Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Seminar: 1 session / week; 3 hours / session

Prerequisites

None

Course Description

Students use media and technology to develop new forms of learning experiences in schools, workplaces, and informal settings. Students participate in a range of new and ongoing projects that hone understanding and skills in learning science, instructional design, development and evaluation. Topics vary from year to year, and include developing new media and activities for Massive Open Online Courses, creating practice spaces for practitioners in the professions and humanities, and developing new approaches to assessment in complex learning environments. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

Course Goals

We have four goals for this course. We hope you:

1. Engage firsthand in the development, deployment, and evaluation of education technology projects.
2. Explore and deploy new skills in instructional design, design-based research, and learning analytics with a focus on user-centered design and engaging stakeholders in the design of new media.
3. Get a grounding in some of the foundational texts in practice-based teacher education, learning analytics, and accessibility, as well as exposure to new research and thinking in education technology.
4. Practice effective oral and written communication to a variety of education technology stakeholders.

Course Structure

Education Technology Studio is a studio course about the design, implementation, and evaluation of educational technology to develop effective and equitable forms of learning experiences in schools, workplace, and informal settings. Our primary modes of inquiry will be reading, hands-on projects, reflection, and discussion. Most of the activities will have a technical focus. While previous knowledge of data analysis and programming is useful, it is not required. The scope of the assignments can be adapted to students’ prior technical background and technical support will be provided from peers and instructors as appropriate.

Policies and Expectations

We have designed a preliminary syllabus of topics and readings, which we are willing to add to or amend. Over the semester, we look forward to learning about each other’s interests, and using those interests to shape what we do together in the course. For this reason, we are open to changing topics, readings, and assignments to let students bring their expertise into the course and to pursue what we’re most interested in together.

The fundamental commitment that we ask you to make is to:

1. Attend every session with undivided attention. The instructors have put a great deal of thought and energy into communicating the course material in an exciting, engaging, and relevant way. We thank you for displaying your utmost professionalism by not checking devices/social media during class. Your physical and mental presence will maximize your own experience in the course as well as that of your classmates.
2. Complete the assignments with your best effort and energy; you will gain from this class what you put into it.

The participation and engagement of every student in the course and outside of class is essential to a successful studio course.

Grading

Student mini-projects and the final project will be rated using the generic criteria/scale below. The instructor will make modifications to the generic rubric to best fit the nature of the individual mini-projects and will notify students accordingly. In addition, in determining a student's grade consideration will be given for elegance of presentation, creativity, imagination, and originality, where these may appropriately be called for. Audience members and stakeholder/user guests will also be asked to fill out a rubric to provide the student with additional feedback.

Written and Presentation Rubric