Lan Luo's e-profile

The detailed learning progress is shown in this mind map.

Digital education caught my attention when I provided online training to my former colleagues from many branches in various cities. I am not an active learner if the speaker simply read through PPTs and lectures without any interaction. Therefore, in my training session, I always tried to incorporate chat, cases and interactive questions to ensure the delivery of the massage. To better improve my teaching ability, I passed Cambridge English’s Teaching Knowledge Test (TKT) through self-study to know about lesson planning and the learning process. As a business-background professional, I did not know that this way of teaching is actually a form of digital education.

After attending online training for college advising at Columbia University, I started to pay attention to digital education formally. The teaching sessions are pre-recorded but there involve a lot of activities such as forum discussion, cases study and written essays. After having more digital learning experience with MOOC and Coursera as well as Mint Reading, I found digital education very interesting and helpful for learners like me, who can only learn in my spare time while working. However, there are so many courses online targeting different types of learner. Which one is the most suitable or efficient one? This is the first question that bothers me when looking for learning materials for self-improvement. Moreover, the quality of courses varies and accreditation cannot be ensured. Then how to ensure the course quality? Is there any standard? How to connect knowledge with practice? Along with my study, questions burst like a flood that finally ceased my blind searching.

Now, as a digital education student, I find my way to explore answers to my questions by knowing what is digital literacy, student engagement online, learning styles and processes, as well as how theories guide teaching. In the following sections, I will try to reflect on my study of EDS 431 Designing Digital Education Curriculum combined with my other learning experience this semester at XJTLU.

From the first week’s lecturers, I can strongly feel the student-centred teaching philosophy at XJTLU and especially in the EDS 431. Although the class was taken online at the beginning, we were not required to turn on our cameras. This comfort helped us easy to focus on the teaching content instead of having pressure for “being watched”. Actually, I found tools like anonymous voting and Etherpad Lites are great ways for us to reflect on our current learning and raise questions without embarrassment. From my perspective, protecting students’ self-esteem built the foundation for our later engagement in this class. We soon became active in activities interaction, for example, we used annotation to give our choices during the class, posted our opinions on the course forum, and expressed our through more confidently.

I listed this section with the name “Human-Cantered Digital Education” instead of student-centred or learner-centred because I found digital education does not leave teachers who do not use digital tools to facilitate their teaching. In one of our guest lectures with Dr Lorretta Teng, we still enjoyed the class discussion and a short presentation to show the class our understanding of five key changes to practice learner-centred teaching by reading an article written by Maryellen Weimer in 2013 (Weimer, 2013). This reminds me of the Technology Acceptance Model developed by Fred Davis (Davis, 1985) including various aspects that influence user’s perception and intention of using technology. Thinking from an instruction designer’s view, if I develop a teaching material or system, I should consider the ease of use for teachers from non-technical backgrounds or insufficient digital literacy, and respect their choice in selecting materials because technology should be an alternative instead of the only methods in future education.

This reflection can be also related to Dr Na Li’s research on the meaning-making of online learning (Li et al., 2022). I wondered if the fever for digital education would fade after eliminating the restriction of attending onsite classes due to the pandemic. But if educators can understand and develop the meaning of actions, digital education will bring a more interesting and interactive learning environment which I would like to share some of my personal experiences in the following sections.

Before moving to the following sections, I would say that I am so relieved when I learned about Piaget’s cognitive development (developmental stage theory), Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, and Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions in EDS 431. Because these theories explained my questions about finding the right online course for personal development before studying digital education. In Piaget’s cognitive development theory (Piaget & Cook, 1952), I understand how people develop intelligence through biological maturation and environmental interaction. From observing and imitating others’ works at an early age, we finally reach a mature stage to start viewing the world from our own perspectives. This explains why I was looking for a course that best suits me because now my motivation to learn is entirely intrinsic. It seems that Piaget’s theory leads me to the study of digital education and EDS 431 would be the expert guidance I received to go further. Vygotsky’s theory (Wertsch, 1984) indicated the three zones I experienced and am about to experience. Searching courses or applying to XJTLU’s digital education are things I am able to do unaided, studying EDS 431 is the thing I do with expert guidance, and independently designing an entire course is what I cannot do at this stage. Based on Vygotsky’s theory, if I was asked to design a module like EDS 431 right now, I may lose my motivation to complete this task. Therefore, in my current situation, the teacher plays an important role in providing guidance. Also, the guidance can be in other forms. As Professor Hofstede mentioned in his theory of Cultural Dimensions, factors like power distance, feminity and masculinity, short-term and long-term orientation, uncertainty avoidance, collectivism vs. individualism as well as restraint and indulgence will have an impact on my learning experience and development progress. These theories are helpful if I work as an instructional designer. I would consider my audience, their development stages and cultural backgrounds. As Dr Na Li always said, context is very important.

It is so interesting to find my learning styles and Myers Briggs Types Indicator (MBTI) personality. Knowing myself is a good start to tailor my study based on my strengths, weaknesses and my way of preference in learning.

Based on the VARK (Visual, Aural, Read/write or Kinesthetic) model (Manzoor et al., 2022), my learning style is Kinesthetic. It really reflects my previous learning experience. For example, I prefer to gain practical skills like how to use H5P to design interactive activities, I enjoy hands-on experiences by actually experiencing how VR is used in group discussions by participating in the VR Speaking Clinic, and I am more efficient in learning from case studies in EDS 405 Educational Leadership. After understanding my type of learning strategies, I can seek extra materials to support my study and know how critical it is to understand students’ learning styles in educational practice. 

As for the MBTI personality test, which has been frequently used by health professions and educational programs (Randall et al., 2017), I discover my personality as an Advocate INFJ-T who tends to stand up and make a difference. Humanism and the responsibility to make other’s life better are major characteristics of this type of personality. It fits my previous experience of taking care of my team members at work and trying to help others to grow together in the company’s internal training. I am also happy to know my personality is also suitable for education, especially digital education because the strengths of INFJ are creative, insightful, principled, passionate, and altruistic.

My learning style and personality explained why I enjoy the asynchronous learning part in tutorials and action learning in group work. According to Shepherd’s research on action learning (Shepherd, 2016), the process involves a team with different backgrounds solving the same problem just like we did in EDS 431. I was a member of Team A (Big Picture). We have members from English major, business and automation backgrounds. When we analyse a situation, we tend to provide our opinions from different angles. For example, when critiquing a negative example in one of our classes, our group acted as module leader, teacher and instructional designer and gave feedback on further improvement. This practice helped us in the mid-term assignment on sample curriculum critique.

I really enjoy the sample curriculum critique although it is actually an assessment of our learning outcome. This assignment allows me to think from the perspective of a future teacher and reminds me of the procedure and actions a lecturer should apply in actual practice. As a K-type student, it is really helpful for my study. And I also learned a lot from the sample curriculum about how the lecturer includes different types of interaction such as ice breaker, group discussions, presentations and so forth. Based on Debattista’s work on a comprehensive rubric for instructional design in e-learning (Debattista, 2018), interaction is a vital part of forester an active community to support teaching and learning. From identifying weaknesses of the sample curriculum and providing suggestions for improvement, I learned how to design a course based on suggested rubrics and should try to avoid similar weaknesses in future instructional design and teaching. I found this very inspiring and it is the charm of action learning.

In addition, aside from the assessment, we had a peer review session to allow us to give feedforward suggestions. It helped us to understand the marking scheme and support future improvement for each other. A recent empirical research (Saeed & Mohamedali, 2022) shows that using the feedforward model in Higher Education has a positive impact on students’ performance and engagement. Reflecting on my recent case study on the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu) (Caena & Redecker, 2019), the student should benefit from the overall process of online learning which points out the importance of student engagement in online classes. Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, many recent research papers focus on online education which benefits my understanding of student engagement online. Ferrer and the research team have conducted research on university students’ motivation and engagement in online earning (Ferrer et al., 2022). They found that co-design digital learning materials between teachers and students can enrich the learning experience which can motivate students’ intellectual engagement and their willingness to explore and discover. This reminds me of our glossary, digital escape room, and monthly image vote. We share our findings in the glossary to build our own dictionary, design the escape room to learn and practice collaboratively, and vote for our favourite picture as the cover page displayed on our module page. These activities increase our engagement in this module and give us the autonomy and ownership to our study.

My learning style by doing makes me resonate with Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy (Churches, 2008). In Bloom’s extended digital taxonomy, the fundamental skill is doing, following by connecting, applying, conceptualizing to evaluating, creating and the higher order thinking skills, sharing. Most of our class activities are based on these levels. For example, using glossary and forum, we can create and share our findings and opinions, and by criticising sample curriculum and reviewing peers works, we can apply our learned theories, structure our knowledge, and test them through identifying problems. For me, Bloom's Taxonomy is a very useful theory to track my learning progress.

In EDS 431, I found my interests in AI in education, digital game-based learning, digital badges and immersive learning. 

In one of our classes, Dr Na Li invited Dr Jinheen Kim to have a guest lecture about AI in Education (AIED). We learned about the student-AI collaboration model by understanding the role of students, AI and teachers in AIED (Kim et al., 2022). It really inspired me when knowing many Korean schools use AI robots in English education and motivated me to sign out for the Design Thinking Workshop and two research activities in AIED offered by Co-Curriculum Activities.

In the Design Thinking Workshop, I, together with my peers who were also interested in AIED, tried to find solutions to support the fourth goal Quality Education of UN’s Sustainable Development Goal, with a focus on education equity and equality in rural regions with AI. Although it is an ideal proposal, I learned the process of design thinking by targeting problems and trying to find solutions.

From the two research activities, I have gained knowledge related to human-AI interaction and the development of machine learning and learned how to conduct research interviews. The paper of Amershi and the team’s research (Amershi et al., 2019) about human-computer interaction (HCI) on AIED was very complicated for me. After a thorough discussion during the seminar, I have a better understanding of what should be considered when designing human-AI interactions. This paper is not for the educational application but I still drew some insights from it. For example, one of the guidelines suggests that AI design should consider showing contextually relevant information. In one of my interviews with a student who majored in biostatistics, he said that once he wanted to search for information about his major, but the results showed irrelevant information because biostatistics’ short form has the same words as another phrase. This irrelevant decreased his trust in the AI search function. If a similar situation happens in AIED, it may misguide students and distract them from current learning activities. Aside from knowing AIED, another paper by Amershi’s team introduces the development of interactive machine learning (Amershi et al., 2014) and helps me know why finally we may grow together with AI. Machine learning strongly replies to the data input but we, as humans, do not like to simply provide data labels. Increasing transparency and collaboration in HCI will create better performance in machine learning. Putting it into educational purpose, if AIED is adopted in Chinese schools, teachers and students should have this awareness to utilize this facility.

Digital Game-based Learning (DGBL) is extensively adopted in EDS 431. Before studying this module, I cannot fully differentiate the terminologies of game, gamification, and game-based learning. Along with our study in this module, I experienced level-up, digital escape room, and the DGBL for professionals that Dr Juliana Tay demonstrated for us. Based on Becker’s study (Becker, 2021), game, serious game, game for learning, game-based learning, game-based pedagogy and gamification are different types of teaching and learning with the methods of game.

The DGBL project that Dr Juliana Tay designed with the research team at the National University of Singapore excited me because the motivation that drove me to my second master’s degree in education is to find answers to professional upskilling. In Juliana’s research, they designed a simulation game for the construction industry that greatly stimulates adult learners’ interests and motivation. The adult learners tended to be more realistic and they want to learn to apply instead of playing games or earning a high score in the game. So, they simulated an authentic working environment and bonus rounds to encourage higher-order thinking. They also built a forum to allow learners to communicate with more practical solutions. This part really interested me because when I conducted interviews with my peers regarding digital methods that we experienced this semester, I found a response showing that the forum we had was sometimes burdensome because the discussion was boring. I then found research regarding this issue and research shows that asynchronous discussion forms can promote critical thinking but has limitations for learners to feel less meaningful in communication (Andresen, 2009).

I think that projects like Juliana’s can be linked with digital badges or micro-credentials to increase the accreditation and employability of learners (Maina et al., 2022). When I did a coursework research about micro-credentials, I found that previous research shows the positive effect of formal university micro-credentials training in increasing the awareness of personal strength and employability (Maina et al., 2022). While high-skilled employees become more desirable in the job market (Hunt et al., 2020), the eagerness to learn is also increasing. The following image is generated from my survey in EDS 401 Globalization and Education: Critical Perspectives.

Short-term and skill-based training like DGBL and PBL can become more meaningful and impactful associated with digital badges or micro-credentials. This understanding was generated from many papers that I read during the process of exploring the relationship between micro-credentialling and professional competence. From the meaningful aspect, the badges would allow learners to have certified learning outcomes instead of purely learning without any prof. With a strict teaching standard and evaluation, the quality of learning can be also transferable and stackable, which can be also combined into a certificate (Clayton et al., 2014). The content design to assessment format can vary to achieve this meaningful aspect. As for the impactful side, the badges should be widely accepted by most employers or industries instead of being limited to a certain group or company (Brown et al., 2021). Based on these two dimensions, the courses with digital badges should not only focus on skill enhancement but also related to applications combining different but standard or measurable assessments to help employers or industries to verify the quality of digital badges (Zhang & West, 2020).

In EDS 431, I earned two digital badges but the cohort designed other badges to motivate our learning, which is also an interesting learning experience.

The following is a video introducing the digital escape room we designed based on H5P. The video is made with Camtasia. I found that the digital escape room is a very effective way of teaching and learning because it not only involved the concept of game-based learning but also project-based learning (PBL) (Morgan, 1983). Playing the digital escape room is a way for us to learn from the game while designing a digital escape room is a project that we should complete with our designer’s mind. When playing a digital escape room, I focused more on the contents like solving the puzzle or crossing a word related to the course materials. In this way, I recalled what I learned from the lecture and apply them to escape from the digital room. While designing digital escape rooms, we put more effort into defining the purpose of our room, the rationale we finally followed is that we want our classmates to review how to design a curriculum. Hence, in our first digital room, we used Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (Wertsch, 1984) and Bloom’s Taxonomy (Churches, 2008) to help our peers focus on learning goals. In our second digital room, we helped our peers to review the VARK model (Manzoor et al., 2022) and ABC curriculum design (Young & Perović, 2019) reminding us that designing a curriculum should consider different learning styles and using various activities. In our final digital room, our topic was assessment and feedback for further improvement of teaching and learning which is also an important part of online learning (Debattista, 2018).

There was a class that all of us were so energetic. Ms. Haixia Wang demonstrated many interactive technologies (APPs in her words) that can facilitate both online and blended learning. The AR methods applied in Chinese language learning are very authentic and immersive. Imagine if we had this kind of method in English learning, we may not have so many jokes about Lei Jun’s (the CEO of Xiaomi) English.

During Dr Na Li’s session, we experienced the AR robot. When knowing it is built by her daughter, again, I raved about the exposure of technology to current teenagers. See, if we are going to be instructional designers for future students, it is necessary to master those tools and techniques to enrich teaching content and learning experiences.

The last part of the lectures was conducted in the XR lab. The VR facilitates looks fancier than those during the VR English-speaking clinic that I participated in this semester. It is a pity that I did not experience the wearable equipment due to the time limitation. But it is truly interesting to observe my peers fighting their path in the virtual world.

Coming back to reality, some questions aroused after these exciting activities.

1. Affordability: since technology like VR/AR is quite expensive these days, it is hard to apply in mass education due to the different affordability of schools. Also, for schools adopting VR/AR equipment in their teaching and learning, will this situation accelerate the problem of the digital divide in education (Gorski, 2005)? If the cost of them is like phones and computers today, education may be in a completely different form.
2. Application in different learning subjects: AR is very efficient in language learning while VR can be a powerful tool for science subjects and arts maybe. How can they facilitate other subjects which connect more with reality? Also, if it is distributed imbalanced among subjects, will it cause inequality in digital literacy for different subjects?
3. Contents design: it seems that most of the VR/AR applications now are for entertainment. Although some of the games are applied for educational purpose, applications designed specifically for education is still rare. If more design for education, there may be more benefits in motivating student engagement, increasing digital literacy for both teachers and students, and stimulating creativity. 

In EDS 431, I had three significant gains:

1. I understood educational theories and models related to both education and digital education that I can use them to design and evaluate a curriculum;
2. I learned how to design a digital curriculum using  various resources like Open Educational Resources for different kinds of activities based on technologies such as H5P, Camtasia, Miro;
3. I found my academic interest for further exploration. 

Learning more about digital education brings me more questions about education. But I think this is the meaning of education and I am glad that I have so many questions. In the start of this semester, I read a book written by Tara Westover named Educated. I really like the end and I would like to use it as my closing words for this portfolio.

“They were the choices of a changed person, a new self. You could call this selfhood many things. Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. I call it an education.”

Amershi, S., Cakmak, M., Knox, W. B., & Kulesza, T. (2014). Power to the people: The role of humans in interactive machine learning. Ai Magazine, 35(4), 105-120.

Amershi, S., Weld, D., Vorvoreanu, M., Fourney, A., Nushi, B., Collisson, P., Suh, J., Iqbal, S., Bennett, P. N., & Inkpen, K. (2019). Guidelines for human-AI interaction. In Proceedings of the 2019 chi conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1-13).

Andresen, M. A. (2009). Asynchronous discussion forums: success factors, outcomes, assessments, and limitations. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 12(1), 249-257.

Becker, K. (2021). What’s the difference between gamification, serious games, educational games, and game-based learning. Academia Letters, 209.

Brown, M., Mhichil, M. N. G., Beirne, E., & Mac Lochlainn, C. (2021). The Global Micro-Credential Landscape: Charting a New Credential Ecology for Lifelong Learning. Journal of Learning for Development, 8(2), 228-254. https://login.ez.xjtlu.edu.cn/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1314205&site=eds-live&scope=site

Caena, F., & Redecker, C. (2019). Aligning teacher competence frameworks to 21st century challenges: The case for the European Digital Competence Framework for Educators (DIGCOMPEDU). European Journal of Education, 54(3), 356-369. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12345

Churches, A. (2008). Bloom's taxonomy blooms digitally. Tech & Learning, 1, 1-6.

Clayton, J., Elliott, R., & Iwata, J. (2014). Exploring the use of micro-credentialing and digital badges in learning environments to encourage motivation to learn and achieve. Rhetoric and Reality: Critical perspectives on educational technology.

Davis, F. D. (1985). A technology acceptance model for empirically testing new end-user information systems: Theory and results (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

Debattista, M. (2018). A comprehensive rubric for instructional design in e-learning. The International Journal of Information and Learning Technology, 35(2), 93-104. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJILT-09-2017-0092

Ferrer, J., Ringer, A., Saville, K., A Parris, M., & Kashi, K. (2022). Students' motivation and engagement in higher education: the importance of attitude to online learning. Higher Education, 83(2), 317. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00657-5

Gorski, P. (2005). Education equity and the digital divide. AACE Review (Formerly AACE Journal), 13(1), 3-45.

Hunt, T., Carter, R., Zhang, L., & Yang, S. (2020). Micro-credentials: the potential of personalized professional development. Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal, 34(2), 33-35. https://doi.org/10.1108/DLO-09-2019-0215

Kim, J., Lee, H., & Cho, Y. H. (2022). Learning design to support student-AI collaboration: perspectives of leading teachers for AI in education. Education and Information Technologies, 1-36.

Li, N., Zhang, X., Limniou, M., & Xi, Y. (2022). Meaning-making in virtual learning environment enabled educational innovations: a 13-year longitudinal case study. Interactive Learning Environments, 1-15.

Maina, M. F., Guàrdia Ortiz, L., Mancini, F., & Martinez Melo, M. (2022). A micro-credentialing methodology for improved recognition of HE employability skills. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-021-00315-5

Manzoor, S. R., Mohd-Isa, W. N., & Dollmat, K. S. (2022). Post-pandemic e-learning: A pre-protocol to assess the impact of mobile VR on learner motivation and engagement for VARK learning styles. F1000Research, 10. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.73311.2

Morgan, A. (1983). Theoretical aspects of project-based learning in higher education. British Journal of Educational Technology, 14(1), 66-78.

Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. W W Norton & Co. https://doi.org/10.1037/11494-000

Randall, K., Isaacson, M., & Ciro, C. (2017). Validity and Reliability of the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator : A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Journal of Best Practices in Health Professions Diversity, 10(1), 1-27. https://login.ez.xjtlu.edu.cn/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.26554264&site=eds-live&scope=site

Saeed, N., & Mohamedali, F. (2022). A Study to Evaluate Students’ Performance, Engagement, and Progression in Higher Education Based on Feedforward Teaching Approach. Education Sciences, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12010056

Shepherd, G. (2016). Developing deep group reflection within a Critical Reflection Action Learning set. Action Learning: Research and Practice, 13(3), 252-262. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767333.2016.1220176

Weimer, M. (2013). Learner-centered teaching: Five key changes to practice. John Wiley & Sons.

Wertsch, J. V. (1984). The zone of proximal development: Some conceptual issues. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 1984(23), 7-18.

Young, C., & Perović, N. (2019). Introduction to the ABC learning design workshop. https://abc-ld.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/01-ABC_LD-Toolkit-Intro-Erasmus-v02.pdf

Zhang, J., & West, R. E. (2020). Designing Microlearning Instruction for Professional Development Through a Competency Based Approach [Original Paper]. TechTrends: Linking Research and Practice to Improve Learning A publication of the Association for Educational Communications & Technology, 64(2), 310-318. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-019-00449-4