7 Sep 2022. What is high-quality teaching?

This week i started researching the topic, what is good teaching? below are my notes and thoughts.

Existing learning of Students must be linked to new learning, like overlapping networks.

Learning involves building on top of pre-existing knowledge and collaboration between students.

4 Requirements for Co-Constructivism:

The learner must make cognitive constructs.

Activities need to be fun to create emotional involvement.

Provide opportunities for correction of constructs as soon as possible.

Questions based on reasoning. Students must think about concepts.

The human brain remembers meaning - not words.

Constructivism is the process of gaining personal understanding through brain cells, creating patterns of stored information without the interference of a teacher.

Co-constructivism Is the added collaborative process between student and teacher.

Communities of practice three key elements:

Domain: Subject matter or common ground that drives learning.

Community: Community of people interested in a said domain with shared knowledge and skills.

Virna Notes:

Study brief, First, top, and Hexagon did for next week.

The “You choose hexagon” is linked to your own goals.

Weekly recap videos are helpful. Learning Objectives vs Learning Outcomes.

Outcomes are activity based.

Objectives are Learning based.

A mentor does a feedback portfolio before Christmas. Outer Hexagons are headers/ Menu for A1 and A4

Learning activity is an activity for the day.

Learning Environment is the location of the activity, physical or Digital.

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14 Sep 2022. Educational Philosophy.

This week I started thinking of my education style/ pedagogy. During the lesson, we looked at different types of representations by using Lego.

I also started developing a draft for my portfolio website with menu content. 11th January E-Portfolio feedback.

Annotated bibliography update. Do further reading, Geoff Petty chapter 1.

Innovating Pedagogy 2017

https://iet.open.ac.uk/file/innovating-pedagogy-2017.pdf

Research collated to cater for today’s problems, such as pseudoscience.

I enjoyed reading up on the topic of what education is for. The main 4 points are:

1. Training people for employment: Matches well with Problem-based learning - summative assessments of what has been learned.

2. Developing citizens. Broader perspective - contribute to society - produce responsible citizens

3. Socialising the community - blending people of different ideologies and backgrounds to give a fuller pedagogy. “Community is the curriculum”. Event-based learning brings people together. Maker Culture – a community of peers who support each other to build things.

4. Developing Individuals – a healthy mind in a healthy body. Learning helps us identify ourselves and understand ourselves. Learning to Learn. Incidental Learning - occurs on reflecting on teaching/learning.

21 Sep 2022. Main Outcomes. Flipped Learning

This week we looked at the main outcomes of PGCert and lesson plans. Blow are my notes and thoughts.

Get experienced students to engage with inexperienced students and exchange knowledge. Vertical learning internally. After the break. How to design effective activities? End of October, arrange observation with the mentor and triad. By Friday, send the triad agreement. How are you going to communicate? Record peers’ reviews.

Traditionally the teacher lectures, and the students listen. Then the students go home to their individual spaces.

In a flipped classroom, the order of events are reversed. Before the class, the individual looks at work, then the teacher works with students in small groups.

Benefits: The teacher is amongst students through the ”hard” work.

The disadvantage of the traditional method is that teacher teaches, the student goes home, and when the student needs help, no teacher is there.

I like the concept of flipped learning as this can allow me to be flexible with how I deliver the learning materials to the students more efficiently. I also like how it encourages students to be further invested in the course content, making them more practical students.

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26 October 2022. Designing Learning Activities.

Hook: How do you hook the students? Outcomes: What are the outcomes? Post Assessment: Testing their knowledge. Summary: Summarise the Lesson.

Set up questionnaires to help students dig deeper. Break it up: Collaborative Learning. Effective questions and cases.

Keep it interesting. Try to include fun activities. Take moments to gauge students learning.

Let them walk in your shoes. Allow students to learn by teachgtheir peers. Dale’s Cone of experience. Cone of learning. After  weeks, students only remember 10%

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9 Nov 2022. Observation Lesson Plan

Social impact Observation. Accessibility in Level design? Show good and bad examples. Universal learning design. Reference teaching mechanisms in week 2. Include user-friendly designs for all types of environments block out. Record filming and briefing. Take pictures of students and the learning environment. Digital Learning Environment: Padlet, Aula, Discord. Need to evidence of activity. Maybe use Padlet for class review?

Activity: Peer-to-peer review of level layouts and review for accessibility. Discuss what works and what doesn’t.

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15 Nov 2022. Lesson Plan initial draft.

Today I started writing down some ideas for my lesson plan. This included the learning outcomes, how the lesson fitted into the bigger picture with some activities. Review the framework given to build game worlds. Understanding game design goals vs Level Design goals. Understanding Teaching Mechanisms in level designs, what are you teaching the player? Flexibility in implementing new game design systems to your level designs. Procedural systems?

Incorporating world-building elements to your level design. 3 whys? Today we will look at applying teaching mechanisms into your level designs for universal design.

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16 Nov 2022. Critical Thinking/ Reflection.

This week I documented my notes on critical reflection from our lesson with Virna in week 9. Discovering assumption that guide our decisions, action and choices. Checking the accuracy of these assumptions by exploring as many different perspectives, viewpoints and sources as much as possible. Taking informed decisions that are based on researched assumptions. Is this statement true: In order to learn students, must be visibly doing something? Refer to Dustin Hosseini Critical Reflection talk.

What influences our knowledge? Upbringing, parents, friends, traditions and educational practices. How we are taught, knowledge validity. Professional organisations. Educational organisations. Educational polices laid out by governmental authorities.

Three angles of learning:

The Prediction angle: Professionalism dictates learning.

The understanding angle: Values and ethics underpin knowledge, theory and practice.

The Emancipatory angle: Critically considers assumptions underpinning one’s own practices. Beliefs, intentions, values. Education for itself is important.

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23 Nov 2022. Learning Environments.

This week I documented my notes regarding the learning environment of room 901, a book review and Andy Rees’s presentation.  Research multiple game studios’ environments to compare with the current student learning environment. Learning is a social act. Read. Playgrounds, studios and hiding places: Emotional exchange in creating learning spaces.

Changing the environment impacts behaviour. Experiment with different ways to liven the learning for the students.  Spend half an hour each lesson reviewing the learning performance of you and the students. Create possible design templates for potential behaviours. Maybe create a dedicated space for students to use laptops instead of behind large workstations.

Emotional exchange in creating learning spaces notes: How can space affect learning.

We want to optimise meaningful engagement: Spaces can be powerful agents that can bring people in, breaking social/class/race/able-bodied,

Dedicated places play a very big part in students learning.

"Playground" and “hiding" places create spaces where students can use depending on their emotional state. This builds on Donald Winnicitt’s psychoanalytical explores “potential space” or "transitional space”.

I enjoyed Andy Rees’s presentation. I enjoyed having an insight into his philosophy from the ground roots level. This gave me greater insight into his vision for Ravensbourne University.

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30 Nov 2022. Professional Standards.

Show evidence of all three dimensions: Values (4), Knowledge (2) and Activities (2). 8 total in reflective writing: Learning activities and Environment.

V1: Talk about your teaching style, Universal design for learning. Show awareness of inclusive learning design.

V2: Maybe Flipped learning? Peer-to-peer review. Include motivating and encouraging activities. Design learning for a range of levels.

V3: Observations from peers or mentors, Journal, Observation feedback, Personal research.

V4: Make links with the games industry.

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25 Jan 2023. Presentations.

This week I carried out my presentation. Overall, it went well, I was happy with the reactions from the room. It felt great. Most of the feedback I got was very positive, with the only notable criticism being that the presentation should have more images and look a bit too serious. It felt great to outline my overall progress in presentation form. I found that having a strict deadline of 5mins helped give me a clear understanding of my PGCert journey.

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