M.Ed. in Learning, Design, and Technology Capstone Portfolio: Ponza 2021
Personal Introduction to Capstone Portfolio
I became a teacher because I have a passion for learning. I chose to be an elementary teacher because I have a passion for working with young minds. I enrolled into the Learning, Design and Technology program because I have a passion for technology integration and designing opportunities for learner’s to showcase what they know in a fun and innovative way. Over the past few years I have met many peers, both professors and cohorts that have helped me to sharpen my skills and develop a deep contextual understanding of how learning, designing, and technology go together. I have blogged, engaged in rich discussion, constructed my own personal website https://sites.psu.edu/mponza/ where I have shared my thoughts and reflected on my journey and most importantly completed various projects across my courses that demonstrate what I have learned in the program. As this paper progresses I will describe the projects that I have chosen and discuss why I made the design decisions that I made. I will also reflect on how these decisions I made are consistent with or expand on theories/principles I have encountered in this M.Ed. program. I will discuss how the project has furthered my conceptions and practices related to design and/or learning. Finally, I will end the reflective statement by talking about my learning design philosophy and potential for success in the learning design field.
Learning & Design Projects
- LDT 440: Summer 2019: Blueprint 2: Nutrition And Physical Activity And Their Effect On Learning: MyFitnessPal, Moki Physical Activity Tracker
- LDT 527: Spring 2020: Reducing Household Costs: How to Eat Healthy While Shopping Smart
- LDT 433: Summer 2021: Micro-teaching: Rocks & Minerals
Reflective Statement
The projects I chose to display in my portfolio showcase my growth from 2019-2021. I have always considered myself a distinguished teacher and a strong lesson curator, but these last few years have been integral in my development as a designer and builder. These projects helped me elevate my design skills and showed me new and innovative ways to integrate technology safely, effectively, appropriately and affordably.
Description 1: LDT 440: Summer 2019: Blueprint 2: Nutrition And Physical Activity And Their Effect On Learning: MyFitnessPal, Moki Physical Activity Tracker
This project was completed during my studies in LDT 440 with Dr. Kirby. As I have mentioned I always considered myself an excellent designer of lessons and unit plans and integrator of technology. I pride myself in how I differentiate and create engaging and rich learning experiences enhanced with technology, however this project took me many edits and correspondence with my professor. I was frustrated. I failed many times in creating the blueprints in this class because I didn’t realize how much work went into designing a blueprint. There is so much more outside of just the content, instructional strategies, and assessments. It was great for me because it allowed me as an educator, to embrace the role of an online student. It gave me insight on how tough it can be for online learners. My prominent design decision was to use the design principles in Dr. Daniel Surry’s RIPPLES rollout system. When constructing my blueprint through RIPPLES I discovered there is so much more to consider than just content. As Surry states (2004), there are numerous barriers to the integration of instructional technology and even in successful integration, resistance may arise that needs to be addressed. The components that I carefully considered were the resources, infrastructure, people, policies, learning, evaluation and supports needed. What will the cost be? Is it beneficial to implement this technology or use existing technology in place? Will changes to the current infrastructure be needed or will it be ready to implement? Who are the stakeholders and how will it affect them? What policies are in place that will guide and protect the users of the technology? And of course, what specifically with the technology is helping the learners learn, how will they be evaluated, and how will the users be supported? Nothing can be assumed or discussed later, everything must be accounted for and are all equally important. This taught me to see the whole picture instead of just focusing on a few details. If you want technology implemented, then you better have the answers to the questions you will be asked for implementation. As Surry & Ensminger (2006) state, if you are going to successfully implement something such as technology integration, you must account for the changes that will address both the human needs and organizational issues. Now, when I design units and lessons and technology interrogations, I consider these principles and how I can make it feasible to create a collaborative learning environment efficiently by analyzing the affordances the technology provides.
Description 2: LDT 527: Spring 2020: Reducing Household Costs: How to Eat Healthy While Shopping Smart
This project was completed during my studies in LDT 527 with Dr. Susan Land. This was one of my earliest foray’s into designing a robust blueprint for a self paced online learner containing interactive assignments. This is a cross-curricular PBL (project based learning) blueprint. As Chard asserts (2007), major advantages of PBL’s are their ability to make the mundane of traditional school work and transform them into engaging real life situation. Thus, I designed this project to teach the learner about health/science and math through engaging and interactive assignments and tasks that are designed to be authentic, such as reading food labels, mock shopping, and creating a mock grocery store. To design this engaging and authentic self-paced unit on how to eat healthy while affordably and responsibly shopping for a family of four reducing household costs I used the STAR Legacy framework. This framework helped me to focus on creating a strong lesson, and facilitate the creation of a balanced learning environment. It helped to anticipate potential success and failures students may encounter and allowed me to take my project from the problem, identify the challenge, and develop the driving question. This allowed me to create goals, develop my methods of instruction and potential product creations as well as create areas for learners to reflect and complete self evaluation. One of the biggest things I learned in this project is how to provide areas for learners to self reflect on the process and journey they are going through, rather than wait for the end. It allows them to learn how and why they learn, analyze what worked and didn’t work, and make changes for future learning to occur. Through the creation of this artifact I also learned how to extend my designs to reach the public. Building a community and sharing with the community is a huge part of online learning and project based learning. Technology affords us the ability to interact with our community and many communities that are not easily accessible due to distance. I have brought this knowledge with me into my career as an elementary educator and try to find ways to share our learning and projects with the community by engaging with our community members and reaching out to experts in the community for support.
“Research demonstrates that strong relationships between schools, families, and community members can positively affect student achievement and outcomes.” (Hanover Research, 2018, Para 4)
This project built upon prior learning and projects from previous blueprint designs from classes such as Dr. Zimmerman’s LDT 505 and Dr. Kirby’s LDT 440 and helped me prepare for my future projects in LDT 433 such as my micro-lessons.
Description 3: LDT 433: Summer 2021: Micro-teaching: Rocks & Minerals
This project was completed during my studies in LDT 433 with Dr. Zelonis. The primary focus of this course and project was to examine teaching and learning in a strictly online format. I created and designed a micro-lesson, meaning a brief and concise lesson meant for self teaching by the learner with appropriate content for the audience that would take them 30-45 minutes to complete. I had to keep in mind the enormous impact that transactional distance has on learning in this environment, so I designed my lesson to minimize the transactional gap. As Moore (1997) states, there are three clusters of variables that control the extent of transactional distance: Dialogue, Structure, and Learner Autonomy. To combat the transactional distance, my most prominent design decisions were to make it collaborative, interactive and give the learner choice in how they completed their assignments and learned the content. I recorded videos of myself teaching the content and vocabulary so the learner’s could hear my voice and see my face, which I believe holds significant value to making the learner feel connected to the educator. I also included many areas where the learners could interact with each other through discussion spaces to create a collaborative community where they could share their thoughts and ideas and learn from each other. I also incorporated video and audio responses so the learners could hear and see each other as well. For choice, I gave multiple options for assignments that allow learners to showcase their mastery and understanding in multiple ways including standard quiz assessments, drawings and posters, to performance assessments such as creating video presentations or audio podcasts. Personalized learning and voice and choice are keystones in my learning and teaching philosophies. Technology is a tool, a tool that allows me to reach learners in a way I couldn’t during my early years of teaching.
In a variety of ways, technology holds promise to enable personalization to an extent that was not possible at large scale in an earlier era. Technology’s greatest role may be to manage the complexity of the personalization process. By occasionally providing instruction or supporting independent learning, technology can also enable educators to take a more personalized approach in their own teaching efforts and other activities they undertake to support student learning and development.
(Pane, 2017, pg 6)
Thus, I will always design and build my lessons, whether online only, hybrid or in person to allow learners the ability to choose the method that works for them best and allows them to demonstrate their learning and understanding with the support of technology.
Conclusion
My Design & Learning Philosophy
I believe that I have always had an innate ability to create and design technologically advanced lessons for my students. However, what I wasn’t aware of was all the design processes outside of the content and materials. Taking these classes and creating these projects was time consuming, beneficial, fun, and eye opening. It helped me take my learning philosophy and forge it into a stronger philosophy of learning and design.
I don’t think I could’ve picked a better time to enroll in the Learning, Design and Technology program at PSU. This pandemic has really been an eye opener to me in regards to teaching and learning, especially in the realm of online teaching and learning. It is so much more than, “just have them use their fancy devices and high speed internet” So much goes into planning and designing and small fine points that are essential to creating the programs and lessons needed for online learning and teaching of the content and curriculum. I believe that it is a team effort with the teacher and learner each playing a role in building the learning community and the learning that is to take place. I believe through my studies the most important aspects that will help me as a designer are: understanding the roles of the online teacher and learner, using the curriculum and content to create blueprints and design diverse and engaging units and lessons that will allow me to use varying and appropriate instructional methods, and finally creating a supportive and collaborative online learning environment and community that promotes a culture of communication, participation, risk taking, creativity/innovation, and deep contextual learning.
Future Use
Technology is transformative. It is powerful. However, it is only as powerful and as useful as the designed intention and the efficacy in which it can be used and applied. I have learned so much about what goes into the design process and how to appropriately use technology as a tool, not a crutch. Technology is a medium that offers learners the ability to support learners and allow them affordances as well as the ability to work at their own pace and time. It can combat and minimize the transactional distance that is unavoidable in online learning settings. While I am a traditional brick and mortar teacher, I plan on using what I have learned to enhance my teaching and ensure I can reach learnings on their level more effectively. I plan to do this by incorporating online learning methods into my classroom that I have learned in my studies. With the prevalence of high speed internet along with devices such as chrome books, iPads, cell phones and LMS systems such as Canvas, I plan to build a hybrid classroom where I am working with children in person in smaller group settings while a portion of my class is doing self paced lessons filled with scaffolding and personalized assignments that gives them a voice and choice in their learning. This will give a divide and conquer strategy that multi-teacher classrooms have, but with only one teacher. I also have aspirations to take what I learned and explore options outside of my classroom. My future areas of interest are:
Short Term
- Work for a company designing and building programs, units, lessons, curriculum, apps, & products
- Become a technology specialist that works with schools and teachers on how to design engaging, safe, efficient technologically enhanced lessons as well as introduce newer technologies such as AR/VR and more.
Long Term
- Become a professor that teaches teachers how to use technology to personalize learning and offer choices to learner’s allowing them to demonstrate their learning and mastery of skills.
- Pursue my doctorate in research of personalized learning and performance based assessment particularly in the primary/elementary level.
References
Chard, S. (2007, October 19). Why is project-based learning important? Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning-guide-importance.
Moore, M. (1997). Theory of transactional distance. In D. Keegan (Ed.), Theoretical principles of distance education (pp. 22–38). New York: Routledge
Moore, M.G., & Diehl, W.C. (Eds.). (2018). Handbook of Distance Education (4th ed.). Routledge. https://doi-org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.4324/9781315296135
Pane, John F. et al. (2017) Informing Progress: Insights on Personalized Learning Implementation and Effects. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2042.html.
Surry, D.W. (2002, April). A Model for Integrating Instructional Technology into Higher Education. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), New Orleans, LA.
Surry, Daniel & Ensminger, David. (2006). Facilitating the Use of Web Based Learning by Higher Education Faculty. Online Submission.
Top benefits of family and community engagement. Hanover Research. (2018, September 10). https://www.hanoverresearch.com/insights-blog/top-benefits-of-family-and-community-engagement/.
Respectfully submitted for review and consideration by the LDT department and in accordance with the capstone project guidelines set forth by the faculty, this capstone project contains samples of work completed during my course of study in Pennsylvania State University’s Learning Design and Technology M.Ed. program.
Thank you,
Michael J. Ponza
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