Lei xu's portfolio

First name: Lei

Last name: Xu

Student ID: 2358863

Email address:Lei xu23@student.xjtlu.edu.cn

In EDS 431, we have 12 lectures and 6 tutorials plus 6 labs for synchronous learning and 12 weekly readings and digital escape rooms to complete and 6 learning levels to achieve

• Understand and apply a range of approaches to the design of online and offline courses;
• Critically evaluate these approaches via an understanding of their philosophical and theoretical bases;
• Select, design and share media, learning activities and assessment tasks appropriate to each approach;
• Design and build course components appropriate to their own institutional and educational context.

As most of my education and work experience is related to English education, I have a certain knowledge base of pedagogy but little knowledge of educational technology. Working in a vocational school for two months made me realize that frontline teachers are less likely to use digital technology and AI. Veteran teachers would avoid using digital games or interactive PPTs in the classroom due to their low digital competence, whereas new teachers would use digital technology in the classroom to stimulate engagement and motivation. This disparity results in students receiving different learning resources and experiencing the curriculum differently, leading to the creation of a digital divide. Korupp and Szydlik (2005) stated that the digital divide signals the emergence of a new type of social inequality, which is caused by human capital, family background, and social background, and research has shown that human and social capital is more important than economic capital. Research suggests that human and social capital is more important than economic capital. Teachers are an important human resource in the education process, and their lack of digital skills is a reflection of insufficient human capital. Therefore, when I chose my master's program, I applied to the Digital Education program of our university, hoping to find a solution to the above problems in deep learning and practice. Before enrolment, although I was aware of the digital education curriculum, it remained unclear what role digital education would play in my future learning journey and career. In the course of undertaking the program for over four months, I have gradually developed some ideas about the significance of the existence of digital education.

During the time I have been studying digitally, I have learned about the latest educational technologies and theories from a variety of courses. I benefited a lot from the teachers' patience, the experts' lectures, and the group discussions, and I became more and more fond of the process of exploring and learning knowledge. Especially in the course of EDS431, I learned a lot of digital education concepts, such as Education 4.0, synchronous learning, VLE, and so on, through the two-hour lectures every week.

I believe that what many frontline teachers lack is not the willingness to use digital technology, but the accumulation of relevant knowledge and practice. Only when they have the relevant knowledge can frontline teachers use educational technology effectively in classroom teaching activities and promote the change and development of educational methods.

The class I look forward to the most every week is EDS431 because Ms. Lina's course design in EDS431 is so clear that I can self-assess and reflect based on the objectives of the course, and understand my learning progress and level in real-time. She would present the learning objectives to the students first in the PPT of each lesson and then lead us to construct a cognitive framework of the new educational theories. Lekha (2020) points out that a clear curriculum design helps teachers organize their lessons in a purposeful, efficient, and systematic way to achieve the goal of improving students' learning abilities and capabilities. Such an approach to teaching and curriculum design made me realize that I should pay more attention to the educational objectives in my process of curriculum design. At the same time, to enrich our understanding of educational theories and the cross-disciplinary application of the theories, Mr Lina invites guest speakers to give lectures on different topics in class every week. What impressed me most was the lecture by Dr.Zhiying Huang, who explained 17 SDGs to us in detail and made me interested in sustainable development. In my independent study after the class, I reviewed the information about educational sustainability to understand the connection between the current state of its theoretical research and curriculum design. Leite (2022) states that exploring the role of educational sustainability in curriculum design is to provide a theoretical framework and guidance for global citizenship education and other types of educational curricula. If the SDGs are used to refine the definition of global citizenship, then the implementation of educational trends such as inquiry-based learning and problem-based learning will increase. In my paper analyzing the impact of game-based learning on students' second language acquisition, I incorporated the concept of educational sustainability as a significant influence on students' acquisition of a second language. These lectures provided by the EDS431 course have largely expanded my views on cutting-edge educational theories, AI technology, and professional development, and enriched the theoretical knowledge base of education.

At the beginning of the EDS 431 course, every student in the class took the MBTI test. Harrington and Loffredo (2010) shows that personality types may influence people's preference for a pattern and affect their attitudes and actions in dealing with problems. Although the reliability and validity of MBTI are yet to be proven, it is undeniable that this personality test helps people to understand themselves more clearly. This personality test helped the class to understand each other and select and match group members with complementary personalities. To a large extent, it stimulates group creativity, improves efficiency in completing activities, and promotes intra-group cooperation and inter-group competition. My MBTI test result is ESFP, and I think the letter S has a greater impact on my learning and problem-solving style, S stands for sensing, a practical person tends to pay attention to the concrete details of real events, and cares more about the immediate attempts than worrying about the future. Therefore, I am very pragmatic in my learning, I will evaluate my ideas before putting them into practice, I will seek help from the teacher when I encounter problems I don't understand, and I will complete my learning tasks step by step. The letter P stands for perceiving. Perceiving people are flexible and open-minded and are willing to pursue possibilities and changes. So when I come into contact with new knowledge, I will be accustomed to connecting it with the theories I have learned, exploring whether there can be new sparks, and expanding my research ideas. When faced with numerous possibilities and options, I tend to use new methods for multiple attempts and verification. This personality makes me enjoy constructing and organizing cognitive frameworks during the learning process, and take great pains to validate ideas through practice. I prefer to deepen my understanding of theory through practice rather than through boring memorization and recitation. The digital escape game created by Ms Lina has been a significant contributor to my independent learning and practice. Fotaris and Mastoras (2019, October) noted that although the digital escape game is a relatively new concept, research analyses have shown that educational escape rooms can provide an enjoyable educational experience that immerses students in an active and participatory learning environment. I believe that digital escape games present knowledge points in a short, fun format, reducing the psychological pressure on students to learn and consolidate their knowledge while providing learners with opportunities to engage in teamwork and develop critical thinking, leadership, creativity, and decision-making skills. While recognizing my character strengths, I have also recognized my weaknesses on reflection as well. When completing activities and assignments, I always habitually neglect to refine the details and lower my expectations for results. Although novel ideas and frameworks play an important role in academic research, details determine the content and quality, and I should continue to strengthen my attention to detail and improve my academic rigor.

Based on the evaluation of the proposal, the group will create a prototype of the course using tools related to course design and incorporating expertise and theory. In the course design and creation, the group members have gained a lot of growth and progress. In the course of EDS431, the teacher showed us the concepts and basic operation of the related software about course design, such as H5P, Articulate360, and so on, which helped us a lot to put the course design plan into practice.   H5P was mentioned as an acronym for HTML5 Package, which is free and open-source software licensed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Amali et al.,2019). Its goal is to help people create, share, and use HTML5-based interactive content. Through the H5P.org website, people can experiment with and design interactive videos, demos, and tests independently. Currently, H5P applications and content types work similarly on H5P-compatible websites, integrating with three platforms: Drupal, WordPress, and Moodle. There are a large number of users, with about 9,000 websites in use. Since we were exposed to and experimented with H5P early in our EDS431 course studies, our game creation will also be based primarily on H5P. The theoretical background for the design of this game is mainly Constructivist learning theory, Hein (1991) illustrates that there is no experience or meaningful knowledge independent of the learner or community of learners, Constructivism emphasizes that the learner constructs a framework of knowledge autonomously during the learning process and that thinking and reflecting on learning is particularly important. The reason for choosing this theoretical foundation is that we hope that learners will not only master and understand the basic knowledge, but also improve their ability to learn independently, think critically, and think logically in this course. In the process of creating and presenting the game, we encountered many details and challenges that we had not considered during the initial conceptualization. Determination of teaching objectives, presentation of knowledge points, testing, and feedback methods, selection of target groups, and use of teaching methods are all intertwined, and it takes a lot of manpower to match them logically and in terms of content. In my opinion, the most important and difficult part of a complete course design is to clarify the selection of instructional objectives and knowledge points. Herring and Williams (2000) stated that continuous improvement of a course should be based on the framework of a course with clearly defined objectives. The selection and determination of course objectives should take into account the requirements of the course syllabus as well as the knowledge base and ability level of the students. We encountered difficulties in gathering knowledge of veterinary medicine related to the proposal. Since the group members had never been exposed to veterinary expertise, they had to use the internet and the help of the proposal creators to build a knowledge framework. Another disappointment was that the actual design was different from the initial concept. In the initial design phase, we expected to present the course game as a simplified version of a large-scale online game like CSGO. But in reality, we just used H5P to present the basic course content. I think the biggest difference between these two ways of presenting is the different experiences and immersion levels of the students. In my discussion with Ms. Li after class, I learned that if I wanted to implement the course design as an online game, I needed to have a certain coding base and computer and programming skills of the group members. The difficulties I encountered in the course design helped me understand my shortcomings and gaps. After three rounds of evaluation and optimization, we finally created a prototype of a course about veterinary knowledge using H5P, which has the advantage of presenting knowledge as an interactive game to increase students' interest and engagement and stimulate creativity and reflection. However, the prototype is not perfect, the rigor and logic of the course content need to be further optimized and the number of interactive activities needs to continue to increase. The design and development of digital courses undoubtedly play an important role in digital education and inclusive learning and help learners to personalize their learning to a great extent.

My attitude towards integrating AI and education has shifted dramatically during study and reflection in EDS431. Because I had very little exposure to digital education in my previous learning experiences, I was extremely lacking in foresight about AI. I had a very conservative attitude towards the integration of AI and education. However, after learning about the impact of digital games on curriculum and teaching as well as experiencing and feeling them, my attitude towards AI shifted. I think there is a lot of room for growth in the field of digital curriculum, both theoretically and practically, to provide an impetus for the development of pedagogy. Gourlay (2021) shows that digital education is an essential and indispensable element of blended learning. Digital technology can help learners to be free from physical constraints in a sense, increasing the possibilities of learning and creativity. Digital education has evolved rapidly over the past few years, especially in the context of the growing demand for online learning fuelled by epidemics across the globe. Advances and developments in digital technology in education continue to bring about many changes, such as the popularity of online learning platforms such as Coursera, EdX, Udemy, and others, which offer a wide range of courses and allow students to access knowledge on a global scale. Students can personalize their learning experience according to their ability level. The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning has made personalized education more feasible by analyzing students' learning patterns and needs to provide tailored educational content. Digital education is also based on the development of virtual technologies, with VR/AR technologies providing students with more immersive and hands-on learning experiences, such as virtual labs and virtual tours. Mobile learning has also become a hot topic and research theme in education. The popularity of mobile phones and tablets has driven the development of mobile learning, allowing students to access educational resources anytime, anywhere. In the future, the development of digital education may move towards more aspects. Blended learning models and AI-assisted teaching will appear frequently in the classrooms of frontline teachers, and digital education will continue to evolve and integrate with traditional education to provide students with richer and more flexible learning experiences.

The academic atmosphere of the school  is very friendly and positive, offering many academic and extracurricular activities for students to choose to participate in. What impressed me was the fact that master's students can take on the role of teacher's assistant by double-selecting with a teacher. This job opportunity allows students to be the link between the teacher and the class, strengthens the connection between educators and learners, develops a sense of responsibility, and helps students deepen their understanding of the course structure and content. At the same time, students have the opportunity to participate in teacher and faculty research projects and can sign up based on directions of interest. Students can either work on the project with the teacher as subjects or take on the role of leader in the project. During my months of enrolment, I have been involved in four ai-related research projects. The following three projects that have benefited me are listed below.

In October, I took part in a mixed online and offline escape room game organized by Ms. Li  and teachers from the Department of Computer Science, in which I assumed the role of a volunteer responsible for assisting computer science students to find the final answer through a digital escape game. During the activity, I not only recorded the decryption process of the students with my mobile phone but also observed that most of the participating students showed positive attitudes towards the digital escape game. They seemed to prefer this kind of fusion game learning to traditional coding learning. However, the co-operative activity also has some drawbacks. As the students participated in the activity as a group activity, it was easy for individual group members to have a lower level of participation, less independent thinking, and habitual reliance on their peers for answers. This activity gave me a real sense of the use of digital escape games in the classroom and the impact of inclusive teaching on teachers' teaching and students' learning and increased my confidence in designing digital lessons.

The latest project completed was the GPT writing experiment. Under the guidance of Ms Li, I completed the pre-test questionnaire, the writing experiment, and the post-test questionnaire. During the experiment, I completed the writing content through dialogue with the writing robot and self-questioning according to a specific topic. At the end of the experiment, I found that the writing robot could indeed help with topic writing. However, its limitation is reflected in its inability to accurately identify the needs of writers. The bot is better at providing writers with writing frameworks and expression guidance than evaluating and enriching writing content. I believe that with improvement and optimization, the robot's functionality and information retrieval ability will be improved to provide effective ideas and quality content guidance for people's writing.

In EDS431, I have gained a lot, learned and accumulated a lot of professional concepts and definitions that I have not touched before, and mastered the influencing factors and processes of course design in practice. However, I believe that I still have great deficiencies in the implementation of the course design, especially the use of technology is poor, the ability to explore the technology alone still needs to be enhanced. In teamwork, most of my responsibilities are to provide course design ideas and improve course content, and I lack practical experience in designing courses using platforms such as H5P.

Having undertaken knowledge learning and project participation in digital education, I believe that the role of digital courses for frontline teachers cannot be ignored. Pepin et.al (2017) demonstrates that digital curricula and materials offer the opportunity for changes in teaching and learning models and approaches, opening up more possibilities for the personal development of learners. Digital courses matched to teaching objectives can help teachers reduce teaching pressure and effectively engage students' engagement and creativity in the classroom. However, the use of digital courses also needs to consider issues such as affordability, teacher resources, and information security. Designing a curriculum system that matches the syllabus and teaching objectives requires a great deal of human, material, and financial resources. Currently, most of the commercially developed digital courses are sold at a high price, making them less attractive to educational institutions. It is also important to consider that schools or educational institutions may lack the necessary technical equipment or stable network connections, which may limit the implementation and effectiveness of digital curriculum design. Another aspect is the lack of teacher resources with good technological skills in schools. Teachers may lack experience in the use of digital teaching and learning tools and platforms and need training and support to better design and deliver digital lessons. Cotten et.al (2011) shows that the use of digital lessons and electronic devices by trained teachers in the classroom had a positive effect on creating a positive learning environment. Conversely, teachers who lack technological skills will lose the opportunity to innovate classroom instruction. Although personalized teaching is one of the advantages of digital curricula, achieving truly personalized education requires large amounts of data and complex algorithmic analysis, which may face privacy and data security concerns.

Addressing these challenges also requires significant human, material, and financial resources, with comprehensive consideration of the integration of technology, pedagogy, resources, and support. Training teachers, providing appropriate technical support, improving curriculum design and content quality, and promoting student engagement and motivation are all key to overcoming these problems.

Time flies, and in the blink of an eye, this semester is coming to an end. Looking back on these four months of study and life at the school, I have gained a great deal of knowledge and feelings. I have gained a lot of knowledge and feelings. My friends with compatible personalities, my understanding teachers, the interesting classroom activities, and the positive learning atmosphere are all unforgettable to me. During the course, I think I still have many shortcomings. One of them is the lack of reading. Whether it is in completing homework or independent study, the teacher very much suggests reading as the first step of learning, reading a lot of other people's articles can understand the current state of research and expand the research ideas. However, I always used to build a knowledge framework before reading and searching for information in independent study. This makes my expression more scarce and my ideas too limited. I hope I can pay more attention to literature reading and improve my ability to think deeply in my subsequent learning journey.

EDS431 is a course that can stimulate students' hands-on thinking skills, which plays an indispensable role in students' learning of digital education-related knowledge and implementation of course design. I hope I can always keep my love for the education industry and keep walking on the sunny road of digital education.