OLTD Learning Outcomes:
- Become familiar with common terms, definitions and elements related to online environments
- Critically assess and evaluate resources for best practice in online learning
- Create assessment and evaluation methods/tools most suitable to the strengths and challenges of online environments
- Develop skills to optimize learning experiences through personalization
- Based on characteristics, needs, stages of development, current 21st Century personalized learning mandates, etc..
Evidence to Support Outcome:
Reflection to Support Evidence:
This evidence piece was created in Spring 2015 during OLTD 508. This evidence piece is a Google Doc that was shared between myself and Darci Gilmore. We used this Google Doc to create an assessment tool for educational use of mobile apps. The document contains an explanation of our rubric categories. We also assessed several apps using our rubric and provide detailed information on how they were rated.
The completion of this assessment tool and review of mobile apps for education allowed me to become familiar with some of the research around mobile apps for the classroom. The creation of the rubric categories was based on research as well as personal and professional experience. We focused on transformative use of mobile apps in education, because many apps and other tools are used simply to replicate an existing activity instead of making an activity better or trying something new and different to get at the same learning outcomes. We also had categories focused on the abilities of the mobile app to differentiate activities or personalize them. Given that many mobile apps are made with education in mind, while many others are simply repurposed by educators, a clear idea of how these apps can be used to transform existing practice to personalize learning for students is important to their successful use in the classroom.
Being able to critically and objectively assess the usefulness of a tool in the classroom allows faculty to focus time and effort on tools that can be more transformative in their practice. With the ever-expanding options for mobile apps, and the marketing some get as “educational”, without a critical eye it could be quite easy to forget key factors – like the ability to personalize and share learning – when evaluating a tool. Especially in the case of mobile apps – where students are more likely to be accessing a tool 1:1 – it is critical to think of how using a mobile tool can enhance or improve what would normally be done in the classroom. With the busy pace of teachers lives, they must prioritize which tools are worthy of full investigation. Those mobile tools that are best suited to online learning will be the most transformative and allow for the biggest shift in sharing, personalization or accessibility.