Creating Educational Technologies

This course develops a Design lens for thinking about how technologies affect change in education, and during the course students will undertake the design and development of a range of established and emerging Educational Technologies. The course culminates in students proposing the development of a new Educational Technology. 

Students will learn about Instructional Design/Engineering approaches to education and training, and the influence these have on Learning Environments. Students explore the major paradigms of Hybrid Learning and then select an Educational Technology to develop an Online Learning Object to support learning and teaching. Students then explore three further Educational Technologies in detail: Educational Computer Games: how these are being used in education, and the development process of making an educational computer game; Deep Learning: an application of Artificial Intelligence Neural Networks that use processes similar to the human brain to use data to make predictions. Students will be training a conversational system, or ChatBot, to answer questions on a topic; and finally, students will ideate and propose their own new Educational Technology, that addresses a challenge they have identified in education. 

This course engages with a range of emerging technologies and assumes competency with computer technologies and a positive attitude to exploring what can be achieved with Educational Technologies. While students have an opportunity to focus on educational issues in a range of contexts, the course assumes an understanding and interest in education as a field of study. While the course has a focus on Educational Technologies in Western K-12 and higher educational systems, opportunities exist to study the application of Educational Technologies in other systems and countries through assessment tasks.

The course is best completed in conjunction with 7134EDN Researching Educational Technologies, which explores research approaches to the Educational Technologies developed. 

Creating Educational Technologies aims to provide students with:

• understanding of Design-Based instructional approaches; 

• a detailed understanding of selected emerging Educational Technologies; and

• approaches to developing new Educational Technologies.

After successfully completing this course you should be able to:

1. use and develop Design-Based online instructional learning objects;

2. use and develop Education Computer Games;

3. use and develop Deep Learning (Artificial Intelligence) applications; 

4. ideate and propose new Educational Technologies that address educational challenges; and

5. demonstrate an understanding of a range of Educational Technologies. 

Each week you are expected to:

• • view recorded video (in several clips);

  • complete online course work including an online quiz on this coursework and recorded video clips;

  • contribute to online discussions using Microsoft Teams; and

  • attend a two-hour weekly online video-conference using Microsoft Teams.

Log of Learning Activities (20%)

Each week you are expected to do completion activities that contribute towards your Log of Learning Activities assessment:

• • complete an online quiz, each weekly quiz contributing 1% towards your final grade; and

  • contribute to online discussion, each module (3 weeks) contributing 2% towards your final grade.

The Log of Learning Activities will comprise quizzes and discussion contributions that you complete during the course. While designed to scaffold learning and be completed progressively to support the development of Portfolio of Learning subtasks, students may complete Log of Learning Activities at any time during the course. The 12 quizzes may be retried as many times as you wish, and the best result by the Week 12 due date will be counted. While guided discussion with peers will be supported only during the three weeks for each module, full marks for each module can be achieved with 5 discussion contributions per module. These 5 contributions must be made during the three weeks of the module, however, evidence of these discussion contributions may be submitted up to the Week 12 due date, but must have occured in Microsoft Teams within the three weeks of each module. A discussion contribution must add substantively to the discussion by raising a new point, contributing a reference or resource, or making an argument. Simple questions, agreements or encouragements, while welcome in discussions, do not meet the requirements of a discussion contribution.

Marks for quizzes will be available on L@G immediately and finalised on the due date in Week 12. Marks for discussion contributions will be available on L@G within two weeks of the final due date in Week 12.

Portfolio of Learning (80%, 20% per portfolio subtask)

Each module (3 weeks) your are expected to complete an assessment task that contributes to your Portfolio of Learning. 

The Portfolio of Learning will comprise four subtasks that evidence your learning throughout the course. Three Creative Synthesis subtasks where you create an Educational Technologies artifact, and a final Presentation during the online video-conference or on-campus tutorial, where you propose a new Educational Technology.

The Portfolio of Learning is designed to be scaffolded by learning activities and collaborative discussions, and completed in stages, with subtasks submitted in weeks 3, 6, 9 and 12. Collaborative discussion in online forums and video conferences (online) or tutorials (oncampus) will support the development of these subtasks during the 3 weeks each subtask is being developed. You may submit all portfolio items on the portfolio due date in Week 12, however, you have the opportunity to submit portfolio items throughout the semester and if submitted by the subtask due date in Week 3, 6 and 9, marks and feedback will be provided within 3 weeks, and if you fail the item, you will have 5 days from receipt of the mark and feedback to resubmit that item for re-examination. Items submitted on the portfolio due date in week 12 may not be resubmitted for re-examination (including the final presentation item) and marks will be available on L@G within 2 weeks of the due date in Week 12.

The four portfolio tasks for this course are:

While this course (7131EDN) focuses on the creation of Educational Technologies, if you are interested in researching existing Educational Technologies, 7134EDN Researching Educational Technologies (a Semester 1 course) explores approaches to researching Educational Technologies, with students completing four mini-research studies by the end of the course.

If you are interested in how to apply your understanding of Educational Technologies within educational organisations, 7170EDN Transformational Educational Technologies (a Semester 2 course) explores the complex systems involved in successfully implementing Educational Technologies and the policies and processes that can result in transformational practice in educational organisations.