MSIDT 525: Instructional Approaches in Learning and Cognition

Hello!

The other course in the second semester of my CSUF MSIDT program (Spring 2015) was MSIDT 525: Instructional Approaches in Learning and Cognition. The university website says that this course “Focuses on behavioral, cognitive, constructivist learning theories, related concepts, and their implications for designing instruction. Develops students’ critical thinking about desirable cognitive outcomes when designing educational experiences.”

The course objectives were (again from the university website):

- The ability to examine learners’ learning preferences and their capacities to organize and coordinate information

- Comparing and contrasting emerging theories of adult learning (andragogy) with theories of how children learn (pedagogy)

- Recognizing the impact of learning theories on the design of learning environments including environments where technology supports learning

The highlight of this class for me was fulfilling the second objective, and to this end I wrote a research paper on Knowles’ andragogy and its application to multimedia learning. This helped me to bridge the gap between theory and application, and components from this paper will be essential in the preparation of my final program thesis and project.

On the fun side of things, I got to work in a small group to author a PowerPoint presentation on learning theory as it applies to online learning. This was probably the most enjoyable group project that I worked on in the program, as the other members were cool people and everybody pulled their weight and respected each other.

And lastly, there were ten discussion forums that the members of Cohort 13 were expected to participate in. These provided a lot of different viewpoints on learning theories and helped to continue building the learning community that was established in the first semester.

Supporting the course was only one main text:

-- Merriam, S., Caffarella, R. and Baumgartner, L. (2007). Learning in adulthood (3rd Edition). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

The readings were difficult ( a review is on its way) and in this course it took a surprising amount of time to do everything right. There were no quizzes or exams, and from the course description it may look like there was not a lot going on, but the paper and discussion boards were very involved and we kept busy throughout the 16 weeks of the course.

Thanks for checking out the blog, and next we will take a look at the text we used for this course.

Review of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

For the IDT 510 course, Research Practices in Instructional Design and Technology, one of the four required texts was the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th Edition). This book is required for every class in the MSIDT program.
This course was my first experience with the American Psychological Association (APA) writing style, and it was an adjustment for me. When I was in college 25 years ago, we were told to buy the Random House Handbook, and format our papers according to its conventions. Well, APA is one of the common format styles now, and this book is its bible.
Why do instructors want papers in this format? Well, it makes gives all of their students’ papers a consistent construction and look so they are not difficult to read or sort through. Students can be creative, and can you image sifting through dozens of papers with goof fonts (Comic Sans MS), weird colors, or optimized margins and line spacing so that only half as many words need to be written? In a more cynical view, it also makes an easy grading point for them because they can see right away if a paper is not in the right format.
This 272 page manual is easy to use, with plenty of examples and clear-cut rules for how papers should be written (apparently there is only supposed to be one space after a period now, so that is one thing I had to fix). Unfortunately, the American Psychological Association is always changing the rules, so this book was outdated as soon as I bought it. There were errors or changes on 80 of its pages, so on their website there are seven pages of updates to this book.
Compounding this problem is that some instructors will refer students to other websites for APA standards, and they sometimes conflict with what the APA manual says – one notable area is in how running headers are formatted. That being said, one of the really good sites is Purdue University’s Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab, which might actually give enough information on APA formatting that buying this book might not be necessary. It can be found at: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
But, the book is not terribly expensive either, with new copies selling on Amazon for around $28. Either way, program students had better study up on APA style, as they will be writing a lot of papers, and there is no reason to give away easy points for screwing up formatting.
Thanks for checking out the blog today, and we will be taking a look at other IDT 510 texts in upcoming posts.
American Psychological Association (2010). Publication manual of the american psychological association (6th ed.). Washington, DC.

Turnitin Anti-plagiarism Software

Hello!

In the internet age it is easier than ever to write research papers. In my first go-around for college I actually had to go check out books and journals from the library and my papers were cobbled together and did not really reflect what I could do. These days, the research part is much easier as everything I need can be found online, and downloaded as .pdfs instantly.

Unfortunately, this easy access to high-quality research and writing makes cheating much more prevalent,. But, the same internet that makes finding these articles so easy also makes it easier for professors to find out if your work is actually your own. This is accomplished through Turnitin, the big daddy of anti-plagiarism software.

How big is it? They have processed more than 337 million student papers for more than 24 million students, and 1.6 million faculty members use it. When you turn in your paper it will be compared against 45 billion other documents to see how original it is. That is pretty big!

The system is easy for students to use. The professor will post a link, and if you have not signed up for Turnitin you will be prompted to do so when you drop your document into the system. If your professor lets you see the results, within a few seconds the system will respond with an amazing analysis of your work. It will define a percentage of your work that is plagiarized, and note every section that it has issues with.

No research paper will be 100% original, as the APA format references should look the same for everybody, and if you have quotes or paraphrase authors those things will be flagged. Of course, literature reviews will have a relatively high level of non-original material. But that is fine as long as everything is correctly attributed, and it is satisfying to see how good of a job you did on making your paper your own work.

Some see Turnitin as the ultimate big brother tool, but I am fine with it as I feel that everybody should have to do their own work, and they should not be rewarded for laziness. It is a good tool for a tough job.

Thanks for checking in, and next time we will start getting into the actual courses and books from my first semester in the MSIDT program.