Journal
Co-Curricular Activities (CCA)
Date: 2022.10.10 ~ Now
Main activities: I joined the research project of Dr. Kim and Dr. Li and the main topic of this activity is AI. We conducted 7 offline and online discussion sessions, collected and processed more than 100 data, and interviewed more than 10 students. The project is currently ongoing.
Reflective thinking:
Through CCA, I have learned the following contents related to digital course design:
1. Personal Learning (Peng et al., 2019): Personal Learning is a point I want to emphasize first because I believe that the most important part of education must be the student. This theory emphasizes not only that teachers should bring appropriate educational materials and take suitable teaching methods to students, but also that students should have self-directed learning. So curriculum design or digital equipment can come in handy. Design content for students that suits their learning style and knowledge needs, using AI, VR, and metaverse comes to meet a variety of different needs. In addition, students' enthusiasm for learning can be driven by various curriculum settings. For example, maybe the future learning management system with AI can select the learning content completely suitable for students according to their emotions, learning ability, and preferences so that students' learning will be easier and customized.
2. AI: Firstly, the attitude towards the use of AI design in the curriculum. I think we can hold a positive attitude, but we can't put all our hopes on artificial intelligence. On the one hand, AI has been gradually integrated into the learning system, especially in developed countries. In South Korea, a lot of students in primary school have an AI robot of their own. And AI has already played a certain auxiliary role in the learning system (Steinbauer et al., 2021). On the other hand, if AI is added to the digital curriculum, it may face the obvious problem that student privacy cannot be guaranteed and what AI will teach students cannot be guaranteed. Secondly, I think the most useful aspect to integrate AI into the curriculum is the work of supporting teachers. In class, AI can help teachers give answers to students' personal questions without disturbing the learning progress. After class, AI can also help teachers monitor students' progress and remind students to complete homework. In this way, teachers can be freed from a lot of simple and boring work, and students can get personal attention and tips.
Badge Design
Date: 2022.11.11
Main Activities: After learning Alternative Models of Curriculum and Accreditation, Dr. Li asked each student to come up with an idea about "the badge you most want to get". Because I want to be the student who has the most knowledge, and I think by constantly reviewing can I get more knowledge. Just as an old Chinese saying goes, "the meaning of a book comes out after it has been read a hundred times", I designed the Knowledge Eater badge.
Reflective Journal:
A digital badge is a digital technology, presented in the form of an image, that certifies the knowledge and skills that a student has acquired through study. It is found that digital badges can be introduced into higher education to promote students' learning process, encourage students to strengthen their learning input and output, and improve their academic performance (Cheng et al., 2020). Therefore, the digital badge should be applied to the course, which can be used as proof or an award to students after they complete a certain goal. However, it should be noted that the design of the digital badge must meet the course objectives and requirements, and its design standards must be clear and have quantifiable indicators, to better achieve the reward effect.
In the process of designing the icon of this badge, I noticed two aspects: the first is to meet the requirements of the design because the design of every product needs to follow certain standards. The second is the need to express the connection between the design and the goals that the students are required to achieve. For example, my badge design is the person who completes the knowledge test with the highest score every month. It has a piece of cheese on it because the pronunciation of cheese in Chinese is the same as that of knowledge (our classmates are all Chinese). It also drew a book, which represents constant reading and learning.
Immersive Learning Design
Date: 2022.11.22
Main Activities: In this lecture, we went to the XJTLU XR center, and I experienced Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Extended Reality (XR) devices respectively.
Reflective Journal:
I think the biggest challenge with XR technology is that existing technologies are difficult to access and use. First of all, not all students have the opportunity to use these technologies, because the price of these technologies is too high for students or schools in rural areas or towns. Moreover, the physical discomfort of these technologies is hard to deal with. For example, after using this device for more than two hours, I still feel dizzy. Therefore, to apply these techniques to teaching, we must solve these basic problems. At the same time, XR technology presents many opportunities. One of the most prominent is immersion. For example, when our classmates play the equipment game, they are scared by the content of the game. Therefore, the immersion of these devices can be utilized to enable students to stand in the author's position and experience the author's feelings. Finally, from this experience, I am also thinking about whether the application of these technologies in learning can enable students to master the application of technologies faster without any operational difficulties. Since I've never used this device, I need constant guidance from the staff. At the same time, I also found that our classmates had used such equipment before, and their experience would be much better than mine. Therefore, I think it is important for students to use the equipment without any difficulty.
Conference: Online-onsite Blended Teaching Innovation Project
Date: 2022.12.7
Main activities: The meeting consisted of the dean and four module leaders sharing their teaching experiences of the semester on the topic of blended teaching
Reflective Journal:
After this conference, I have the following thoughts on curriculum design and blended teaching. Firstly, I think the quality of a curriculum has nothing to do with how much technology is used. Whether it's LMO or Miro or something like that, they're going to help education. But if they can't be used properly, it will increase the burden of teaching. As Dr. Li also mentioned in her sharing, her course uses a lot of technologies, but this course is not replicable, because not all courses need to use these technologies. During the meeting, it was also clear that not all teachers will necessarily use digital education technology in their courses, but their courses are also excellent. The second achievement is to understand what kind of role a teacher should play in blended teaching. In the teachers' sharing, all point to the "guiding" role. In a student-centered environment, teaching should lay more emphasis on the cultivation of students' self-directed learning abilities. Just like in this module, students work in groups to discuss problems, design their escape rooms, and exchange experiences. In this process, the teacher may not even be present, and the students can already complete the learning task independently. Finally, I have some ideas about some sharings from a teacher. She thinks that in the process of online learning, teachers need to remind students and timely confirm whether students have completed their homework. To this point, I think we can combine some AI into the learning management system to do these time-consuming and tedious things. In this way, teachers can have more time to complete the research on teaching content and teaching methods, as well as timely feedback on the valuable questions raised by students.
Dr. Michael Day
Date: 2022.9.27
Lecture title: Teaching Semantic Ontologies to Equip Students to Think Computationally and Reduce Harm?
Main content: In this lecture, Dr. Day first mentioned that there are many hidden dangers in the current Internet, such as cyber violence, privacy disclosure, and early puberty of teenagers caused by the Internet. Then he mainly talked about a "big pizza." The content on this pizza contains both non-human and human elements, which are interconnected to form a social network. We need to teach the machine to identify these pizza networks to reduce Internet problems.
Inspiration: Any technology should be designed with its connection to human society in mind. Education needs to cultivate people who have socially capable and can collaborate. Therefore, as educators or designers of future technologies and curricula, we must seriously consider the position of students and teachers in education and fully meet their needs. Make the use of technology in education unbiased, all kinds of educational designs suitable for different age groups of students.
Dr. Loretta-Y Teng
Date: 2022.11.8
Lecture title: Learner-centered teaching
Main content: Through some interactive and game-based learning methods, five characteristics of learner-centered teaching (Weimer, 2013) were taught by Dr. Teng, then we were asked to figure out how to integrate them with digital technologies.
Inspiration: Through this lecture, I have two feelings about teaching methods and learning content. First of all, Dr. Teng's teaching method is very lively. She makes students willing to show themselves through positive body language and encouraging ways, thus forming good classroom interaction. Moreover, in the five characteristics of learner-centered teaching proposed by Maryellen Weimer, our group mainly conducted in-depth research on guiding students to reflect. Guiding students to learn to reflect is always more important than asking them to reflect. As an old Chinese saying goes, "Teaching a man to fish is better than giving him fish." Therefore, we must do a good job in the after-class design for students to reflect on what they learned, and teachers should also give students sufficient feedback. For example, a Forum can be designed on the learning management platform. After each class, students can write what they have learned on it, and let the students who want to share their learning experience with others publish their content, so that students can learn from each other.
Professor Jason Yin
Date: 2022.11.15
Lecture title: Opportunities and challenges of digital entrepreneurship
Main content: Professor Yin shared his own six years of experience in the field of digital entrepreneurship and recommended Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) as a form of entrepreneurship that beginners can undertake.
Inspiration: Before this lecture, I just finished reading the Minimalist Universe written by Korean writer Lee Lim Bok. Therefore, after class, I also carefully thought about what beneficial or interesting influence the metaverse can bring to the course design. In my opinion, the influence can be mainly reflected in the following aspects: firstly, it can enhance the immersion of blended teaching and online learning. Now our online learning mainly relies on the Internet, and there is no difference between online and offline content in essence. However, if the metaverse technology can be more mature and truly realize the sense of immersion and interaction envisioned by scholars, blended education mediated by the metaverse will certainly improve students' learning experience. For example, in traditional blended education, what teachers teach is two-dimensional and each student may interpret it differently. In contrast, in the metaverse, students can experience learning more realistically. Secondly, the metaverse can be used to customize private courses for students. Through scene construction, it can set learning content based on each student's learning needs and preferences, to achieve personal education. Finally, using blockchain technology, students can design the course, which is also reflected in the Escape Room design of our EDS431 course, so that students become the real center of education.
Ms. Haixia Wang
Date: 2022.11.22
Lecture title: Building an Augmented-Reality (AR) Based E-learning Platform for Business Chinese Acquisition and Business Culture Immersion
Main content: Ms. Wang used her paper as the main content to explain how to apply AR to Chinese education.
Inspiration: What impressed me most in this lecture was that I intuitively understood the actual application of artificial intelligence equipment in teaching. In Ms. Wang's lecture, she only uses some basic equipment but greatly upgrades students' learning experience. So it doesn't mean that a variety of techniques used in the curriculum is the best, we can't just show off the hoe, and forget to farm. Secondly, her lecture made me realize that the content learned in books may be completely different from the actual application. She proposed to learn Chinese from the Chinese scene and culture and master knowledge from the practical application of the scene. On the one hand, we can use these artificial intelligence devices' immersive feeling to realize the interactivity of learning and deepen students' learning impression. On the other hand, it also reminds me of the significance of the integration between industry and education, so that students can learn what they can use in their future life and work. This can enable students to learn knowledge proven by practice and improve the efficiency of talent training (Bian,2022).
Ms. Jing Wang
Date: 2022.11.29
Lecture title: LEARN MORE @Learning Mall
Main content: As the deputy director of Learning Mall (LMO), Ms. Wang explained the main development modes of LMO to us from a professional perspective. She made an overall elaboration on the development of LMO from three aspects: one brand, two components, and three education models.
Inspiration: I am most looking forward to this lecture because I chose LMO as the topic of two other modules this semester. I am very interested in its influence on blended education. Ms. Wang also emphasized that the impact of LMO on blended education is unique in China. First of all, from the perspective of learners, LMO provides a lot of free online learning resources for learners, especially students of XJTLU. Secondly, as a learning management system, LMO provides XJTLU teachers and students with online services for the whole teaching and learning process, which can fully connect online and offline teaching. The LMO not only manages the learning process but also becomes a learning partner for students and teachers.
However, I think there are also some problems with LMO blended education. This is mainly reflected in the uneven level of digital literacy of teachers, so different courses present different qualities in the use of technology, and sometimes students cannot directly find the resources they need. Secondly, when online and offline classes are held at the same time, online students do not have a strong sense of participation and cannot interact with courses through more online functions. Therefore, teachers' ability about using LMO should be trained.
Dr. Juliana Tay
Date: 2022.12.6
Lecture title: Digital Game-Based Learning
Main content: Dr. Juliana introduced us to a process of designing a serious game based on her research project and explained how, as a scholar with no engineering background, she achieved successful research and development of educational games through effective teamwork.
Inspiration: Although today's lecture is only based on a project that is constantly being improved, it has inspired me enough to glimpse the whole course design of digital game-based learning. The first inspiration is the game content. Dr. Juliana stresses that the most important factor to consider when designing educational games is "Who are your learners?". Only by making sure what your users want to master, then you can design the right game. And this is something that we're going to emphasize over and over again in EDS431, with any technique you have to be careful about the context that you're using. The second is how to achieve the purpose of education. Therefore, the level of the educational game should not be too simple and should allow students to have deeply thought. For example, when making multiple-choice questions, students can choose the best choice for the situation among the correct answers. This can better exercise the students' thinking ability. Finally, how to be a researcher like Dr. Juliana? I think the most important thing is to understand the logic behind things. She clarified the underlying logic of the game design and teaching methods, and by connecting their corresponding aspects. As a result, the known pedagogy can be mapped to the unknown game design.