Professional Development Activity - Essay Example

Professional Development Activity Introduction This year, for the first time, the hair dressing department would like to attempt the use of flexible delivery of the Certificate II in hairdressing to school students who may have the intention of accomplishing their course within a year instead of the usual administrative two years which has been the norm within the previous years. This previous method meant that the students who might have begun the course within their final year of the school (year 12) may been disadvantaged since they might only be able to finish half of the units hence may only receive an attainment statement to cover the units which were successfully completed. This then would imply that the students would have to resume post school in order to finish the remaining units before they could be considered qualified. To deliver the qualifications within one calendar year yet still adhering to Board of Studies and school, requirements demand that the course should be partially be delivered within the school holidays. Because of a learning management system’s flexible nature, students would be able to accomplish part of their study off campus. The structure of the program would include four days face to face instruction and a one day off campus instruction with self directed activities. MOODLE has been selected as a learning management system since it may enable teachers to manage, communicate and track student progress while off site. There may be a number of retail units embedded in certificate II in hairdressing Qualification. These units are available in a toolbox format and for this reason may be the most appropriate units to upload onto the MOODLE platform for flexible delivery. Foundational principles and goals Beyond struggling to see to it that my students obtain fundamental contents of my Hairdressing course and coming up with an appropriate solution which would enable my year 12 school students acquire a certificate II hairdressing qualification within one year, my main objectives as regards this activity may be: To acquire a deeper understanding of learning management systems and their impact on the training processes and competence preparing for implementation To assist my colleagues from other faculties with their transition into a rapidly developing digital institute. Professional activity The professional development activity that I would like to undertake as a participant is a MOODLE course creator workshop. An individual given the role of a course creator may be able to assume a teacher’s role for the courses under review, create courses and have access to hidden courses. He may also have the ability to assign teachers the role of delivering the created courses. The course creator role may be mainly aimed at instructional designers, educational developers and teachers who engage themselves with online teaching (Moore, Michael & Greg, 237-249). At my place of work, may often be narrowed down to a program coordinator, head teacher or a teacher from each faculty selected on their computer competence. Instruction in a MOODLE course creator role may be freely available online through You-Tube video tutorials, e-learning course in MOODLE 2.2 making use of the topic format and then populating each topic with activities and learning resources that include learning objects from the retail operations toolbox. MOODLE may be considered a management system for learning which may be designed in order to aid instructors in the creation of the online classroom settings having the chances for rich collaboration and interaction. It may comprise of a number of design aspects, which may allow students and instructors to interact freely, experience and collaborate online learning within multiple ways. It may be said to be significant in supplementing underground courses or even hosting complete online courses (George, 53-77). I would like to effectively come up and provide web-based and instructor-led learning in my course. The development of learning processes and programs of certificate training would be effectively designed in order to teach students in the ever evolving learning environment. As technology grows every day, I would like to stay committed to providing learning opportunities for professional growth. My designated programs would be tailored into accommodating the requirements of students and on site classes would be appropriate (Rocky, 79-85). The activity’s objectives As the course draws to an end, I should be able to have used MOODLE 2.2 to; Setup a MOODLE course shell from scratch using the topic format Populate the MOODLE course with content, communications and assignments Enroll students in a MOODLE course, using the group functionality Upload resources such as learning objects from the Retail Operations’ toolbox Create MOODLE activities such as quizzes and forums According to recent research study addressing the way in which lectures may be making use of online technology, many had been reported to have posted lecture notes to students and used the internet to gather information, but none of them considered an integrated and interactive teaching medium. In my activity, I would like to go against the norms and come up with a design that would ensure a complete teacher-student interaction in order to register perfect grades, since may not just be considered a one-person process which occurs within a vacuum. In order to achieve an extremely integrated online teaching approach, evaluation and assessment may require a complete cultural change, a reinstitution approach and workload management changes, which I could say am ready to address ( Illing, 23). In the creation of this course, I may be right to take up the functions of a teacher or any other role that may be set in Administration>Users>Permissions>User policies designed for this course. I may opt to assign additional instructors and assign many other functions to a few selected users (Close, Ali, Claudia and Cicco, 334-342). From my research so far, I may be aware that addition of the new assignment types may not be easy. The steps I may need to master may be to: Make a creation of an extremely new directory in the assignments/mod/type/directory Make a creation of a version.php Make a creation of a lib.php Make a creation of db/ directory Make use of XML DB editor in order to come up with the install.xml file within db/ (much easier compared to hand work) and the needed table. Make a creation of an assignment.class.php Come up with a class, which makes extensions of assignment_base (within assignment.class.php), hence either overrides or inherits the submission assignment, feedback and marking elements as needed (Close, Ali, Claudia and Cicco, 468-592). This may be the format performed in a short time without including most details. I may be forced to go through the already existing assignment types within the school’s online library in order to get a clue of the way they work. It may be significant to mention that an assignment type done from scratch may be non-trivial hence I may extend those underlying in order to leave a room for addition of new features. At a later date, I may decide to refractor all installed assignment types to fit in one single assignment type. MDL- 27946 (Close, Ali, Claudia and Cicco, 642-827). In the creation of new quizzes, I may have to put into consideration two significant steps. In the first step, I might be required to come up with a quiz activity and a setup of its options, which may specify the main rules and guidelines that may be associated with the quiz interaction. My 2nd step I may have to make an addition of questions to this quiz. I may go ahead to describe a number of options that I may set to aid in quiz activities (Myrick, 174). Immediately a quiz becomes a part of my hairdressing course, and the settings of the quiz noted, the teacher may then proceed to build up the quiz. The navigation menu may be most appropriate for any instructor to get info or link of the quiz or directly click on the name of the quiz on the homepage of the course. I would opt to build a quiz in order to remove questions from the question banks that I might have created and organize and add them by page hence determining each question’s value (Myrick, 336). A significant educational issue, which may relate to the learning objects’ application to mainstream learning and teaching may be the easy way in which these objects may be used in order to provide support for quality learning. There may be an obvious expectation that environments based on online learning must attain an improvement as a result of increased exposure to learning objects. Several cases would reveal that the ideal may not be similar to the reality. Enough research on learning objects may only focus on the processes and strategies that support reuse and discovery more than processes and strategies that may be related to instructional approaches and learning designs to their usage (McGreal, 447-534). Learning objects may comprise of decomposed content that may be formed into chunks of information, which could then be safely stored, reused or retrieved. In the creation of my professional activity, I would ensure that my learning objects’ conceptualization would be geared towards instruction forms, which may be information and content-based. My learning objects would also only exist in minute stand-alone modules’ forms since their main aim would be to provide support on narrow outcomes of learning e.g. skill development or content provision (McGraw, 663-681). The use and implementation of courseware managements systems (CMS) and virtual learning environments (VLE) may be very efficient in the provision of the infrastructure required to come up with effective environments for my students to learn with the use of learning objects. My sole aim, as stated earlier may be to ensure adequate and appropriate online learning environment for my students. My activity therefore, must be geared towards achieving this goal. My mainstream component of delivering online units may be the ICT because the technology supports, encourages and templates the least effective learning approaches. (Carlson, Roger & Dee, 442-489). There may be ways in which e-learning portals may be able to take up the role of certain activities at the same time: A. In my particular design, I may decide to make every single course to consist of multiple sharing methods, so as each student could have an opportunity to pass information the way she wants. This may include chats, forums and message enablers’ e.g. online users and participants blocks. To be more precise, since my design had been a MOODLE, the blocks would be more appropriate. B. I may opt to design every lesson to make use of examples which may be meaningful especially to all audiences. One of my colleagues had mentored minors who had extremely little interest in math lessons. Their interest had been adversely piqued the moment they discovered that math had the ability to earn them a couple of dollars for shopping. From this, online sale offerings may be deliberately included in the site in order to improve students’ interests and encourage better learning skills. C. My MOODLE course would not lack mind field trips through ensuring that links had been included to the relevant respective external sites. I would ensure that actual field trips could be included in the course too. Since it is a hairdressing course, I may decide to give online assignments which would take the students to nearby hairdressing salons and do volunteering jobs and upload recommendations from the salon owner to my site. I would also include an option of the inclusion of Videos and pictures for posting as assignments together with any written information, me as the instructor, would require them to include (McKavanagh, Kames, Bevan, Cunningham & Choy, 443-482). D. My site would of course not lack any glamour. I would have to ensure a mix up of games, videos, reading materials and flash. A few Précis could also come in handy. A number of fun quizzes could be popped in along the way too. In order to ensure a perfect understanding of knowledge, I would have to engage guest speakers (on-demand or live) in some lessons. E. since I would be dealing with a more mature class, I would break the lessons up into various minute chunks in order for students to rest without exiting in between topics. I might have to ensure that a note pops up to notify the student to take a short break. F. After designing all these elements, it might be crucial to go out in search of expertise (in software) that would help me create them. One main point that I have to stress is; I cannot begin with the software before forcing my design into its abilities. Beginning with the design abilities would be more appropriate. I am hopeful that it will appear the way I want it to appear (Rice, 231-296). I am aware that the most tasking activity in the design of any e-learning portal would be ensuring that one’s students stay interested and involved while balancing group activities with individual learning. I have tried securing a number of tips concerning the best way of making use of MOODLE activities of collaboration in order to involve students and open opportunities for them to interact with others yet spend nothing: A. Instead of coming up with an item glossary for them, I would assign them tasks and engage them with terms which require definitions. Allowing ratings and duplicates would also be a good idea. B. MOODLE wiki would offer me with a humongous topic variety for my students. I would also require them to do their own work in relation to the subject matter of this course. I would then grade them in accordance with the number and quality of citations, their writing skills or any other thing that may seem to be beneficial e.g. originality of content. C. The best way in which one may grab a concept may be through sharing it with another person. Instead of the usual immediate answering of forum posts questions, I have thought of giving them a predetermined time of almost up to 48hours, in order for students to get an opportunity to help their friends. D. To further enhance interactions, inclusions of options asking students to come up with discussions, monitor each other’s replies and give responses to a number of questions would be necessary. Questions would be posed to reveal the common misunderstandings concerning the reviewed topic thus would ensure that the discussion further reinforces right interpretations. E. I would create a MOODLE chat which would go a long way in holding a weekly discussion panel. Setting an appropriate time and saying a few things in order to set the discussion on a blaze before any student would ask questions would be satisfactory. The chat’s purpose may be to facilitate the learning process. In my course, student responsibility to these discussions would also be required from each of them. I would set some discussions which would require them to look for topics on their own while others would have those allocated topics (Al-Bulushi, 78). F. Web meetings would be designed which, in my opinion, could be more advantageous than chat since anything may be displayed e.g. a histogram, Rembrandt, maps or even color wheels. Since I am planning on making some of the discussions to depend on visuals, web meetings would be preferred in such discussions (Kock, 452). Works cited Al-Bulushi, Ali. Task-based Computer-mediated Negotiation in an EFL Context: The Ins and Outs of Online Negotiation of Meaning Using Language Learning Tasks. Saarbrucken: VDM Velar Dr. Muller, 2010. Print. Carlson, Roger, and Dee Anna. Willis. Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference Annual March 26-30, San Antonio, Texas, USA. Chesapeake, Van: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, 2007. Print. Close, Ali, Claudia Hesse, and Cicco Eta. De. Online Learning Matters: Extending Your Organizations’ Learning Provision. Leicester: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE), 2009. Print. Illing, D 2003 ‘Make online part of teaching: audit’, Higher Education Supplement, the Australian, August 27. Print. Kock, Ned F. Encyclopedia of E-collaboration. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference, 2008. Print. McGreal, Rory. Online Education Using Learning Objects. London: Rutledge Flamer, 2004. Print. McKavanagh, C, Kames, C, Bevan, F, Cunningham, A & Choy, S 1999, Evaluation of web-based flexible learning, NCVER, Adelaide. Print. Moore, Michael G., and Greg Kearsley. Distance Education: A Systems View. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2005. Print. Myrick, Jason. Moodle 1.9 Testing and Assessment: Develop and Evaluate Quizzes and Tests Using Moodle Modules. Birmingham, U.K.: Packt, 2010. Print. Rocky, Dwyer J. Employee development using adult education principles. Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 36 Isis: 2, pp.79 – 85. 2004. Print. Rice, William H. Moodle: E-learning Course Development: A Complete Guide to Successful Learning Using Moodle. Birmingham: Packt, 2006. Print. Veletsianos, George. Emerging Technologies in Distance Education. Edmonton: AU, 2010. Print. Read More