eJournal Entry 5: Identifying Instructional Strategies – by Ami Stovall

Motivation

To make sure that the learners who take my course are motivated, I first need to be aware of some of the most common reasons that students take the required course that this supplemental course was designed and created for. A majority of learners who need this course are those who are nursing majors, pre-med, pre-dental, and pre-pharmacy majors, with those occasional engineering students. So, with that knowledge, I will make sure that this course has value to them and their career needs, by incorporating information that is relevant to their fields of study as it relates to the content within this course being designed.

In addition, as an instructional designer/educator, it is my job to ensure that the learners are motivated and attentive throughout the course, so I will add some learning activities that include arranging the class of students into base groups that will be used to facilitate cooperative learning. This is motivating for students as they will understand that they will all “sink or swim” together through some of the learning modules as they proceed through the course material. To setup these base groups, I will begin by creating a brief survey for the students to assess various learning strengths and weaknesses per student. Then I will arrange the groups in such a way that will pair for example, students with strong calculator skills with those who have little knowledge or experiences using graphing calculators, as well as those weak in math students with those students who have strong math skills etc. This way there will be benefits for all students through the learning process as they proceed through the course. This will serve to place strong students as mentors with those students who have limited skills in math etc. It will also benefit the stronger skilled students as well because as they mentor the other students within their base groups, this will reinforce the skills that they have learned and continue to learn moving through the material.

Prerequisites and Subskills

The supplemental course will connect the learners in the Introduction to Chemistry Problem Solving using the Metric & United States Common System (USCS). This course introduces the learners to Measurements, Significant Figures, Proper Use of a Scientific Calculator, the Metric System, and Problem Solving as these concepts relate to the Introduction of Chemistry core concepts as a freshman college-level course.

This course is designed to help learners become proficient in Chemistry Problem-Solving Using the Metric and United States Common Systems with the following order:

Learners will connect to the online Collaborate Ultra faculty lead interactive Tip Sessions twice a week where they will interact with the instructor lead guided inquiry activities on the topics listed in the modules below.

     1.     Module 1 – Measurements

     2.     Module 2 – Significant Figures

     3.     Module 3 – Proper Use of a Scientific Calculator

     4.     Module 4 – Metric System

     5.     Module 5 – United States Common System

Each module will have a folder title with concepts of module they will learn for that week. Within the folder, there will be recorded closed captioned videos of the online Collaborate Ultra faculty lead interactive Tip Sessions twice a week where they will interact with the instructor lead guided inquiry activities on the topics listed in the modules for those students to refer to again as well as those students who were unable to attend these original live sessions. In addition, these module folders contain files that the students can use for more practice, similar to TRY ITs, handouts, and other activities on the module topics. This provides spaced repetition which is important to learning.

Practice and Feedback

Once the students have completed the TRY ITs handouts and other activities on the module topics individually, then they will check their understanding using the included answer KEYS provided by the instructor. The students will be asked not to erase errors that they make. Instead, they will be asked to make corrections in a different color ink than the ink color they completed the work in. Finally, they will review later, where they will be able to reinforce their understanding of those concepts.

In addition, I will design quizzes and end-of-module assessments that will also be used to show and track their progress. They will also be assessed on the base group module activities and throughout those group activities, their assigned base group members will also give each other peer feedback on the work done within these groups.