With the “big shift” to remote teaching and learning in March, faculty at GVSU have been pursuing innovation in teaching and learning.
This eLearning and Emerging Technologies blog post features Xiaojuan Xu, Professor of Psychology, Grand Valley State University.
What classes do you teach and what is your approach in using digital media?
I regularly teach Behavioral Neuroscience and Neuropsychology. Because of the nature of the materials taught in those courses, psychology students find the materials very difficult.
I have developed some creative ways to teach difficulty materials, e.g., we developed several animations to illustrate difficult concepts. The animations containing my voice explanations can be uploaded into the Blackboard course for students to view them.
One of the learning objectives in those courses is for students to master the knowledge of the brain anatomy. I have developed a human brain dissection video and a sheep brain dissection video. The videos demonstrate the dissection process along with my voice explanations and show different brain structures with labels to help students learn the neuroanatomy.
I have used the videos to enhance my lectures in class and also placed them on reserve for students to review. With sudden change to online/remote teaching, I have been able to incorporate my creative ways into my remote teaching. For example, I have inputted both videos into Panopto and linked them to my Blackboard course sites.
However, I faced the problem of how to assess students’ knowledge on the brain in Blackboard. Kim Kenward, instructional designer, brought Hunter Bridwell, digital media developer, into the conversation when I told Kim my problem.
Hunter began working with me and developed several tests on the human brain and sheep brain in Blackboard. Those tests make teaching Behavioral Neuroscience and Neuropsychology completely online possible without removing the important component of the materials taught in those courses.
Building Interactive Experiences for Students
It was clear, to me, the format and idea behind the assessments was important to Xiaojuan. The assessment options available in Blackboard weren’t going to do quite what we needed them to for this assessment to be success. So I got to work on taking what was an in class paper assignment and more or less digitizing it. Though it was a far more complicated process than simply making a digital version of a once in person test.
How did you develop the learning activity?
I used Articulate Storyline 3 and developed the assessments from scratch working off the word documents from the original test. There were a couple concessions we had to make along the way but all in all the assessments stayed true to form. Essentially the assessment is a series of questions with a rather large word bank of answers and the ability for students to drag and drop each potential answer next to the question, then submit their answer. There is also a timer for each assessment we created.
The great thing about these assessments is that, while they aren’t Blackboard tools, they integrate into Blackboard’s grade book so grading this part of the exam is done automatically similar to tests and assessments in Blackboard. While Blackboards tests and test bank questions work great for most situations of implementing tests and assessments, sometimes the format you need or an idea you have requires a certain level of specificity, and it’s important to get it right.
This is where eLearning tools like Articulate Storyline and the expertise of Digital Media Developers, Instructional Designers, Instructional Technology Specialists, and our eLearning Studios can bridge the gap from surviving to thriving in this digital landscape that is pretty new for most folks.
eLearning Technologies @GVSU 