Month: November 2022

Based on what we learned this week, I’ve noticed that AI is helpful but not necessary in learning. Although it is artificial intelligence, it is still based on data and algorithms. As the experience of learning in Duolingo, in fact, it helps learning better but not in field of AI. Actually, Duolingo did a good job on gamification, but I don’t agree with “humanize” and AI. The difference between AI learning and people teaching is that you can ask questions if you don’t understand the content and teacher will answer it, but you cannot ask questions in AI learning. You passively accept the learning content, even though you actively choose what to learn. What I feel about Duolingo, it does help in some ways, like daily language, but it doesn’t teach grammar. Therefore, it can only be a tool or aids for learning a new language. The formal learning from teacher is necessary if you want to learn this language deeply. Furthermore, the training data used largely from English language learners will impact the user experience for other languages. There are grammar and meaning differences between two different languages. Sometimes the sentence is right, but not what native speakers usually use. The sentence is translated from English. As a Chinese speaker, I felt strange when I tried to learn Chinese in English in Duolingo. So, I guess it happens in other languages learning. In my opinion, AI learning will never replace human.

After the materials in this week, I noticed that gaining marks really encourage me more than taking points off. Gamification is more effective because it adds elements of game design to a learning activity. It makes the learning process more interesting and fun.

About gamification, the first thing coming in my mind is Duolingo, which is used to learning foreign languages. I used it to learn Japanese before. At the beginning, you need to choose the purpose of your learning. It will teach you about hiragana with how it looks like and how it pronounces. You will remember and practice them. Instead of remembering words by yourself, it will mix every character to make sure you really understand the character, not just rote them. The challenges of learning sections increase over time. You will know more vocabulary and sentences about what you want to learn, based on which purpose you chose before learning.

In my opinion, the most important element of creating engagement of Duolingo is levelling up. If I miss one question when I am practicing, I cannot get the points to level up. It looks like you get two stars out of three stars because you miss one small part of the game. I feel very dissatisfied with it, so I will start it one more time until I get three stars at this section. The process of getting three stars keeps me review those words again and again. Therefore, the knowledge will be impress in my brain. Levelling up and gaining points are more effective for me to engage in the learning.

Here is my interactive story:

https://camillejiangling.github.io/interactive-story-1/

After understanding the active and passive learning, I realized that the importance of active learning. Based on my experience, most of my classes like math and statistics are passive learning because teachers write down the notes on the blackboard while they are teaching new contents, and students are all busy copying the notes, and cannot focus on what the instructor is saying. Instructors are providing knowledge visually and aurally, but students need watch, hear and write them. I am distracted when I am watching, writing and hearing at the same time. In this case, I choose to give up one of writing and hearing, and catch up the materials after the class with taking photos of notes on the blackboard. While I am copying these notes, what the instructor was teaching in class will be more clear with the notes together. It seems that I take the lecture twice, so I remember more new knowledge. It’s one way that how I balance active learning and passive learning.

On the other hand, I experienced a very active class this term. It is a chinese classic literature course. The instructor uses the scaffolding a lot to teach the knowledge. Since we do not have to remember something like poetry, we just learn how to analyze them, we are not passive recipients of knowledge. The instructor guides us to understand what the author was trying to tell, but not tell us the meaning directly. We need to guess the meaning on our own first, and the instructor does not tell us it’s correct or wrong, he just provides some background information like what the author was experiencing. Therefore, we have more hints to guess, and we could make us as the author to feel the poetry.

In conclusion, I believe that active learning is more effective that passive learning because it is based on people’s own desire. They will keep thinking during active learning, instead of learning by rote.

Learning Objectives

This PowerPoint was made to teach primary school student mathematics. The learning goal of this PowerPoint is to understand how to calculate the volume of a rectangular prism.

Updates and Changes

There are not too many places to change because this topic and PowerPoint is very simple. Most changes I made is deleting redundant information in the pages. Instead of writing these texts in the pages, I choose to explain more with my voice now if I make this presentation again after understanding the Modality Principle. In page 3, the Redundancy Principle and the Coherence Principle are emphasized because I delete the explaination of why it is not a prism. The Redundancy Principle suggests that people learn better with narration and graphics than narration, graphics and text. There were too many words that can be overwhelming for a learner. Also, based on the Coherence Principle, simple text and simple visuals that relate to the topic are more effective for learning. In page 6, I add some bold to the text to highlight the important information which is the Signaling Principle.

Not change

Most of the pages remain the same as before. I do not change the order of these pages because it follows Merrill’s First Principles. Knowledge is activated, demonstrated and applied in order. The existing knowledge of shape/length/width/height/area is activated in the topic which is the Pre-Training Principle. The Image Principle, the Multimedia Principle and the Spatial Contiguity Principle are used a lot because I used a lot of images to explain the topic and make the volume visible instead of imaging it in the brain, and most text are next to the image to illustrate what I am try to say. The link in page 6 demonstrates the Segmenting Principle well, because learner can control the cube to understand how the cubes form a prism and how the volume is calculated step by step. For the general design of this PowerPoint, I keep the color same and balance the text and images in most pages. Also, I left a lot of negative space to make the PowerPoint succinct.