The following is a review of the draft learning resource completed by the members of pod 11, and can be found at the above hyperlink.

Positive Points

  • The assignment required at least two contexts of challenged learning, and right off the bat it’s evident that those have been taken into account, as we can see the student group contains an ELL and a user from home with only an internet enabled phone.
  • The topic, artificial intelligence, or AI, is also very clear from the beginning, as are the learning goals.
  • I like the mixed use of multiple learning tools in the first activity.  A quiz, and some competition will stimulate learning in students with differing learning methods, as well as the use of rewards (chocolates).
  • The use of text and video is a good way of reaching visual, auditory and reading based learners, reaching students on multiple levels.
  • The inclusion of a debate, banter, and group discussion are also good stimuli for learning.
  • I appreciate the considerations for students struggling with making groups, or understanding various aspects of the lecture, you seem to be quite considerate of the different struggles that your students might face.

Recommendations

  • One recommendation I would make to increase the readability of the resource would be to not stretch the text out so much.  There is very large spacing between lines, many paragraph breaks, and very large page margins, making the resource over 20 pages long, with an excess of white space.
  • There is minimal use of headings, or indentation to show change of flow.  I would recommend using white space to show a change in topic, and adding indentations, titles, and headers as well to help split the block of text into easier to digest language.
  •  I noticed that at the beginning you mentioned that there were two special cases among the learning group (ELL, and a remote learner with no laptop), maybe I missed it, I noticed how some activities would be adapted to their needs, but many of the activities made no mention of it.
  • The structure of how the different activities are presented varies, it would help readability if they all followed a similar structure, e.g. Title, learning outcomes, description, requirements, etc.
  • The last column in the “Preview Session” table has a heading, but no content.  I would recommend either not having it in the table, or having content that says “not applicable”, to show that the content is not in fact missing.  This carries through with the rest of the tables as well.
  • The formatting of the table is also difficult to follow, with wide margins, only a word or two per line, and stretching across multiple pages.

 

Questions

  • On the Direct Instruction section, I appreciate the idea of limiting a lecture to just 20 minutes long, but I’m not sure how you came to that number?  Is 20 minutes better than 15 or 30?  Was the length chosen for the amount of content, or to capitalize on student attention span?  How does a 20 minute lecture help minimize costs?
  • Is there specific AI software or applications you’re wanting to use for the activities?  I noticed the mention of Siri, but also “There lots of AI app on phone”, so how is a specific app chosen for the lesson?
  • I noticed learning outcomes listed for some of the activities, but not for others.  Are the learning outcomes the same for all of them, or different?

Conclusion

I feel as though your content is good, and you’ll be able to help your students understand AI better.  The most significant drawback I see to your learning resource is the formatting and organization.  The use of headings, a table of contents, reduced white space, and clear sections would make your content significantly easier to read and understand.

 

Good work!!