Description:  Effective instruction of content requires appropriate learning strategies and engagement of the learners in authentic experiences.  The use of questions as a component of the inquiry process allows the student to think critically and deeply about the content.  Particularly, questions that require students to draw upon their prior knowledge or schema, prepares the learner for cognitive transformation.  As students make connections to new knowledge based on prior experiences, learning can occur. This artifact contains a few slides from a Power point I created to include a combination of content knowledge from a textbook and authentic experiences of the students it was created for.  Prior to the lesson, students were asked to contribute in a discussion board by answering and responding to questions that linked the content of the textbook with personal experiences, particularly pertaining to educational technologies. For instance, students were asked to describe two examples of hypermedia they were familiar with and particularly appreciated. Throughout the Power point, these student contributions were linked reflectively with important and relevant concepts within the reading material.  Students were provided the opportunity to share new knowledge gained upon reflection of questions posed prior to class.  Allowing students the opportunity to take necessary time for reflection, analysis, and synthesis deepens learning.  Additionally, this process increased student inquiry as evidenced by the following quote from the discussion thread.

“I’m honestly kind of stumped with this question for whatever reason. I can think of some further questions I have such as what strategies are used in e-learning to create a sense of community similar to what one might experience in a f2f class so as to better foster communication and collaborative learning? Some newer technologies incorporate a kinesthetic element into learning combined with visual and auditory input. How does this impact cognitive load if at all? How does it influence learning outcomes? Perhaps studies have already been done in these areas which I am as yet unaware of so, again, rather than a suggestion for future research in general, I’ll put forth some questions I have as I suppose potential future personal research topics.”

Finally, as a means of assessing learning, students were offered an opportunity to express their biggest takeaway from previous instruction they had shared with the class.  This was relevant and served as a summary of the text during the last presentation of the course. 

Reflection:  I remember feeling great anxiety in the weeks leading up to this presentation.  It was difficult to be the final presenter in the course since my cohort members presenting before me had raised the bar so high. I thought long and hard about how to present my portion of the text for optimal learning. This learning environment, synchronous online learning, was still very new to me.  I had experienced it as a student for a few weeks the summer before this course, but had never instructed in this environment.  It became apparent that keeping the class engaged would be imperative.  What interaction had been effective at keeping us all motivated?  I focused on engaging the class in the interaction I had experienced as a student in an online learning environment. Thus, I worked on establishing student-to-student interaction, student to instructor interaction, and student to content interaction.  These interactions became the foundation for building my lesson.  Effectively implementing educational technology requires deep thinking and reasoning as to how the instruction will meet the needs of your students and provide evidence of their learning. In this situation, I chose questioning strategies, interaction tools, and Power point because they enabled me to meet my specified learning goals and allowed the students the opportunity to deepen their understanding of the content. It was a combination of three factors: the content, the students and the context, that became the driving force behind the design choice.  As I continue to teach pre-service teachers about effective use of educational technologies, I share these reflective practices and evaluative decision processes.  We practice them together as I model presentations such as the one I mention above.  My hope is that they take these processes with them into their own classrooms and effectively integrate educational technology.