Reflexions on week 2

This week has been about the starting point for designing our course.

This consisted in drawing a scenario where our learners are involved in. Bringing to pencil and paper all of what happens in their learning environment. Considering not just external factors but also the ones that are internal of the learner, his/her characteristic. Getting in contact with all these details makes us, the designers, aware of all the things that influence the learning process weather in a positive or negative way. Some issues will constrain that process, other will enhance it. I am specially concerned with some internal factors that are very important in the learning process, namely the beliefs of the learners. A list of some important aspects regarding teachers beliefs:

• Attitudes towards technology (Chang & Cheung, 2001; Choi, Choi, Kim, & Yu, 2003; Jeong & Lambert, 2002).
• Self-efficacy (Hasan, 2006).
• Perceived attributes of technology such as perceived usefulness (Dasgupta, Granger, & McGarry, 2002; Landry, Griffeth, & Hartman, 2006).
• Perceived ease of use (Kiraz & Ozdemir, 2006; Klaus, Gyire, & Wen, 2003)
• Complexity (Cheung & Huang, 2005).
• Perceived influence and support from the environment such as facilitating conditions (Groves & Zemel, 2000; Gueldenzoph, Guidera, Whipple, Mertler,& Dutton, 2000).
• Teachers’ pedagogical beliefs (Lim & Chan, 2007).

I think that the perceive ease and sef efficacy are really important when we design a course. We should take care to help with this issues considering a tutor in some face to face sessions and with the self efficacy the tutor and peers can help a lot.

There are many approaches to this stage: Scenarios, personas, force maps, situated learning, EoR.  In this OLDS MOOC we have prof. Luckin as part of the facilitators and she was the one who created the EoR framework, so I think it is very useful to try it out.

In my particular scenario many details, maybe to many, but it helped me to get involved with the technique. I further watched some videos to understand about the force map. I already have mine. I did something different regarding the arrows. I put in the post it papers referring to the different factor a – sign or a + depending if that factor was constraining or enhancing the learning process. I have to many so it was becoming a mess with the arrows.

Now I think I have my force map and my scenario clear. I am still struggling with the cicular scheme. I wiil figure it out over the weekend. I don’t get to know well the relations

My reflection: The learning environment is not only a condition for but also an important outcome of the learning process. This idea is embedded in the philosophy of Vygotsky (1978, 1986), giving its due importance to the interaction between the learners’ context and the learning that occurs as a result of the interactions within that context. Moreover if the context is build by the learner the interaction with it has a manifold effect. The difficulties that may arise while designing and building the PLE will provide an appropriate zone of proximal development, providing challenging activities that will induce the learner into the culture of her/his society empowering her/him as an autonomous learner (Becker & Varelas, 1995, cited by Luckin, 2008).