For the past few weeks I have been working on making a fun and innovative learning plan for a few of my coworkers. When thinking about what I wanted to teach these adult learners I had to think about what would be beneficial for them to learn. Because we all work with large sets of data and it is vital that we are paying attention to all details, I decided that I wanted precision and accuracy to be a learning goal of this lesson. Through using the MakeyMakey tool kit and application, my learners are going to replicate an image of their choice. This lesson is intended to not only teach them accuracy and precision skills, but also introduce them to a new technology and way of learning. If you want to read my lesson plan you can find it here. In order to make this lesson the best it could be, I received feedback from multiple peers (as shown above) and my instructor of CEP 811. Most of the feedback I was given proved to be very helpful and introduced me to multiple viewpoints that I had not considered before. I learned a lot from reading comments about my lesson from an individual with a UDL viewpoint. I discussed UDL in my previous blog post but looking at my own lesson with a UDL perspective this week was interesting (it’s funny how some things are much easier said than done sometimes). One suggestion that was given to me was to allow the learners to choose their own image to recreate. I had to ponder this for a while, as I had my lesson set up around the assumption that I would be providing all learners with images to recreate. After a lot of internal debate and thinking about how this would impact the lesson, I decided to implement this suggestion. What I found was that by allowing learners to take this control over their learning experience, I could foster more engagement and excitement for the activity.
One suggestion that I actually did not implement was the suggestion of posting the learning goals for my learners throughout this activity. Because I am dealing with adult learners, I felt as thought they did not need a constant reminder of what I was specifically looking for and this could actually hinder their experience. What I did include in my lesson though was letting the learners know what I was hoping to get out of this lesson before they begin working with the kit. While I don’t think it’s important to have a constant reminder as adult learners, I think it would help to give them some guidance and purpose knowing what I was making them do this for. I made a lot of these decisions based on not only my peers’ and teacher’s suggestions, but also based on some of the research I found through MSU Libraries. Surprisingly, there is not a whole lot of research on adult learning, specifically as it relates to technology, but I did find a few guiding points of research. When considering the ‘why’ of adding UDL aspects to my lesson, I found that“learning environments designed based on UDL acknowledge the uniqueness of each learner so that all learners have opportunities to maximize their strengths” (CAST 2018). This was an important aspect when it came to revising my lesson, as I wanted to make sure each learner was able to get the most out of it. I also dove into some research done surrounding adult learning theory, technology, and intersectionality. What I found was that PAL, or the psychology of adult learning, has developed over the past decade to include “intersectional inclusion, decolonisation of knowledges, and learner-centered and learner directed approaches” as well as “creativity and collaboration skills in adult and lifelong learning practice” (Uflewskai et. al 2021), something that has not been included before. All of these aspects have played a critical role in crafting an engaging, equitable, and productive learning experience. References: CAST. (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. http://udlguidelines.cast.org Uflewska, A., Lido, C. M., & Dey, S. (2021). Innovative, interactive and individualised (i3) teaching and learning practice in higher and lifelong education. Widening Participation & Lifelong Learning, 23(2), 55–69. https://doi-org.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/10.5456/WPLL.23.2.55
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