ETD 567 Module 5-1 -- Teaching Technology Project for Assessment and Feedback

The instructional unit information is from the curriculum map that I had created for ETD 502. I have highlighted, in yellow, the
particular unit and its details for your convenience.
Arabic Language and Culture: A Crash Course
Target Audience: Adult Learners
Timeline

Topics/Knowledge/Concepts

Week 1

What is culture?
What are the most important elements
of culture?
Why do different people sometimes see
the same things differently?
Halls Iceberg Metaphor
Learners discuss preconceptions and
misunderstandings regarding different
cultures. Especially the Middle Eastern
culture.
Group activity: Learners are grouped
according to favorite color preference
to demonstrate commonalities amongst
the group.
Learners are shown how there are many
words in both Arabic and English that
have the same spellings and meanings.

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Gender-specific greetings; business

greetings; social mores/expectations in
public
The phrase that pays. How to get help
and have safety in the M.E.

Duration: 6 weeks (approximately 6 hours)

Skills
Standards & Benchmarks
Learners will understand the definition of culture, its
elements, and how peoples perspectives are affected
by their cultural upbringing.

Learners will discover that there are more similarities

than dissimilarities amongst various people and/or
people groups.
Cultures: Practices and Products (Standard 2.1
and 2.2)
Examine, compare and reflect on products, practices,
and/or perspectives of the
Target culture(s).
Comparisons: Language (Standard 4.1) Evaluate
similarities and differences in language use and
idiomatic expressions
between the target language and ones native
language
Comparisons: Cultures (Standard 4.2)
Evaluate similarities and differences in the perspectives
of the target culture(s)
and ones own culture(s) as found in multimedia and
digital/print resources.
Identify and appreciate differences in cultural
perspectives in a broader range of topics and begin to
appreciate such differences not only in topic areas
presented in the curriculum. Begin to identify
and appreciate the values and perspectives of the
target culture from within its own cultural system
rather than judging nonAmerican cultural practices
according to American conventions.

Presented By: Mohammad K. Al-Jarrah

Assessments

Resources

Quiz will be conducted to assess

knowledge prior to taking this course.

Course syllabus
Halls Iceberg Metaphor ( Hall, Edward T.
Beyond Culture. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor,
1976.)
http://www.zoomerang.com/

Quiz will be conducted to demonstrate

retention/recall of lecture material.

http://www.actfl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/Cr
osswalkFinalAligningCCSSLanguageStandards
.pdf
http://wilderdom.com/games/descriptions/Cat
egories.html
http://fas.org/irp/agency/army/arabculture.pd
f

Role-playing and competencies. Quiz will

be conducted to demonstrate
retention/recall of lecture material.
Role-playing and competencies. Quiz will
be conducted to demonstrate
retention/recall of lecture material.

http://fas.org/irp/agency/army/arabculture.pd
f
http://fas.org/irp/agency/army/arabculture.pd
f

Week 5

Etiquette/Hand gestures/ Cultural

expectations regarding hospitality

Week 6

Wrapping up what was learned

regarding M.E. culture and cultural
diversity in general. Q & A.

Role-playing and competencies. Quiz will

be conducted to demonstrate
retention/recall of lecture material.
Quiz will be conducted to assess
knowledge after taking this course.

http://fas.org/irp/agency/army/arabculture.pd
f
http://www.zoomerang.com/

1. The main topic of this unit, "The Phrase that Pays", refers to helpful Arabic phrases designed to equip a traveler so that they
can have a more safe and pleasant trip to the Middle East. This unit covers the more basic phrases that one would find helpful so
that they can eat, travel, find a hotel, get medical attention, and even be taken to the American embassy.
2. Target Audience: Adult Learners
3. The purpose of this lesson is to act as a supplemental tool for those who are engaged with the whole course.
As a native Jordanian who has been teaching Arabic for over 15 years, I did not need to research this material for use in this
online instructional unit. However, I will have references pertaining to the use of feedback and evaluation of the instructional unit. In a
workshop setting, the learners would be asked to recite the phrases along with the teacher until they are each mastered. Next, the
learners will be placed into groups where they will be given a situation (needing a taxi or asking for help, for example) and they will
be challenged in providing the correct responses. Further reinforcement can be reached by allowing each learner to act as the teacher
and listen for accuracy from their fellow learners. This will allow all of the learners to learn from their own mistakes and to discern the
mistakes of others so that they will master the correct pronunciation and appropriate situation for each phrase. Finally, the learners will
be tested with a quiz at the end to determine the effectiveness of meeting the objectives of the unit.
In addressing the Special Needs/Differentiated Instruction aspect, I have included online activities within the learning
environment for the instructional unit. These activities are designed to meet the needs of most learners by providing auditory and

visual tasks in order to reinforce the lesson materials and to increase the ability of the learners to meet the objectives of the
instructional unit. An example of this would be the use of Weeblys embedding tool to place useful audio widgets from
www.audiopal.com beside the written Arabic/English phrases. By doing so, I attempted to meet the learning needs of both the visual
and auditory learners to learn and to retain the presented materials. Conveniently, www.funnelbrain.com provides interactive games
that encourage the learner to recall the phrases quickly and it provides fast feedback on their progress. To proceed to these interactive
games, one must go from this page, http://502onlineunit2014.weebly.com/flash-cards-and-quiz.html, by clicking the View On
FunnelBrain link located under the embedded Flash Cards activity. Next, one would see a link labeled, View Important Phrases as
Flashcard Deck. Once that link is clicked, the learner will see the www.funnelbrain.coms interactive games of KaBOOM! and
Soccer that can be played by most learners and even those who are hearing-impaired.
For the purposes of this project, I will be using more formative assessments such as tests, quizzes, and role-playing exercises to
ascertain the effectiveness of the instructional unit (Lepi, 2014). This leads us to Kirkpatricks four-level evaluation model where level
1 is Reaction, level 2 is Learning, level 3 is Behavior, and level 4 is Results (Hodell, 2011). I believe that my assessments are going to
more heavily address level 2, Learning, since I am more concerned with the objectives being acquired by the learners (Hodell, 2011).
However, I can see the value of level 1, Reaction, because the materials will be more well-received if the delivery system appeals to
the learners (Hodell, 2011). In his book, Interactive Instruction and Feedback, Dempsey (1993) explores the details of feedback
possessing either a pedagogical foundation, psychological foundation, or technological foundation. I have found that my feedback

foundation will be more pedagogical in focusing on the complexity of the task and somewhat psychological in using active processing
to determine the effectiveness of the lesson (Dempsey, 1993).

References
Dempsey, J. (Ed.). (1993). Interactive instruction and feedback. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Educational Technology Publications.
Hodell, C. (2011). ISD from the ground up a no-nonsense approach to instructional design (3rd ed.). Alexandria, Va.: ASTD Press.
Lepi, K. (2014, February 13). The key differences between summative and formative assessments. Retrieved March 29, 2015, from
http://www.edudemic.com/summative-and-formative-assessments/