Planning an essay

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For the cognition and learning course 6411 we were asked to prepare and present a video explaining our essay topic, where we are in the essay development process, and what we feedback or support we were seeking from our classmates. Since I’ve done a few video productions before, and am more comfortable in front of the camera than I used to be, I created an interactive video that included images, text, and myself sharing my essay topic, I created this using the computer camera and recorded directly to iMovie. I created images in powerpoint and exported them as png files, then dragged and dropped them into the video stream where they applied. I did this video production with a quasi-script, following the framework laid out in the course syllabus. Here is the video – since this could potentially be included in my comprehensive portfolio as evidence of academic thought.

Any thoughts or ideas would help.

  • new research or how to define critical digital literacies? (I’m using Alan Luke’s model and Hinrichsen & Coombs work)
  • what’s your understanding of open educational practices – if you have any idea what this is? new perspectives will help!
  • anything that links cognitive load theory to teaching with technology?
  • how would you see these 3 concepts related? or are they? what am I missing or haven’t even considered?

Feedback received:

  • Great ideas. Big ideas. I agree that you will need to commit to operational definitions for the paper for each of the terms in your question including “relationship”. I googled relationship types and you can imagine what I got haha. So from my own quant research brain, possible types of relationships are causal, correlational, when two or more ‘things’ have something in common, when two or more things interact to create a new thing (think drug interaction for example). What I’m trying to describe in non-stats words is main effect, interaction effect. There might qual categorizations of relationships but I’m afraid I don’t know what they are other than “converging’ and ‘diverging’ themes.
  • You can imagine a Venn diagram with three circles overlapping as one approach, with the centre of the diagram representing the shared ‘thing’ among the concepts. This would be likely a simplified model but a start. Defining relationship and then going for it is my feedback.
  • It’s good how you are mapping out individual concepts, and the challenge you are undertaking is to map out the relationships. In a schema I wonder what that looks like. I imagine something like a triangle like you have (with the cogs, nice!) but inside the triangle are the bit where you feel there is relationship (which you will also need to define! I know right)
  • I hadn’t thought to define the term ‘relationship’ but this is a critical piece to make sure I’m able to shape this toward a structured and manageable essay. I tend to lean toward the qualitative versions of relationships, but need to consider the quantitative elements e.g interaction effects. In terms of graphic/images, this is a first attempt, with a Venn style diagram as my first choice, but the ‘arms length’ rather than overlapping image might be where I end up after reading through all the research. I’m not convinced there are explicit overlaps, as the Venn diagram would suggest. But it’s good to get this preliminary visualization as I move into this work.
  • interesting considerations in terms of topics. I think that if you are still considering the relationship between cognitive load theory, critical digital literacies, and open educational practices it may be one element too many. A simpler analysis would be to focus on only two of these. Perhaps you can examine the relationship between cognitive load theory and OEPs. Does the relationship go both ways in that each affects the other or is it only one-direction? If so, perhaps it is more than simply outlining the relationship, but rather the effect which one has on the other which would then play a major role in the selection of OERs.
  • I like the way you structured your video and your use of images to represent the topic’s different ideas – clearly, this isn’t the first time you have created a YouTube video. A few questions that came to mind after watching your video:

    a) I was uncertain about, and please forgive me if I missed this in your presentation, whether you plan to examine CLT and CDL in light of the educators or the learners or both?

    b) In terms of open educational practices, do these practices apply CLT?

    c) Are you planning to explore a specific type of technology?

    I also echo the comment about refining your topic a bit more; doing so will help in constructing better defined question.

  • You have proposed quite a few interesting questions, but I have the feeling that you really want to zero in on how the CLT impacts instructors who are using such open educational platforms rather than the students who are on the receiving end of it. Am I correct? Or are you trying to see both sides of the coin and study the effects of CLT on both students and educators and how it shapes their thinking? Maybe narrowing it down to one side would help you lessen the amount of research you might find. I’m just coming from the L2 perspective where we have to make a great distinction when it comes to the effects of a method that could concern both teachers and students. Just an idea…

    You have also mentioned that the only area you haven’t really done much research is critical digital literacies as it’s your backyard, so to speak. I know this from my own background concerning L2 acquisition and learning that even in my video I have included a lot of the information based on my actual 18 years of experience of teaching. It’s too bad we cannot provide our opinions based on our actual experiences until we can quote ourselves. I see that you have already found Hinrichsen and Coomb’s work. Have you read Hilton’s (2016) study focusing on the implementation of critical dialogues in online courses? Maybe Hilton’s analysis of critical dialogue will prove as a positive element to reduce the CL through a rich conversational environment.

    References:

    Hilton, J. T. (2013). Digital Critical Dialogue: A Process for Implementing Transformative Discussion Practices within Online Courses in Higher Education. Journal of Online Learning & Teaching, 9(4), 602–614.

  •  You offered the same advice to me regarding focusing on teachers or students and I keep running into the same problem because ultimately we are trying to improve things for the learner. From the instructor’s point of view, is it enough to just point out the need to be aware of how much information and ultimate load the learner is having to deal with or does it also involve a fundamental shift from focus on content (especially with technology and digital literacy) to understanding how students learn and the implications of CLT. Training teachers or instructors to design may involve a collaborative approach. Kirschner et al., (2018) might be a good read and direction that could involve focusing on instructors or the learner. Hope this is helpful.Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., Kirschner, F., & Zambrano, J. (2018). From Cognitive Load Theory to Collaborative Cognitive Load Theory. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 1-21.
  • I really liked your video since it makes it very easy to understand your research question and your hypothesis. The subject that you have chosen to examine seems to be revealing a very logical interrelation between critical digital literacy and cognitive load in open educational practices. Relating critical digital literacy with cognitive load theory and explaining the interrelation between them looks manageable to me, however, I am confused about the scope of open educational practices within this correlation. The concepts look logically related and interesting to explore. My only concern is the scope of the work. I am also trying to narrow my research to a more manageable scope and it is not very easy. However, you have already organized a big portion of your research design and I am looking forward to reading your writings.
  • I like that you combined three theories in your paper and technology is also my interest. I have a question about open educational practices. Since there are actually many ways to define open educational practices, if you are going to build a relationship among this theory and the other two theories, how would you like to build the connections. This question also appears in my paper. I’m focusing on task-based language teaching, and there are different voices about the definition of tasks. Some of them are overlapping, but some are not. How should I relate them? One more question about the relation of them is, since they are completely different theories, how do you combine them in one paper. My paper is also about connecting two theories in one paper, but I’m having troubles with connecting one another in a good way. I might not give any good suggestions, but some questions to think about. And hope to learn from your experience as well.

These all provide some insights to inform my essay direction.