TECHNOLOGY-BASED CREATIVE WORKS
Digital Tool Selection Web-Application for Digital Literacy Development
In partnership with three scholars, we engineered a digital technology tool selection web application designed to assist K-16 educators in mapping learning outcomes along the spectrum of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy stages by developing an interactive guide for discovering, categorizing, and classifying different types of educational technology. This application enables educators to develop digital literacy skills by selecting the appropriate digital technology for the learning outcome and the learner. We created an aggregate decision point that funnels from customized constraints into Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy, and beyond to the deliverable, which focuses on the affordances of the tools and their potential alignment to the levels.
The problem this tool addresses is that students are accustomed and comfortable engaging diverse digital tools for socializing, playing, shopping but there is a gap and even resistance to using digital tools to discover, design, or create in an online digital learning (ODL) environment. In conjunction with the development of a digital taxonomy, future additional solutions and supplemental facilitation tools will include terminology repository to aid in the success of course development and appropriate use of technology and authoring tools taxonomy providing the integrated environment.
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This is a engineered prototype only and has not been released commercially.
Choose Your Own Adventure
Virtual Game-Based Learning at New Student Orientation
I was part of a team that flipped the traditional in-person outreach seminars about academic learning support programs at new student conferences to every first-time-in-college student. Using Prezi, student community leaders delivered a "choose your own adventure" style story outlining the first semester of college life at Texas A&M University at Galveston. We developed a map of branching narratives centralizing the problems the first year students commonly report as they make the transition to a college environment. The many paths of this adventure game allow students to explore common academic roadblocks that students may face during their first term including adjusting to new responsibilities, mental and physical health, balancing task loads, and developing independence. Stemming from their own experiences, the Student Leadership in The Center for Academic Learning Support at Texas A&M University at Galveston designed a highly relatable experience for new students.
We used universal design methods and game based learning through interactive fiction to provide a branching narrative for users to make choices and which they can replay for different outcomes. We call it Choose Your Own Semester! Our version engages two diverse pedagogies. Cognitive Constructivism aims to assist students in assimilating new information into existing knowledge which enables them to make the modifications to their intellectual framework. Experiential Learning is a learning process based on concrete experience. This elicits reflection and review about the experience. The students then reach conclusions and discover the meaning of the experience. This leads to trying out what you’ve learned.
Interdisciplinary Canvas Module: Plagiarism & Academic Integrity
I designed, built, and employed an interdisciplinary Canvas teaching module for academic integrity and remediation focusing on plagiarism as an accidental act. This module uses integrated Prezis and instructional design to teach ethos, citation styles, and information literacy and appropriate technology solutions to the most common forms of plagiarism. The main goal of this module is to create a proactive learning opportunity about plagiarism, academic ethics, and intellectual property rights. The major outcome of the matrix is improved student learning, success, and retention in the university.
The module is the result of a systems review I performed to help manage plagiarism on a college campus. The problem with the current academic remediation system is that most of these systems serve reactively with little to no proactive user engagement nor is there equitable access to training and teaching content. The solution is to include more proactive technology tools holistically across user groups into an integrated technology system matrix including possible future technologies that can educate, detect, and track plagiarism both proactively and reactively.
Designing Tutor Training using Gamification
I designed and applied a scalable tutor training lesson plan that integrates playing the Texas-based domino game called 42 with meta-learning approaches for students in higher education. This training uses game play, reflection writing, and summative assessment to challenge tutors to examine their approach to learning new, complex problems. They are then challenged to transfer the learning process into a teaching process in order to become a trained tutor in Academic Service Programs at Texas A&M University. The lesson I designed aims to educate students to understand learning as an iterative process regardless of the topic or skill.
At the end of this lesson the learner should be able to indicate that they better understand learning as an educational process (rather than instruction or indoctrination) and that they understand the learning process as change involving the acquisition of knowledge and intellectual skills.
I have now taught this lesson to over 400 people from 12 to 200 person tutor trainings and at conferences to directors and executive directors at Learning Centers across the nation. The next step for this concept is to implement the developed IRB study plan and determine how well the participants learn from this gamification process.
Building a Canvas Community for 150+ Tutor Cross-Over Training
I designed a Canvas Community to host 10 years worth of peer learning consultant training materials and create tiered training modules for new and returning employees per program. I used instructional design theory to create a page template for other instructors to use and built assessments for students that map to national accreditation programs such as College Reading and Learning Association (CRLA) and International Tutor Training Program Certification (ITTPC).
