The design of the ‘Students as Learning Designers’ project has allowed myself and the teachers to explore different methods of delivery. One major aspect of this has been the use of Edmodo to manage the group design process.
Students each have a group on Edmodo. Within this group they are putting the following information:
- The key idea or question that their sequence is design to teach
- A mind map of all the ideas that are related to their concept
- The content that the will need to deliver to their learners
- The design ideas for their sequence and the order of the activities
- The reference that they have used to create their content
This is useful in a number of ways:
- It allows the learners to see what each of the team members has contributed and add to team knowledge as they go
- It allows teachers to monitor the learning that is happening within the group and for each individual
Some of the challenges:
- It has been an ongoing learning process to see how students can effectively use Edmodo effectively
- More structured needed to be given to the students at the beginning of the process to help them use the tool
- Identifying the key idea has been very challenging and this needs to be more structured to help students (particularly those not as highly motivated) to work towards achieving this within a reasonable timeframe
