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Instructional Design and Engaged Learning

DODEA teachers in Germany in December 2007

Module One - Just What is Engaged Learning?

Characteristics of Engaged Learners* Responsible for their own learning They invest personally in the quest for knowledge and understanding, in part because the questions or issues being investigated are drawn from their own curiosity about the world. Projects are pertinent and questions are essential. Energized by learning They feel excited, intrigued and motivated to solve the puzzles, make new answers and reach insight. Their work feels both important and worthwhile. Strategic They make thoughtful choices from a toolkit of strategies, considering carefully which approach, which source and which technique may work best to resolve a particular information challenge. Collaborative They work with others in a coordinated, planful manner, splitting up the work according to a plan and sharing good ideas during the search for understanding. *These concepts are based upon the work of Barbara Means quoted in Plugging In. http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/edtalk/toc.htm

It is easy to read about a concept like Engaged Learning but just reading about it is not the same as understanding it at any deep level.

Learning and understanding is often better served by experiencing and then discussing the concept.

Your instructor will now lead you through an activity that should involve you with a partner in a kind of learning that matches the concept we are exploring.

"A picture is worth a thousand words."

While trite, the saying has extra veracity in these days of intense marketing. Images are often employed to sway our feelings and heighten our appetites or fears.

Understanding how images work in these ways is part of developing critical skills to apply to media literacy - a close companion to text and visual literacies. It is also an essential aspect of effective lesson design, as new technologies allow us to create learning that is appealing. A rich collection of vivid images can add to the effectiveness of learning while exciting the imagination, awakening interest and capturing the attention of the learning.

In contrast, dry slides and pages filled with words are likely to put learners to sleep.

Imagine you have been chosen to develop a one page ad for one of the following campaigns. Few words. One powerful image.

Campaign 1 - Ad for arthritis medicine

Campaign 2 - Ad for blood pressure medicine

Campaign 3 - Ad for anti-depressant medicine

Campaign 4 - Ad for cough medicine

You get one picture and only 40 words to create your ad. Note that each campaign may address a different audience with different tastes, wishes, dreams and fears.

Go to Corbis. Com to identify the perfect image. Copy or save it.

Paste the image into your word processing program. (Note that all these images are for sale, are watermarked and may not be kept beyond the duration of this workshop.) Add your 40 words. Then write a few sentences explaining why you selected the picture you included.

How much would it cost to use this image in a real life ad campaign?

When you and your partner have completed your ad, the group will enjoy what the Australians would call a "walk about," taking a look at the work done by other teams.

Paste the four "Characteristics of Engaged Learners" from above into your word processor and work with your partner to assess how well you did on each of them.

Rate your performance from 1-5 stars . . .

JJJJJ We reached a very high level of performance and were really quite stellar.

JJJJ We did very well on this aspect and even though there is room to grow and improve, we have every reason to feel proud of our performance.

KKK We did fine on this aspect, but there was nothing outstanding about the way we handled it and we can see plenty of ways to improve our performance.

KK We have a long way to go on this aspect before we can feel much pride in our performance. We realize how we need to grow and change.

L We really limped along on this aspect and barely got off the ground. We have so much more to learn.

Under your rating, write at least one sentence explaining why you rated your team in this way, giving a concrete example from your work.

Next module. Please do not proceed until asked to do so by the workshop leader.