Ye Chenlu G2060749D Social design Social support is desirable as a way to foster knowledge work and collaborative learning; it provides an environment where communication is encouraged. 1. Foster a safe, relaxed and comfortable learning environment The social design aimed at providing a comfortable, interactive and friendly educational environment for students and instructors to interact and communicate socially with each other. In surrounding where students are willing to open their minds and actively share their ideas with others, the teacher could empower students to achieve their highest potential. Besides, students will begin to take pride in their work and in themselves. By celebrating all students, instructors foster an open environment filled with happiness and creativity. However, if students feel like anytime they open their mouth to ask or answer a question they might get judged negatively by their peers, they will stop opening themselves up. To combat this, instructors need to go out of their way to create an environment free from judgement, in order to let students know that differing opinions are a great thing and being “wrong” isn’t a bad thing in which failure is a learning experience. No question is too small to ask and no topic should be off table, students feel relaxed to ask questions and interact with each other in a safe and comfortable learning environment. In addition, if it is a blended learning environment, students could join the class anywhere and the video camera could help them feel engaged with the course. 2. Collaborative learning facilitates knowledge construction – higher social interaction Collaborative learning is an effective student-oriented learning method, which incorporates interaction, debate, and negotiation processes. The social design of the learning environment based on the engagement of students with their community, the entire class and the teacher. Students are divided into groups to collaborate regularly through emails, discussion boards, video conferencing, group phone calls, etc. to work on issues or topics related to the content. To assist students, instructors can provide a chart that outlines sections of the assignment, so students can select a specific area for contribution. The group will collectively examine each member’s submission to create a final product. Students can use emerging technology tools such as wikis, blogs and podcasts to further collaborate. For example, wikis are a collaborative tool that allows users to contribute to and modify pages of course-related materials. This tool can be used for group assignments because it is easy to see which students have been participating and contributing to the project. The higher interactions through both synchronous and asynchronous communication between learner and instructor, or among peers enable students to show their higher-order thinking and questioning skills, more cohesive and active interaction with their peers and teachers. They have the opportunity to learn from various perspectives and absorb multiple valuable information that encourage peer interaction and evaluation in a highly interactive learning environment. 3. Promoting social presence Social presence can be defined as being connected and interact with other human beings as “real people” through the medium of communication being used. Therefore, a “good” social presence environment is the one where learners express their emotions and feelings and interact with one another in a way that promotes their learning. Visual feedback enables instructors to be more effective in establishing social presence in online learning because they can speak with emotions, talk in a conversational manner, and create a sense of closeness with students. In case real time is not an option, allow learners to respond to the feedback using video as well in an asynchronous mode. Meanwhile, students are required to open their camera for instructors to observe and monitor their behavioral engagement, in order to provide immediate support if in need. Besides, online instructors have to be proactive in their communications with learners to encourage social presence. Providing messages that are respectful, positive, encouraging, timely, and frequent assists learners to develop social presence and caring behaviors. This also advances affectionate interactions, mutual respect, and finding meaning in relationships with learners, peers, and instructors. Moreover, be responsive to students’ need because timely feedback means to learners that their work is given priority and allows them to make adjustments as the course or training advances. 4. Appropriate systematic and teacher’s feedback According to academic research and excellence in teaching narratives, a reflective practitioner is a successful practitioner. Successful instructional course design needs a performance evaluation process that has flexible guidelines. Designers or teachers will keep monitoring the students’ learning process, emotional and behavioral reactions, in case students have cyber sickness or unexpected problems. Students are encouraged to ask questions anytime. The online students are learning from a distance, it is important that they receive timely and consistent feedback regarding their progress in the class. The systematic response and teacher’s scaffolding need to be appropriate, depends on students’ periodic performance. Too frequent interactions will interrupt students’ information processing. Careful considerations like how to provide appropriate and accurate feedback, when to give feedback, how many responses are needed in the design, such guiding questions should be taken into account in the design process to make the learning environment more meaningful. Technical design 1. Choose a suitable platform to ensure the usability - Easy to use and access The technical design aimed to provide a usable and functional environment without technical problems for the online students. The usable technology being used must have no or low technical difficulties so that the tool is easy and convenient to use, access and control all the time in advance to reduce possible technical difficulties. For example, the video conferencing software Zoom.us can be used by the instructor to host study sessions that allows users to collaborate in real time. Besides, web-based platform such as VoiceThread that allows teachers and students to upload images, video, or documents, record audio, video, or text comments, and then invite others to record comments as well. Use VoiceThread with students in a variety of ways such as a live introduction assignment, for peer reviews, or to create a presentation using images, video, and audio. Also, since both teachers and students are novices for some merging technologies, it is important to train them being familiar with the required tool. Teachers could provide accurate guidance for students in the virtual learning experience when they have done the technological preparation. Therefore, the human-computer interface design and interaction are significant because it determines the usability of a computer-mediated learning environment, both interaction with content and people are incorporated into the interaction with the interface. 2. Easy to present The instructional presentation is of great importance. The environment must guarantee a highly interactive learning environment between the instructor with online students and those in the physical session. Due to the difficulty in using regular facilities to clearly provide instruction to students online, the instructor could use a mobile device to highlight and make annotations on the device screen, and use the whiteboard to share the screen or illustrate learning concepts simultaneously. Therefore, virtual students could follow up the instruction easily and clearly. 3. Clear audio communication When we are communicating with students whether in a face-to-face (F2F) class or an online class, we are communicating to give information or get information to gain understanding and build relationships. Clear audio communication must be ensured. Audio is a powerful way to convey information and subtext at the same time. In fact, a speaker’s voice can provide memorable cues that help students retaining and retrieving the information later. Listeners are more apt to connect with a voice – especially if it is clear, articulate, and convincing – than they are to form an emotional response to reading text. As mentioned, these emotions can also be a critical component of recall and retention. Therefore. like other modes of learning, audio makes learning more functional only if it is used appropriately.
