Pumping up the Pedagogy
by Bruce Cameron
An Instructional Problem
Have you ever had a critical concept that some students just struggle with? You don't want to put students who have mastered the concept on hold and spend time remediating this problem, so do you just move on? Solution: Pump up the pedagogy with an online, interactive learning object.
Using Learning Objects
The content tool of a Desire2Learn (D2L) course allows the instructor to link to various types of learning objects. For the purpose of this article, a learning object is defined as any Internet-supported file which presents instruction to the student. This could be a Word document, a PowerPoint presentation, video, picture, Web site, anything that can be stored on the D2L server or linked to on the Internet. An interactive learning object is a dynamic instructional piece that allows students to control the sequencing of the material specific to their needs.
For example, in NURS501, a master's level course, it had been a while since some students had dealt with making blood slides and doing cell counts. Rather than take the time to instruct all students on this process, a review learning object was created for those students needing it.
This learning object has an index of 10 parts: a text introduction, seven short 30-second videos with supplemental text showing the steps necessary to make a blood slide and an instructional sequence illustrating the cell types.
The learning object concludes with a self help quiz on the various cell types covered in the lesson. All of this was produced and packaged by the Learning Technologies Center into an interactive Flash Video (.swf file). Thes instruction was delivered to students in the third week area of the D2L content tool for this course.
This type of sophisticated learning object requires a lot of advance planning and design. However learning objects are well worth the return of long term instructional time saving and improved student performance.
For more information on learning objects or D2L, contact:
Bruce Cameron
bcameron@u.arizona.edu
621-5177
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