Running Head: AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO COMMUNICATIONS 12

Technology Supported Collaboration and Inquiry:

Design Proposal for an Alternative Approach to Communications 12
Benjamin Ferrel
Alana Giesbrecht
Rachel Horst
Peter Lawrentiw
Kate Ropchan
ETEC 510: Design of Technology Supported Learning Environments
University of British Columbia

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Technology Supported Collaboration and Inquiry:

Design Proposal for an Alternative Approach to Communications 12
Key Frameworks
The number of students taking courses online has steadily risen over the last few years. A
third of all students in B.C. now graduate with at least one online course (British Columbia
Ministry of Education, 2012). However, just as not every learner thrives in the regular classroom,
e-learning can be a real challenge for some.
Our design project focuses on engaging with marginalized students and reluctant learners
that are taking Communications 12. We are concentrating on students taking this course using
either online delivery or a blend of technology based and face-to-face methods. Our program
aims to draw isolated students into a larger pool of peers to collaborate with each other, while
working through the Communications 12 topics of Literacy and Workplace Skills. Our design is
guided by the principles of constructivist learning environments (Jonassen, 1999), multiliteracies
(New London Group, 1996), and collaborative problem solving (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994).
Students who are enrolled in Communications 12 have often struggled with the structure
and expectations of more academic courses. The activities that comprise our course will allow
students to guide their own inquiry within clearly defined frameworks designed to draw on
students existing knowledge and experience, and will engage learners within mediums that they
identify as being relevant in their lives outside of school.
Our project is anchored within a constructivist approach, which assumes that knowledge
is individually constructed and socially co-constructed by learners based on their interpretations
of experiences in the world (Jonassen, 1999, p. 217). It incorporates problem-based learning
that requires students to participate in activities that are interesting, relevant, authentic, and

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engaging. Since the key to meaningful learning is ownership of the problem or learning goal
(Jonassen, 1999, p. 219), our activities personalize the experience for each learner, allowing them
to progress through interesting and realistic scenarios that they would encounter in their lives.
Our design is also influenced by the concept of multiliteracies discussed by the New
London Group (1996), which suggests the future demands that we rethink what we are teaching,
and in particular, what new learning needs literacy pedagogy might now address (New London
Group, 1996, p. 61). In a world that is becoming increasingly dependent on technological
innovation, it is important to prepare students with the skills that they will need to adapt to
constantly evolving social and workplace environments. According to the New London Group
(1996), the dominant channels of communication and media are becoming much more diverse
than language alone. Our design affords multiple ways for students to display their knowledge of
the different metalanguages encountered within real-life scenarios.
A primary goal of our design project is to move away from the traditional online course
delivery model that affords few non text-based interactions between students, and move to a
multimodal collaborative model to build a sense of community amongst learners. The goal is to
reverse the teacher initiates, student responds, teacher evaluates pattern for oral and written
discourse (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994, p. 278). Students who use computer technology that
enables them to share knowledge with one another greatly surpass students in ordinary
classrooms on measures of depth of learning and reflection, awareness of what they have learned
or need to learn and understanding of learning itself (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994, p. 281).
Thus the integration of collaboration between students is an important pedagogical feature of our
design. Overall, our goal is to provide Communications 12 students who have not found success

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in the mainstream school environment with an interesting, relevant, personalized and

collaborative web-based module for the development of literacy and workplace skills.
Intentions and Positions
Through this design, we intend to accomplish a technology-supported constructivist
learning environment (CLE) that will meet the required outcomes for Communications 12
(British Columbia Ministry of Education, 1998), that will engage at-risk or marginalized students
through the use of authentic tasks, and that will be capable of serving as either a complete
distance learning course or as a tool for classroom teachers.
Our first intention, to create a technology-supported CLE for Communications 12, is
supported by current educational research. While there may be no significant difference between
the learning of students with technology versus those without technology, technology is an apt
tool for the creation of CLEs, which underlay effective instruction (Overbay, Patterson, Vasu, &
Grable, 2010; Russell, 1999). Since teachers have the autonomy to substitute instructional
strategies that will enable their students to achieve the prescribed learning outcomes (British
Columbia Ministry of Education, 1998, p. 5), this goal is not only supported by current research
but also by the official curriculum.
Another intention that shaped our design was to make it engaging to marginalized
students. Contemporary research says this involves challenges that are stimulating without being
frustrating, feedback that is timely and positive, and tasks that create intrinsic motivation through
personal relevance (Jonassen, 1999; Mendler, 2000; Sanacore, 2008); our design is true to those
guidelines. A secondary, but no less relevant, benefit of the incorporation of authentic tasks is
that our design provides preparation for contemporary jobs that require tech-literacy even at the
entry level (ONeil, 1992).

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Our third intention is to create a course that will be accessible to all learners. For a variety
of reasons, stretching from agoraphobia to geographical isolation, our target students may not be
able to access traditional brick-and-mortar classrooms; distance learning has been identified as a
necessary option for twenty-first century education (Bouhnik & Marcus, 2006). Our model will
be usable as a tool for traditional and distance-learning educators alike.
We anticipate that, with our focus on preparation for essential workplace skills, an
objection could be raised to our design on the grounds that it focuses more on training than on
education, and that it supports a practice of educational streaming that is, at best, controversial
(Holmes & Ahr, 1994). However, we are operating from an awareness of these positions. Our
design recognizes and respects our students choice to enter the workplace or vocational/trades
training directly from secondary school, and will incorporate an option for students who, after
learning more about the reality of their choices, might want to alter their path and learn about
university options as well. We are not supporting streaming based on academic ability; rather, we
are creating a high quality educational experience for students who have chosen to take
Communications 12.
Another potential counter argument could arise from the design being technologysupported. It is true that educational research has found no significant difference between the
learning of students with and without technology (Russell, 1999), and many teachers tolerance
for technological innovation may be saturated (Knight, 2009). However, because the
technological element of our design is what allows it to be collaborative, constructivist, and
accessible to all students, we think it is integral. To support teachers and students in the use of
our design, we will incorporate clear instructions, scaffolding of learning, and a help function
where users can access further assistance.

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Our design fits external goal sets created for education, from those stated by local school
districts, to aims stated by the provincial Ministry of Education, even to international goals
created by the United Nations.
The Abbotsford School District Strategic Plan, similar to other local school district
plans, states that its primary goal is to improve education for all learners (Abbotsford Board of
Education, 2010). By attempting to improve the educational experience of at-risk and
marginalized students, our design supports this focus, as well as the secondary goals of
improving student access to programs and encouraging the ethical and appropriate use of
technology (Abbotsford Board of Education, 2010, p. 6).
Our design also supports provincial goals for education. It is a perfect mesh with the
learning outcomes for Communications 12 (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 1998). As
well, our design fits with the BC Transformation and Technology Update stated goals of
flexibility, choice, and learning empowered by technology (British Columbia Ministry of
Education, 2012, p. 9).
Finally, our design also meets the United Nations global aims as described in the Dakar
Framework for Action. This document states that it is imperative for educators to ensure that
the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate
learning and life skills programmes and to harness new information and communication
technologies (World Education Forum, 2000, p. 16 & 21).
We will be using Google Sites to host our course environment, however our design
utilizes the diverse and flexible applications that are hosted around the internet. We have
identified a variety of free applications that provide the types of content creation platforms that
we aim to have students use during their activities. Our Google sites domain will host our

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course map and instructions for students, as well as provide a central location for students to
compile their work and share it with their peers. In the current paradigm of the internet, Google
represents the center from where much of the web content and experience radiates. As such,
embedding our course here will situate our students in a learning environment that blends in with
the other contexts of their lives.
Key Concepts and Contexts
Communications 11 and 12 is intended to help students become fully skilled language
users, capable of comprehending and responding to the multiple forms and functions of language
that surround them (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 1998, p. 9). We have taken this
rationale and filtered it through the lens of a multiliteracies pedagogy, which suggests that there
is a need in this new digital era to broaden our understanding of literacy to account for the
multifarious cultures that interrelate and the plurality of texts that circulate (New London
Group, 1996, p. 61). We plan to utilize educative media and the Internet to provide a variety of
choices, levels, and access points into each specific Provincial Learning Outcome (British
Columbia Ministry of Education, 1998). Such creative and alternative approaches are necessary
to effectively engage [the] reluctant learner (Jacobi, 2008, p. 72) who is at the heart of our
design.
Communication and literacy are dynamic abilities necessary to actively participate in the
building of knowledge. In [such] knowledge-building contexts, the focus is on problems rather
than on categories of knowledge or on topics (Scardamalia, & Bereiter, 1994, p. 274). For this
reason we intend to provide students with authentic problems within real life situations that they
can become personally involved with. These educative experiences will be inclusive and
differentiated. Students may engage on a fundamental level, but there will always be opportunity

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for learning that can lead to real understanding, and ability to apply ones knowledge and
deploy it in innovation (Lankshear & Knobel, 2008, p. 9). We hope this deeper involvement will
be a natural extension of the instructional design.
This online curriculum will be designed with flexibility and adaptability in mind. Specific
modules may be utilized within a brick and mortar classroom, or the entire course may be taken
online within a homeschooling or a distance education curriculum. This course could be valuable
to the adult learner who is wanting to brush up on a variety of literacies in a non-threatening and
safe environment. However, it is important to mention that a live teacher or mentor is a necessary
component to the program. Feedback will be an essential piece of this learning environment - we
do not believe this could be adequately automated.
Our target student is one who has not succeeded in the mainstream school environment.
She/He is the disenfranchised student who has not found meaningful engagement in formal
education. There is an abundant amount of research that, acknowledges the importance of mass
media in marginalized communities.... Mass culture ... is an arena of everyday resistance...
allowing for a kind of cultural expression that is otherwise suppressed (Goldfarb, 2002, p. 60).
We acknowledge that marginalized learners do not belong to one homogeneous group. Reasons
for educational disenfranchisement are as numerous as there are high school dropouts in any
given year.
Though they may be a diversified group from a variety of distinct cultures, we propose
that all of our prospective students have developed literacies to varying degrees. We aim to
honour this fact. Most young people today, regardless of their book-learned skills, regularly
read text messages, email, online ads and articles, magazines, television, radio, podcasting in
addition to [or instead of] books (Jacobi, 2008, p. 74). Our target students already make use of

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social networking sites (SNS) on a regular basis. In a recent study about the social-emotional
benefits of SNS on adult literacy, it was found that participating in social networking provides
marginalized young adults with a sense of validation and peer support that can significantly
reduce feelings of stress (Chovanec & Meckelborg, 2011). We believe this sense of validation
and peer support is an essential ingredient in a successful learning environment.
InterActivities
The British Columbia Ministry of Education describes the rationale of Communications
12 in the Integrated Resource guide as being intended to help students become fully skilled
language users, capable of comprehending and responding to the multiple forms and functions of
language that surround them. (1998, p. 9)
Using the above statement as a guide, we have designed a Communications 12 course
that can be delivered in either a classroom setting or completely online. The Communications 12
objectives require some degree of immersion with online material in order to provide learning
that connects students with the functions of language that surround them (British Columbia
Ministry of Education, 1998, p. 9). Based on the pedagogy of multiliteracies (New London
Group, 1996), we aim to provide a learning experience that engages students in developing their
literacy skills within contexts that represent activities that are meaningful in their lives. Problems
will be built under the consideration of the problem context, representation, and manipulation
space (Jonassen, 1999), and will provide instances of situated learning, overt instruction, critical
framing, and transformed practices (New London Group, 1996).
Over the duration of the course, students will compile a learning record (Syverson, 2008)
composed of content that they have developed in each unit. Depending on the setting of the
course delivery, the learning record may take the shape of a portfolio, or it will be compiled

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within a students section of the course webpage. For students who are in a completely online
context, an instructor will provide the student with regular guidance and feedback via video-chat,
email, and blogs. For use in a classroom, the unit and activity guidelines will provide teachers
with the materials and instructions, and students can create both digital and tangible materials for
their learning record.
We have developed a series of units that are designed around situated problems that
present students with a myriad of possible response options. Each unit will be centered around a
common social or work related situation, and will be composed of a series of activities that
gradually develop the students thoughts in order to guide their decisions as they navigate a
realistic experience. The unit activities will range in context and complexity, and students will be
given several options for how they would like to respond. Those options will include written
responses, the creation of media or multimedia presentations, interaction with or manipulation of
existing media, collage of images with meaning tags, and online blogging and commenting (see
Table 1). Certain activities will encourage students to contemplate the work of other students in
order to provide feedback on both the work of their peer and their own work.
Our goal is for students to use their own experience and existing knowledge to direct the
path of their work, but we also intend to provide a clear and complete set of guidelines as a
resource for students, as well as regular, productive feedback. Therefore, an essential aspect of
our design is the use of collaboration and mentorship to provide a channel for students to
interpret the work of their peers, and also receive comments and feedback from their peers as
well as an instructor. An ethos of content sharing and collaboration has emerged to define the
Web 2.0 experience (Alexander, 2006), and as such the tools for peer-peer and mentor-student
interactions are nearly endless for a student with access to the internet.

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As an example of our design, consider a unit where the situation is finding a new job. The
first activity would ask the student to consider what type(s) of job they are seeking. What are
some of the important characteristics - wage, location, hours, type of work, job satisfaction? Why
do they think that they would like that job? Would they need any special training? By answering
these questions, students will learn the metalanguage surrounding job postings and applications.
For this activity, students would be given the choices of a written response or creating a
multimedia presentation.
As a second activity, students would be asked to consider what they think of when
thinking about working at the type of job they want, and then create a collage of four or five
images that represents their thoughts or feelings. Each image should be accompanied by one
sentence describing how the image relates to their thoughts and feelings about work. Students
would then post their collage for other students view. This activity develops students abilities to
consider perspectives beyond their own experience and interpret meaning in visual media, and
also develops their communication skills in several mediums.
The subsequent activity would have students consider the work of their peers and try to
match the sentence with the correct image in the collage. Students would receive points based on
the number of correct matches that they found in other students work, as well as for each
successful match that their peers make for their collage. Students would be encouraged to try
again with another collage to see if they could improve their sentences in order to get more
points, after being reminded that the sentences are about the connection between the image and
their feelings about work, not about the image itself. This activity will provide an opportunity for
transformed practices, as students can apply what they have learned from engaging with the
work of their peers to try to improve their own work.

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The next activity would have the students search job listings from their region to find at
least one relevant job posting, and to post the listing along with a short description of the key
aspects of the job such as wage or salary, full-time or part-time, key responsibilities and
qualifications, required training.
As a final activity in the unit, students would be asked to consider their experience
looking at the work of the other students and looking at local job listings, and to reflect on the
job they chose. They would be able to choose from any of the response methods described
below.

Table 1: Sample of Online Interactivities

Activity

Example of tool

Perform or Record a group discussion

Google Hangout
Create or add to a collaborative writing project
FanFiction, Google Docs
Create a video or edit an existing video
YouTube, Pixorial
Create a slideshow with captions
Picassa Slideshow
Write a blog post

Blogger

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Make a poster

Be Funky

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