real-time and have sufficient internet access or adequate technological resources at all times to maximize their learning potential. Therefore, I will conduct the course in an asynchronous format in order to enhance students’ discussion skills. And take into account that in distance courses, some students are not in the same time zone as other students. I will consider modifying the attendance and participation requirements to make the time for students to submit and check the discussion content more relaxed for those who participate in the discussion skills improvement course and practice the skills. This would allow all students to participate in the discussion skills improvement exercises (Arbizo, 2020). In addition, for students with disabilities and those who are not very verbal, the online discussion sessions will help them to escape the negative perceptions of others and stimulate their learning potential. Furthermore, I will offer my help to all students who need it, including the opportunity to meet each other at the beginning of the course. Although it may be more challenging to make these connections in a virtual environment. I will set up a discussion page (2020) before the start of each week and invite students to participate by discussing simple “get to know you” tips. For example, what is your favourite animal? Why do you like this animal? Questions such as. Over the course of several weeks, students will comment on each other and answer questions to get a basic understanding of each other. This will help them to be more outgoing in their discussions.

Reference

Arbizo, A. (2020, June 15). Create an inclusive class climate online. Keep Teaching. https://keepteaching.ucdavis.edu/teach/create-inclusive-class-environment-online

Open Pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning that promotes student engagement, collaboration, and self-directed learning. Students will be involved in the design of instruction as co-constructors of knowledge and active learners. In the Open Method, students are encouraged to engage in group work by engaging in activities of assessing each other and building knowledge together. Open pedagogy also utilizes the use of digital tools to support online collaboration as well as distance learning. After all discussion activities are completed, students are required to reflect on and assess their learning outcomes and processes. The learning process will foster student initiative and collaboration. Critical thinking and problem-solving skills are very important in the Open Pedagogy.

How to better conduct discussions with group members is my focus, and I will then briefly describe the discussion techniques I propose, the details of which will be highlighted in subsequent articles.

1. Before all discussions begin, students’ discussions should relate to the learning material and apply what they have learned. Students should read the learning material in detail and take notes as they read, and ask questions about the reading that appear in the discussion (Discussions in Online Courses: Best Practices and Expectations, n.d.). Students need to first throw out their ideas and encourage other students to discuss their ideas about you.

2. Your posting needs to be as clear and concise as possible, ideally within one to two natural paragraphs, to complete your argumentative posting. Longer posts can be exhausting and may result in no one reading your argument post, leading to an eventual lack of any responses. Such a posting cannot be discussed. (Online Discussions: Tips for Students | Centre for Teaching Excellence, n.d.-b)

3. postings should include the “3C+Q” model, with 3C being compliments, comments, and connections, and Q questioning. This template will help students learn to move the discussion forward (Discussions in Online Courses: Best Practices and Expectations, n.d.).

4. Keep an open mind and accept all new ideas. (Online Discussions: Tips for Students | Centre for Teaching Excellence, n.d.-b). When you disagree with any student’s point of view, do not demean or insult others’ points of view. Of course, if you receive such an unkind response, you should first calm yourself and inform the professor. Sufficient time to calm your emotions will allow you to respond more calmly and professionally (Online Discussions: Tips for Students | Centre for Teaching Excellence, n.d.-b).

5. The Open Pedagogy emphasizes evaluating each other, which is very important in group discussions where students will focus on what they did not focus on because of other students’ comments.

References

Discussions in Online Courses: Best Practices and Expectations. (n.d.). Johns Hopkins Engineering Online. https://ep.jhu.edu/faculty-staff/teaching-technology-resources/discussions-in-online-courses-best-practices-and-expectations/

Online Discussions: Tips for Students | Centre for Teaching Excellence. (n.d.). Uwaterloo.ca. Retrieved June 16, 2023, from https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/catalogs/tip-sheets/online-discussions-tips-students

This article by Peggy A. Ertmer and Timothy Newby, “Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing Critical Features From an Instructional Design Perspective” discusses three central learning theories, behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism, and compares their key features from several instructional design perspectives.

Understanding each of these three concepts created a challenge for me, as I may not have been able to remember everything due to a large amount of reading. So for this article, I am phasing in a mind map format to give me a basic idea of the whole article.

I strongly agree with the article’s discussion of behaviourism, that learning results from a conditioned response and that the learning environment provided by the teacher should have appropriate stimulus and feedback to facilitate learning. Repetitive training should be conducted to achieve the desired outcome. At the same time, I agree with the effectiveness of this view, as well as the expectations. It seems very reasonable that when better work is done, it is rewarded and when it is not done better, it is punished. But ethically, I think it’s a form of animal training, which I find hard to accept.

The idea of constructivism, which feels overly optimistic to me, is that in constructivist theory, learners need to construct their own system of knowledge by interacting with others and engaging in practice in real situations. Students are guided by this theory to engage in an immersive “apprenticeship” experience, gaining experience and confidence. However, in my opinion, this is very difficult and not all students are suited to go directly into work situations, which can be confusing and even lead to low confidence. Constructivism involves interacting with other students, which can be very challenging for some silent students. On top of that, there are already many group discussion sessions in the world where some students are low self-esteem, lazy or some other emotions and refuse to have a discussion, which is negative for both students.

In the last semester of my studies, I was involved in a field school teaching activity. They also adopted constructivism and the initial learning experience was very painful for me. Because I am a non-native speaker, basic communication was extremely stressful for me. Although after four months of study, my English level and my understanding of the major had improved a lot. In my opinion, the constructivist emphasis on immersion experience may be very powerful for a student to improve, but it may also cause many negative effects, such as the growth of an inferiority complex. How to manage the scale of this is a matter of great discussion.