Week+Five+Practice,+Collaboration,+&+Learner+Control

Introduction Team C produced a wiki during the second and third weeks of the Adult Education and Training course 541. During the fourth week, the team collaboratively reviewed and evaluated the two peer team wikis. The wiki was a collaborative assignment that enabled the team to practice creating a wiki, work as a collaborative team, and provide collaborative feedback to the members. The assignment also incorporated the use of multimedia principles taught directly in the courses individual assignments. The incorporation of the collaborative learning enhanced the level of learning substantially for every team member.

Question to be answered under the paragraph heading Incorporating practice: __** In what ways did your team incorporate practice effectively? In what ways might your team improve its use of practice? **__ Incorporating Practice (First level paragraph heading) The use of the wiki in the team assignments allowed each team member to practice using and implementing the principles learned in the class (Dykhouse, Clark, Cotton, & Jorgensen, 2013). The week two assignment focused on the multimedia principles of pretraining, personalization, and segmentation. The team practiced pretraining by getting familiar with the way the wiki interface worked. This self-trained experience realistically represented importance of pretraining in an e-learning environment. The team practiced personalizaton by incorporating pictures, videos, and links to external information. The team practiced segmentation by separating the three principles into separate sections each with a bold title that illuminated the transition to a new topic.

The third week assignment focused on the multimedia and contiguity principle culminating in the production of a graphic organizer. The team created two new pages for this assignment the first followed the principles from the previous week with multimedia presentations for both new principles with video and links for additional learning. The graphic organizer dominated the second page, which worked well as a summary of the weeks focus topics.

The third week the team missed the opportunity to practice the multimedia principle. Adding a graphic with a few words to illustrate the point of the graphic would have added to the learners experience and the teams experience using the multimedia principle. A video connected to the definition illustrated the contiguity principle. This was a better choice for the learner, however, limited the team’s practice with the contiguity principle.

Question to be answered under the paragraph heading Incorporating Feedback: __ **In what ways did your team incorporate feedback in the practice? What was done effectively? What changes might increase the effectiveness? ** __ Incorporating Feedback (First level paragraph heading) During the last four weeks, the team had several opportunities to provide feedback to each other as well as other teams on their wiki pages. In week two, the team was to begin a wiki page and answer questions the instructor had given to the team. At the end of this week the instructor, provided feedback to the team stating, “I think you will want to embed the link in the wording, which is one way to practice Search Engine Optimization – SEO” (Jackson, 2013, p. 2). The provide feedback from the instructor allowed the team to make the wiki more readable for others.

 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The third and fourth week assignment asked the team to upload their storyboards for the team to review and provide feedback. Each team attached their storyboards for the team members to review. Each team provided feedback to the team members’ storyboards. Dykhouse, Clark, Cotton, and Jorgensen provided explanatory feedback for the different storyboards that the other team members could use to help make their storyboards better. At the end of the week, each of the team members wrote a summary of their findings. This let each team member know if he met the objectives for the week. The fourth week the team was to show the updated storyboard with the feedback suggestions that the team had given them. Once each team member offered feedback, the feedback formed the written summary.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The fifth week assignment called for the team to go individually to another team’s wiki page and provide feedback to their page. Each team member offered constructive criticism and suggestions that could make the page more readable to the learner. These suggestions would offer explanatory feedback to each team allowing the team an opportunity to practice by implementing the changes or adding any of the suggestions given.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Feedback provides knowledge of practice results. It tells learners if they answered the question correctly. Feedback can do much more. In addition to telling the learner if answers are correct or incorrect, a short explanation explains why a give response is correct or incorrect. Malamed (2013) states, “if we’re going after higher order thinking and maximum learning transfer, then we’re giving up a golden opportunity when we forgo real feedback and instead resort to “correct” and “incorrect”.”

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Question to be answered <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5;">under the paragraph heading Implementing Multimedia Principles: __ **<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">Which multimedia principles are implemented into the practice exercises? How were they applied? ** __ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Implementing Multimedia Principles <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> (First level paragraph heading) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">During each week, Team C applied various stages of multimedia principles to its collaborative wiki page. Team C implemented by personalization and segmentation of its wiki page, by first embedding videos, providing links, and other graphics that the team found relevant to Myers and Clark’s (2011) multimedia principles. The team applied its knowledge of multimedia principle segmentation by breaking the assignment up in the wiki by providing links to separate pages for each section of the assignment. For example, Week 3, team C provided explanations, worked examples, and various multimedia types that included video, audio, and graphics on personalization and segmentation principles.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">During week 4, Team C provided both worked examples and other multimedia presentation tools to show contiguity and multimedia principles. In addition to the multimedia principles of segmentation, personalization, and contiguity, Team C also used Mayer’ other principles in its Wiki design. For example, team C incorporated coherence, signaling, redundancy. Mayer (2001), described coherence by “people learn better when extraneous words, pictures, and sounds are excluded rather than included.” In the team C Wiki, the pictures tied the examples to the explanations when necessary. Signaling provides the learner with cues that highlight the organization of the essential material added (Mayer, 2001). Team C highlighted its organization of its Wiki by providing links from segment to segment.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Question to be answered <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5;">under the paragraph heading Learner Controls: __ **<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">Is there an appropriate level of learner control in each plan? Would you change the level of learner control? Why or why not? ** __ Learner Controls <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5;">(First level paragraph heading) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">According to Lawless and Brown (1997), cognitive researchers claim that learner control is an important aspect of effective learning. Learners need to manipulate the environment to construct meaningful learning. Team C manipulated the wiki environment successfully ensuring a meaningful learning experience for the audience and accomplishment of the wiki assignment. Each week the provided questions and assignments allowed the team to manipulate what they were learning within the reading and discussions and apply this in their Wiki. Examples are the graphics and table added to the team wiki while learning about the multimedia principle. This was a practical way for the team to make meaning. Giving the members the control over learning allowed them to match what they already know in their schemata to what they were learning in the classroom (Lawless & Brown, 1997). Creating the Wiki and participating in this assignment is an excellent example of giving the learners control of their cognitive development.

<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Question to be answered <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5;">under the paragraph heading: __ **<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.5;">How does the collaboration enhance the learning? What suggestions would you make to improve collaboration in your team’s activities? ** __ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Collaboration Enhancing Learning <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">(First level paragraph heading) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Team C did a phenomenal job collaborating and working as a cohesive unit. Every member could add his input in a safe, comfortable environment. One member took the lead with the Wiki and guided the rest successfully through the Wiki process. The team equally shared and participated facilitating mutual learning and respect to take place. Team C collaborated effectively allowing each member to benefit from the others. From the Wiki assignment to the storyboard, the feedback, and cooperation was always there. Really, there are no changes or suggestions to improve the collaborative efforts of this team.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Conclusion

References Dykhouse, C., Clark, K., Cotton, K., & Jorgensen, D. (2013, May). Learning-team-C-AET-541. Retrieved from https://learning-team-c-aet-541.wikispaces.com

Jackson, G. (2013, May). Main forum messages: Team C messages. Retrieved from []

Lawless, K., & Brown, S. (1997). Multimedia learning environments: Issues of learner control and navigation. //Instructional Science, 25//(2), 117-131.

Malamed, C. (2013). Alternative to ‘Correct’ and ‘Incorrect’. The eLearning coach. Retrieved from []