Category: Reflective posts

Reflective Post 4

Three most important concepts, ideas, or issues

UI option is the first thing that I think is the most important. Because I am a computer science student, UI design is a very important part in any application and website design. The UI will affect the using experience directly. A good UI can let user find anything they need easily through the interface. But a bad or complex UI will make users feel confused when they try to use the tool. Therefore, a good UI can help users use learning tools easily and save time.

Security architecture is the second thing that I think the most important. Internet security is a big problem now. Like we learned in this course at the beginning of the semester. It is very easy for others to know or get our personal information from Internet. And our accounts and personal information are in danger when we use them online. So, security architecture is essential to protect these information.

Feedback tool is the final thing that I think is the most important. The knowledge need to be updated with the time passing by. For example, I use Python 2.7 in the first two years of university and Python 3.0 in the last two years. They do not have big differences but Python 3.0 makes some codes be more simple and changes and deletes some formulas. When I want to use these changed formulas, the feedback tool is important. I can learn how to use them and what bugs will be caused from the feedback tool. In addition, the mistakes need to be reported immdiately. This will make the website be more accurate.

Two concepts, issues, or ideas that I have difficulty understanding

Sonification framework is the first ideas that I confused about. I know sonification of learning materials is helpful and essential for some people. But I don’t think we can sonificate everything. Especially, some complex graphs are hard to be sonificated. And I check the demo of Floe Sonification. It will include the graph. But it is hard to make it come true. Additionally, format conversion of files may cause some problems. I think it is easy to lost something during this process. I confuse about how to do the sonification. It needs people to check every file and this will cost bunch of time.

EPUB 3 is the second concept that I confused about. I know that EPUB is an ebook format which is a container for web content that can be distributed as a whole and interpreted by supporting EPUB reader systems. And it is more powerful than HTML5. But I think I use HTML5 materials more frequently than EPUB in my daily life. So, I don’t understand why EPUB 3 is more important.

Question

How to upload your learning files and make the file be more accurate?

Reflective Post 3

Online Learning Experience

“GeeksforGeeks” and “Python” are two websites that I often use.(Links below) “GeeksforGeeks” is a social learning community and “Python” is an open educational resource. I usually use them together. I usually use “Python” to find the formula or code that I may use. Then I will search them in “GeeksforGeeks” to see if I can find some examples. For example, I want to use the regular expression, re.match(). I can find that re.match() is under the re.compile() and used to compare a pattern with a string. Also, re.search() is under the same class and does the same thing. Then, I search the difference between match and search in “GeeksforGeeks”. I can find a brief description that both return first match of a substring found in the string, but re.match() searches only in the first line of the string and return match object if found, else return none. But if a match of substring is found in some other line other than the first line of string, it returns none. While re.search() searches for the whole string even if the string contains multi-lines and tries to find a match of the substring in all the lines of string.

Link: “GeeksforGeeks” https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/

“Python” https://www.python.org/

Week 6 Reading “Chapter 5: Effective Practices” and Week 8 Reading “7.1 Choosing technologies for teaching and learning: the challenge”

There are many types of communication interactions. Personally, I prefer the face-to-face (student-teacher & student-student) because I can ask questions when I don’t understand the content. When I do the online learning or attend the online class, the teacher will not answer the questions immediately. But online learning is better for free learning. I can read the material or watch the video at any time. It is better for the busy people. With the technology support, the learning can be more efficient. For example, AI is a good support for learning and teaching. AI has a better performance in data analysis. So, I believe that teachers can know students’ level more clearly with the AI support. Students can use AI to analyze their grade to see the efficiency of learning.

 

Reflective Post 2

The Difference Between Online Educational Content and Openly Licensed Educational Content

Online educational content is the resource which is needed the permission from the author when someone wants to use it. Openly licensed educational content is the resource that the author gives the license or permission to the public to use it under the term of the license. Open licences reserve specific rights and relax others making it easier for educators and course designers to use the resources.

Open Educational Resources (OER) Example

ORE Commons: https://www.oercommons.org/

ORE Commons

ORE Review

  • Relevance

“ORE Commons” has a good relevance. There are many subjects with different education levels and standards in the website.

  • Accuracy

Since the resources of this website are from the whole world, I cannot make sure those materials written in different languages are accuracy. But I searched comments on “Google” about this website. Most of comments are positive. I do not see any spelling errors or typos when I try to do some simple search on the website. All of materials have the rating option. Most of materials are peer reviewed. Overall, I think this website is accurate.

  • Production Quality

I read and watch some materials and videos which have a large number of viewers. Most of them have a clear topic and understandable. Most of their positive ratings are higher than 80%. I think the design features enhance learning because many of them are more like a lecture which can clearly explain problems or solutions for me. For multimedia resources, the audio/video has the high quality. The authors of some low quality videos also provide a “YouTube” link with high quality link.

  • Accessibility

The resource is available in alternative formats. However it needs us to create a account to download files. For some high rating video resources, there is a description or a short summary. Some general topic will be divided into detailed topics with subtitles.

  • Interactivity

I think the resource encourages active learning and class participation. Viewers can leave their comments below the materials or videos. The author and other viewers can answer questions freely. In my search, I did not find any opportunities to test the understanding of the material.

  • Licensing

Most of materials in this website are allowed for educational reuse. Only those materials that shared within groups are not reusable for education. Since the website is more like the library, we cannot modify the origin materials. But we can make the resource better fit our class objectives.

My Use of OER

The OER I used frequently is “Wikipedia”. Since my major is computer science, I often use this website to search the algorithm and definitions of some terms. I only need to understand the material I searched in “wiki” at most time.

 

Reflective Post 1

Instructor-centered versus student-centered learning

I am an International student. Before I came to Canada, I study in China. In China, all courses are instructor-centered. I get almost 90% of the knowledge from my instructors. And the exam is based on what the instructor said in the course and in-class practices.

Then, I came to Canada and study in the University of Victoria. My major is computer science. I think the most courses of the computer science is instructor-centered, especially some algorithm courses. In algorithm courses, the instructors will explain how each algorithm works and how to use codes to do it. The course is about teaching us how to use algorithm to solve the problem and my job is to use what I learned to find the best way. In addition, there are few student-centered courses. I took an artificial intelligence course last year. This is a student-centered courses. We study and do assignments as a group. The instrutor only gives us some basic information about the course topics. The most useful website of this course is “Google”. But, it is very interesting to combine ideas from my group members and the instructor.

Asynchronous versus synchronous learning

I think this course, EDCI 339, is an asynchronous course although we use the same material. And this is the first asynchronous for my life. I do not have chance to take any asynchronous courses in China because China is a big country with a huge population. It is impossible to have a small class in any schools of China. If it is possible, it will be super expensive to be a student of that school. In my memory, my class is always bigger than fifty students and we change the teacher not the classmates. I will take the same course and use the same material with my classmates. It is similar to my univerity courses. I only took the course with more than eighty students in the university. And they are all synchronous courses. I have some tutorials or labs for my major courses. But all of my tutorial or lab teachers will use the same material to help us. So, I am happy to have a chance to take this course to try something different.

Thoughts on connectivism

For my major, I think connectivism is essential after year two. In year one and year two, connectivism is not important because the most of my assignments are single work. I cannot share my work and even my idea with my classmates. And my instructors always tell us that do not upload our codes or assignments online or outside of the school. In addition, instructors and tutorial teachers encourage us to finish the assignment without any sources. I think this is a good way to train us to write codes and it is important for my year three and year four courses. After year two, I begin to do the project with my classmates. It is interesting to generate different ideas from my partners and online sources. I also find it is easy to get a better solution for the problem when I have a meeting with my partners or search online. And sharing my ideas on some websites like”reddit” is very helpful to improve my skills.