Come learn about our recipe for success to increase learning engagement. Use an instructional designer and a subject matter expert at room temperature. Mix up a blended course for pre-service teachers, with pedagogy, ISTE standards, and support. Stir slowly over a semester to ensure quality STEM lessons for K-12 students.
Creating a course that requires many levels of engagement is exciting and essential for the online learning community. Learning engagement, including motivation and frustration, are critical to the learning process. Resilient learners know when they are frustrated; brainstorming, collaboration, and innovation help to find solutions. Involves higher-order thinking skills causing the learner to interact with the course content in multiple ways and achieving or approaching this level of learning in an online, blended course called for new technologies, including robots. Robots are fun and exciting; all students should enjoy the experience of controlling and programming a robot of their own. Teachers need to feel comfortable with new technology and implementing the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) standards in their classroom. Pre-service special education teachers need supported and collaborative practice to provide clear learning objectives for their students; introduce materials in a meaningful way; assess and measure learning; provide engaging instructional materials; make learning activities accessible and monitor learner interactions; infuse assistive technology, and provide learner support. To establish, practice and increase these skills new technologies, including two different robots, were systematically added to the 15 courses in a fully online Master’s degree program in special education.
Participation: To increase audience participation and interaction, as we introduce new technology tools, we will ask audience members how they might use it in a particular subject matter and a specific course. After hearing several suggestions, we will share how we used it in our classes and how it was received, based on the feedback we have gotten from the students in the past ten years.
Session Goals: Attendees should take away many ideas and ways to incorporate different technologies into an online course and thus into a classroom. Hearing the feedback of 10 years of adding technology into curricula, what did and didn’t work. To complete the experience, participants will engage in directed conversation on strategies for new faculty to embrace and use new technology.