To be effective, educational technologies must be designed based on what we know about how people learn. This course explores educational technologies, outlines the theories that influenced their development, and examines their use. We walk you through this exploration through video interviews with experts in the field, readings on educational theories and approaches, activity breaks where you try out ideas yourself, assignments where you put those ideas into practice, and the course-long project which you will develop into a product pitch. This course does not emphasize grades, but instead leverages the rich community we will create in the forums to provide peer feedback. At the end of the course, if you put real effort into the materials and activities, you will have a final project that can be part of an ed tech portfolio. This will demonstrate your level of understanding of the affordances and challenges of educational technology.
This course is archived on edX at Design and Development of Educational Technology
Syllabus
Week 1: History of Ed Tech, Constructivism, Constructionism
Week 2: Teaching for Understanding
Week 3: Active Learning, Non-cognitive Skills
Week 4: Collaborative Learning, Social Learning
Week 5: Assessment
Week 6: Design Based Research
Student Quotes
“The flexible approach to grading allowed me to customize the course to fit my circumstances.”
” I liked when we would submit our work for review of peers and we would have to review 3 others in return. I got the best feedback this way.”
“I especially liked the group activities which required discussion and sharing information sources.”
” The structure of the main project, the gradual build-up, the nature of the video input – I particularly liked the interview/conversation format of the videos.”
