Reflection on Learning: Application to Professional Practice

Stephanie Stanberry

University of West Georgia

Reflection on Learning

Imagine standing in front of 28 fourteen and fifteen year olds. Their glaring eyes

wondering why and for how long you plan to take them away from their technology and dare

you to attempt to teach a lesson. They count the minutes and think of ways to sneak onto their

iPad mini or smartphone. That was my daily life as a ninth grade math teacher. Everyday I

wonder how to connect to my students and keep them engaged while giving them quality

lessons? The only answer seemed to be to combine our two worlds. Take their love for

technology and use it in my world of teaching to provide a unique learning environment that we

all could enjoy and benefit from.

I attempted to accomplish this task on my own with very limited knowledge of where to

begin. When I first started to incorporate technology into my lessons, the only experience in

creating multimedia instruction I had was very basic. My toolbox consisted of PowerPoint and

MovieMaker. These were the tools I also required my students to use when completing projects.

Though those tools were efficient enough to meet the intended purpose for me and my students

at the time, it soon became less and less thought provoking. I needed something that would

require more critical thinking from all of us, but what was it? The next logical step towards

getting the desired results was to go back to school thus leading me to this class. Suddenly the

answer was shown to me, I needed something that would:

allow students to focus on course content; promote active and cooperative

learning; engage students in higher-order thinking skills; present and represent

ideas through a variety of media; manipulate various technology tools, onscreen

objects, and information models; locate and determine the best tools and resources

for gathering and producing information; and critically analyze, evaluate, and

organize information. (Ivers and Barron, 2010, p. 4)

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Reflection on Learning

The course took navigated through a series of learning activities that included designing,

producing, and assessing multimedia projects and providing effective e-learning activities. The

topics detailed in this paper are ones that I learned a great deal from and intend to use in my

future teaching activities.

As a teacher, I spent a lot of time planning my lessons and activities with great detail. I

never really had a method to planning multimedia projects and that is possibly why they fell

short of what was intended. One textbook for this course gave a great model for planning. The

DDD-E Model gave me insight as to what I was neglecting during planning processes in the past.

The model is a clearly defined set of responsibilities that are expected from the teacher as well as

those expected from the students. I soon found that my past multimedia projects fell short in the

design portion of the model. Though brainstorming was a requirement of all my past projects,

students only had to jot down their ideas for submission. I did not require details such as

flowcharts, storyboards, or scripts before the actual development of the projects. This led to a lot

of mistakes and frustration that could have been accounted for before developing the project. As

the book Multimedia Projects in Education states, If the student has thoroughly outlined their

content and approach via storyboards, their time spent on the computerwill be much more

efficient (Ivers and Barron, 2010, p. 76).

Through completing the assignments required for this class, I was able to really

appreciate the presence of a flowchart. Even something as simple as the linear All About Me

Flowchart led me to see past mistakes. Every year I had my students complete a project about a

famous mathematician. Year after year, it never failed that some students would leave out

important information that was required about their mathematician resulting in points deducted

from their rubric. While completing the All About Me Flowchart, it occurred to me that I could

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Reflection on Learning

have eliminated the omissions by my students if I had required a flowchart for the mathematician

project.

Storyboards make multimedia projects a great deal easier to develop, but during the

Instructional Multimedia Program for Client Project I learned that they are not set in stone. The

storyboard allowed me to know what title, what graphics, and how many buttons went on a card

however, there was no way of knowing the best background, font size or placement until the end.

Especially since I was creating a program for someone else, my client had different ideas for

placement and sizing than I did or from what was agreed upon in the storyboard. In the future

when introducing storyboard templates and checking off on storyboards for my students, I will

make sure to let them know that it is okay to deviate some from their storyboards. The

storyboard is a powerful planning tool, but it is not the end all be all so dont stress over changes

for your original thoughts once you develop the project.

All of the Principles describe in the book E-Learning and the Science of Instruction are

ones that I utilized already due to my teaching background. I have a background in teaching

inclusion math classes where I have general education, special education, and ELL (English

Language Learners) students all in one classroom. I also have training in Universal Design for

Learning which crosses over with the Principles described in the book, so I tend to accommodate

for all types of learners. The one topic I found myself reading over and over was the

Redundancy Principle explained in chapter 7. Due to my background, I automatically want to

include both narration and on-screen text with on-screen graphics. I want to make sure all

learners are accounted for. The statement, Accommodating different learning styles may seem

appealing to e-learning designers who are fed up with the one-size-fits-all approach spoke

directly to me (Clark and Myer, 2008, p.127). Yet based upon reading the book, I could also see

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Reflection on Learning

how it could overload some learners. I struggled with this while completing my projects for this

course. I finally decided the best plan of action was to focus my planning on who the intended

audience was and that would determine my decision as it related to redundancy.

For example, in my Instructional Video Project for each graphic I placed on-screen text

with narration. I did this because I made the video for my seven-year-old son. Since my

audience was a small child, I did not want reading levels to interfere with learning how to make

ice cream. I also figured that the narration with the on-screen text to aide with reading skills.

However, in the Instructional Multimedia Program for Client Project I took a different approach.

Since my audience were fellow educators, I just included narration. I gave the option for on-

screen text through a button on the card to accommodate anyone who needed the text or possible

glitches in audio (I have had issues like this with narration-only trainings). I know my past

teaching experiences will make me to continue to struggle with and question the Redundancy

Principle, but I will make sure to stick with and review my planning documents when making

future lessons. I will also express this with my students: know your audience and give the option

if needed.

In conclusion, this course served the purpose of providing an answer to my questions of

how can I connect to my students and keep them engaged while giving them quality lessons? and

what is something that would require more critical thinking from all of us? The answer was

multimedia lessons and projects. In order to achieve the most effective results, I have to take

what I was doing prior to taking the course and incorporate what I have learned during this

course. The DDD-E Model must be utilized in order to focus more on the flowchart and

storyboard aspect of planning. This will ensure more engaging and complete lessons created for

my students and better quality projects created by my students. When creating these lessons for

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Reflection on Learning

my students I must remember the Redundancy Principle and plan/develop according to my

audience is and remove myself from past classroom experience. If I practice and follow the

topics outlined in this paper, there is no doubt that my multimedia lessons and projects will

improve.

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Reflection on Learning

References

Barron, A. E., & Ivers, K. S. (2010). Multimedia projects in education: Designing, producing,
and assessing. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2008). E-learning and the science of instruction. San Francisco,
CA: Pfeiffer.