Reflection: Technology planning and integration

 

          My course work for CI 603 demonstrated the standard 1 of Technology Planning and Integration as it showed my ability to implement technology usages in the learning environment. My team and I created an instructional design using virtual reality (VR) for children with autism to increase their social-emotional skills through emotional recognition. We called it EmotionLab which consisted of three emotional elements we wanted to teach the children with autism including: happy, sad, and angry. Universal Design of Learning was used as a framework for this project. Because there was a time constraint for this project due to the summer term semester, we were only testing one emotion element which was happy. For this project, we used two apps called iMovie and Unity Engine. iMovie allowed us to develop a 2D version of the lesson’s instruction; whereas, Unity Engine, along with Google Cardboard VR plug-ins, allowed us to develop the VR interface. 

          One of the challenges was learning how to use different technologies to integrate into a lesson plan for children with autism. This was a very meaningful project for us as one of the people in my group has a son with autism. None of us are experts in teaching students with autism, so it was an exciting project but also challenging at the same time. We sought insights from subject matter experts in the technical fields on how to create a lesson plan. Then we learned how to transfers the lesson plan to VR. I can see that when involving new technologies into teaching is potentially time-consuming for teachers and especially those who are already very busy with teaching and planning lessons. It then becomes more demotivated and discouraged when teachers have to face technical issues without essential technical supports. For example, I have encountered several technical challenges while creating a lesson part on how to teach happy to students. First, I had to learn how to choose the appropriate images to create the PowerPoint slides, then transfer slides into the iMovie app, record voice message as well as type in script, and add some soft music in the app.  Throughout these challenges, I learned that finding appropriate technology and methods is very important for teaching, in this case, virtual reality. As Ke & Im (2013) stated, “VR’s usefulness as an educational tool has been evidenced in the fields of health science, art, and language, but is underutilized as a learning tool for students with special needs.” (p. 442) We had to do a lot of research about whether or not VR is something that autism kids will feel comfortable to learn with a headset on while in class. In addition, I needed to pay attention to things such as an atypical brain, verbal difficulties, and non-verbal signs during usability testing while working with people with autism. Overall, I think selecting the appropriate technology for the type of students you have and finding ways to integrate these technologies are a long process and it is worth investing in it. Our results showed that the VR application is founded to be helpful and fun. I can predict the trend of using VR for different learning settings will become increasingly more and more popular. However, the result of this project showed that one student did not find the lesson to be useful and fun, and one found the delivery to be problematic. I can see that if we upgrade the difficulty level of the lesson and spend more time creating the content, it could become more attractive and challenge the students learning level. In the future, I would continue to learn more about VR applications, and Artificial Intelligence because they are very interesting and helpful tools to support learning. 

          Another important lesson that I learned through this project is to create a lesson plan that matched the learning objectives. I think that is one of the fundamentals of an instructional designer to help teachers to match their lessons, class activities, and assignment with course objectives. Throughout this process, I learned the usefulness of creating an alignment table containing instructional objectives, strategies, and assessment tools. I think it was clearer and allowed me to see which part we were missing from the information that we gathered from the table. I would want to continue to use the alignment table in the future to help continue to match the course objectives to other learning activities, learner supports, and lessons that instructors have for the course. Another area that I learned from this project is collaboration. This project would not have been a success if I only worked alone. There were so many things needed to be finished in a short period of time. In order to complete the project on time, we discussed each other strengths and weaknesses so we can help each other out which tasks that we feel comfortable working with. After that, we will come back together and put it into a complete lesson. For example, I worked in the Lesson Instruction using the iMovie app and my team member Brian worked in the Lesson Practice using VR application. Overall, in terms of the future, the collaboration between teacher, instructional designer, instruction technologist, and experts in the field is important for the success of the course or project. 

          The standard one Technology Planning and Integration is one of the foundations that I have to apply daily in my future work as an Instructional Technology Specialist. There are many technologies and applications that are introducing to educators every year. To keep updated with all that knowledge, I would like to join the conference related to Instructional Designer to learn new information and have opportunities to connect with educators locally and worldwide such as ISTE, iTEC, and so on. Networking with professional professors and teachers through Twitter is one of the ways to learn from each other and exchange knowledge. I believe that knowing about different technologies and how to apply it to teach science in Vet Med is only part of the work, continuing to improve in my communication skills and writing skills will also help the work between professors and instructional designers/technology specialists become better and efficient. 

          In summary, the result of the project showed that there would be lots of more work needed to be done in order to create a better lesson on how to teach children with autism such as improvement in content pieces, visual design, and testing methods. I think this field is definitely challenging and requires lots of expertise including technology testing with autism or the understanding of how autistic children learn. Even though I am not a special education teacher, I would like to continue to build myself the skills of how to make the online courses more accessible to all the students, especially underrepresented students and students with disabilities.

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References:

Ke, F., & Im, T. (2013). Virtual-reality-based social interaction training for children with high-functioning 

autism. The Journal of Educational Research, 106(6), 441-461.