Group 0003B

University of the People

EDUC 5280: Instructional Techniques for the Secondary Classroom

Dr Greg Benson

March 10, 2021

This textbook is the result of a highly collaborative effort, with many voices represented

to provide educators with an appreciation of the breadth of instructional design elements but also

to empower them with specific strategies that can be easily implemented for the effective

instruction of Communication Studies for a grade 10 cohort.

The project found its inception in our interest in the domains of learning and approaches

to instructional design (Brown & Green, 2016). As our designers represent the full spectrum of

Communication Studies, our lesson activities offer instructors carefully constructed,

well-articulated and pedagogically justified instructional objectives. The choices of activity were

determined by our individual interests but also to explore a range of communication issues,

concepts and skills that are integral to the 21st-century learner.

In developing this project we defined our specific areas of expertise to align with a range

of learning outcomes. Our aim was to explicitly target a range of skills development within an

authentically inquiry-based methodology that effectively utilises all learning domains. What we

discovered is that within a genuinely inquiry-based program, all domains naturally underpin the

activities and learning experiences we design for optimum engagement and learning of our

students, surely the aim of all instructional design. Furthermore, in our research, we discovered

that the learning domains have been extended to include the interpersonal domain (Vinson, n.d.)

which inspired our learning activities squarely to foster collaborative learning opportunities for

the 21st-century learner.

We have designed a wide range of engaging activities that will help you promote and

implement inquiry-based learning for your students, even beyond the Social Studies classroom.

These include Visible Thinking Routines (Harvard Graduate School of Education n.d.) such as

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See/Think/Wonder and Think/Pair/Share, flexible grouping patterns to enhance communication

skills through discussion and brainstorming and finally individual reflection. All of these

strategies aim to make our students cognisant of how they learn in order to enhance transfer and

independent autonomy (Dean, 2019).

The aim of this guide is to help teachers by providing

● Empirically supported pedagogical strategies

● Engaging activities with clear educational benefits and assessment opportunities

● Clearly explained strategies for implementation that foster authentic learning experiences

● The flexibility of strategies can be adapted for individualised differentiation

We very much hope that these activities support and inspire educators to develop

innovative practices that enhance their own professional engagement and satisfaction as well as

the autonomy and independence of their students.

The Team
Festus Amoh
Clement Azzaro
Erasmus Dry
Mfon Michael Essien
Dianne Hubbard
Tina Jain

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Content Area: Communication Studies

Grade Level: 10

Content Curriculum Focus: Communicating to different audiences and cultural context.

Learning Goal: The learner is able to listen and speak for a variety of purposes, audiences and

cultural contexts.

Instructional Objective 1: Students will develop an awareness of the needs of different

audiences and identify ways that language is adjusted to communicate effectively with different

audiences.

Learning Domain/s: Cognitive/ Affective

Explanation of characteristics designed to meet learning objective:

Cognitive domain deals with how a student acquires processes and utilizes knowledge. It

focuses on developing the intellectual skills of an individual (Kasilingam, Ramalingam, &

Chinnavan, 2014). Students will be conducting an audience analysis and then use their

knowledge of the characteristics of the audience to adjust their communication. The affective

domain is concerned with feelings and emotions (Wilson, n.d.). Students will be demonstrating

sensitivity to their audience characteristics as they tailor their speech to their audience. This

instructional objective is an enabling objective as it is a “supporting descriptions of observable

behaviours or actions that indicate the terminal objective has been achieved” (Brown & Green,

2016, p. 92).

Learning Activity: Homework and Cooperative learning

A New York Times Article on Racism (Daniels, 2021) would be given to students to work

on independently as homework to identify the purpose and audience of the article. When they

come to class, their responses will be brainstormed on the board for feedback. Next, students

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would be asked to work in groups of four to do an audience analysis. They would respond to the

following questions in their groups. Each member of the group would work on one of the

questions after which discussion would be done with other members.

● How could you tell who the audience for the article was?

● What did the audience seem most interested in?

● How did the purpose and audience shape the kinds of details that were included?

● Why was the order of the information appropriate for the audience?

Justification:

As remarked by Brown and Green (2016), “assigning activities to be completed outside

of formal class time can extend learning opportunities as well as give students a chance for more

practice” (p. 129). Similarly, Ellis (2005; as cited by Brown & Green, 2016) opines that

cooperative learning is an effective and efficient instructional activity. Students see each other as

resources for understanding when they have the opportunity to discuss new information,

challenge ideas, and share explanations with each other. “When peers work on tasks

cooperatively, the shared social interactions can serve an instructional function” (Schunk, 2012,

p. 246).

Instructional Objective 2: Students will develop appreciation for different cultural perspectives

by demonstrating effective intercultural communication.

Learning Domain/s: Cognitive/ Affective / Psychomotor Domain

Explanation of characteristics designed to meet learning objective:

The cognitive domain encompasses six categories which include knowledge,

comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (Anderson, Krathwohl, Airasian,

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Mayer, Pintrich, Raths, & Wittrock, 2001). The affective domain includes the feelings, emotions,

and attitudes of the individual. The categories of affective domain include receiving phenomena,

responding to phenomena, valuing, organization, and characterization. Psychomotor objectives

are those specific to discrete physical functions, reflex actions and interpretive movements

(Wilson, n.d.). As students role-play people of different cultures, there will be physical activities

and skills involved. Students' emotions will be involved as they experience cultures they are not

used to. This task involved reflection that requires students to use their metacognition to analyze

an experience.

The instructional objective is terminal as it is the major objective for the instructional

intervention, which will be assessed based on specified criteria.

Learning Activity: Role-playing

All students will act as guests who have been invited to an international conference and

are socializing during a break session. Every student gets a card with instructions on how to

behave (e.g. keep distance to people or stand close by, look people in the eyes while talking to

them or don’t look into people’s faces) and what topics to talk about (e.g. ask about people's

families, their salaries, the political situation in their countries, the weather, cultural events and

so on). According to the rules/habits in their own culture, the students will experience situations

where they feel comfortable or not. Students will reflect on the activity and write about their

positive and negative experiences during the role-play. Their experiences will be shared with the

class so every student becomes familiar with how people behave differently in different cultures

and that would make them mindful of what to discuss when they meet people of different

cultures.

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Justification:

Role-playing often provides an avenue for presenting biased opinions, which may or may

not agree with the opinions of students. Most importantly, it introduces divergent points of view

and allows students to analyze and respond, thereby giving them an opportunity to gain an

appreciation for why individuals hold divergent points of view. Ideally, the role-playing scenario

fosters critical-thinking skills while promoting tolerance of other worldviews. Intercultural

communication is the sending and receiving of messages across languages and cultures.

Sometimes, intercultural communication can flow smoothly and become very interesting for a

cross-cultural group. However, things may not go as planned when communication is disrupted

by cultural collisions. Anderman and Anderman (2009) cited Kirkland (2003) who argues that

good multicultural teaching stresses that teachers need to be responsive to the cultures of

different groups in designing learning activities and instructional materials.

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Content Area: Communication Studies

Grade Level: 10

Content Curriculum Focus: International marketing

Learning Goal: Students will evaluate how language and cultural considerations should be

taken into account when devising a marketing campaign.

Instructional Objective 1: Students will explain competently how marketing campaigns can be

affected by language misuse within a provided set of visual ads.

Learning Domains: Cognitive/Affective

Explanation of characteristics designed to meet learning objective:

Will your instructional objectives have an action, condition, and criterion?

For this task, the ABCD approach was used to determine the objective. ABCD stands for

Audience, Behavior, Conditions, and Degree (Brown & Green, 2016). In this case, the audience

is a group of 10th graders who take the subject Business Management as an optional subject. By

completing this task, students should be able to explain competently how language plays a

central role in promotion, and marketing in general, as it relates to how messages are perceived

by the audience they target, and how words aim to generate feelings and actions from the

receiver. This is therefore linked to the affective and cognitive domains. The conditions provided

by the task will be visual stimuli portraying different promotional campaigns, some of which

were successful and some of them were not because of obvious cultural and language misuses.

Dick et al. (2009; as cited by Brown & Green, 2016) suggest that learning objectives are

set either according to a subject-matter expert or by a performance technology approach. In this

case, the learning objective is part of the course content and is therefore set by a subject-matter

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expert, as it is important for students to consider that people understand messages through their

own cultural biases.

In the case of this particular learning objective, and within the scope of the learning goal, its

focus is to be enabling by breaking down the terminal objective into smaller segments to make it

more achievable and gradually build toward meeting it.

Learning Activity: See/Think/Wonder (PZ, n.d.)

Justification:

The activity of See/Think/Wonder is part of the visible thinking routines, described as

“practices that help make thinking visible [and] loosely guide learners' thought processes and

encourage active processing” (Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2016). It allows students

to make careful assumptions and offer thoughtful explanations, and it contributes to generating

interest in the topic at hand (Project Zero, 2019).

In the context of this activity, students will be exposed to a variety of advertisement

campaigns. Some of these advertisements will be selected from successful campaigns, and others

will be selected from a pool of controversial or failed campaigns. This segment of the activity

corresponds to the “See” aspect of the routine. For the “Think” segment, students will analyze

the images and determine what was the success or failure factor in each campaign. Next, they

will pair up with a classmate to share their findings and agree on a way to ‘fix’ the failed

advertisements. Finally, in the “Wonder” segment of this thinking routine, students will generate

as many questions on the whole set of advertisement campaigns as they can during a short period

of time. As a conclusion of the activity, students fill out an exit ticket about what they have

learned during this activity in three-hundred words or less and add all the products of this activity

to their portfolio.

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Instructional Objective 2: Students will evaluate the importance of cultural considerations

when devising a marketing plan.

Learning Domains: Cognitive/Affective

Explanation of characteristics designed to meet learning objective:

The audience of this task is the same group of 10th graders, who are able to travel abroad

often. This means that they have started to develop some cultural competence. According to

Durden et al. “cultural competence is the ability of a person to effectively interact, work, and

develop meaningful relationships with people of various cultural backgrounds” (2016).

Consequently, this task requires them to involve the affective learning domain which considers

how people connect with things emotionally, such as feelings, beliefs, understanding, interests,

motivations, and attitudes, specifically the organization category which ask students to

“[organize] values into priorities by contrasting different values, resolving conflicts between

them, and creating a unique value system” (Clark, 2015). Additionally, this activity also engages

students’ cognitive domain, as, in a short essay, they will need to relate a reading about Geert

Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to the documentary ‘American Factory’ by Julia Reichert and

Steven Bognar. Finally, the standard of acceptable performance in this activity will be

determined by the extent to which the students can provide a balanced, detailed analysis with a

detailed understanding of issues.

Learning Activity: Forum reflection

Justification:

Culture could be partially defined as a set of values being shared by a community of

individuals. It is therefore essential that this activity results in students sharing their points of

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view with others. An interesting aspect of the forum-type activities is that it allows students to

read each other's thoughts and to comment on them. A study by Moore and Teather (2013) found

that involving students in the process of giving feedback helped them recognize the strengths and

weaknesses in others’ work and to use these observations to self-assess their own product. This

activity asks them to consider the five cultural dimensions identified by Geert Hofstede (1984)

and to watch the documentary ‘American Factory’ by Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar through

the lens of Hofstede’s work to try and identify the various problematics explored in the

documentary.

In their short essay, students will provide a balanced evaluation of the importance of

considering the cultural aspects of business, especially when devising a marketing plan. After

their initial post, students will then be asked to rate their classmates’ posts according to a simple

rubric and to comment on two posts they agree with the views and one post with which they

disagree or identify gaps in the author’s reasoning.

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Content Area: Communication Studies

Grade Level: 10

Content Curriculum Focus: Ethical issues of social media in communication

Learning Goal: Students will look at how we use technology as a tool to communicate and

explain their social responsibility towards online behaviour.

Instructional Objective 1: Students must be able to identify the different types of online

relationships and look at the implications it has on the way we communicate online.

Learning Domain/s: Cognitive/Affective

Explanation of characteristics designed to meet learning objective:

“In the cognitive domain, there are learning skills predominantly related to thinking

processes” (Wilson, n.d). These processes include a hierarchy of skills that includes processing

information, constructing understanding, problem-solving and research. During the task, students

will think about their own online identity and define online relationships according to their

understanding.

The affective domain relates to emotions, feelings and attitudes (Hoque, 2016). During

this part of the task, students will look at how many followers they have on social media and

think of how this can affect their online relationships and also how they perceive others

according to their online popularity.

The activity requires students to share their own online experiences with regards to their

online identity and also gives the educator and insight into how students use the internet to

communicate and share content. This helps to establish a behaviour where the students have to

share their own experiences and explain (conditions) to the group how they interpret the meaning

of the topic. This helps the educator to further adjust content and questioning according to

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students' feedback and make instructional changes where necessary to align with the lesson

objective (Gagne, 1992). The objective of the lesson should be in line with what is relevant to the

students and should also be attainable to not discourage students from participating. The

objective promotes inclusivity as all students are contributing to the learning activity by sharing

experiences and reflecting on their own identity. Their experiences and own definitions of

“online relationships and identity” helps to build on prior knowledge and construct an

understanding of the required topic. The activity will use a pre and post moderation evaluation

strategy to measure their understanding of the content and gauge the effectiveness of the strategy

and to evaluate the different actions that contributed to their learning. The tasks support an

enabling objective as the students are required to analyze the terminal objective and break it into

smaller sections of understanding.

Learning Activity: Buzz session activity where students come together and focus on a single

topic “online relationships”. Within their groups, students contribute and share their experiences

with the group and class. This helps to encourage collaboration and group discussion.

Justification:

Students are divided into small groups at the beginning of the lessons. The educator starts

by focussing on a selection of questions that encourages students to discuss their online activities

with the group and then feedback to the class. This helps to give the educator an idea of their

prior knowledge and experiences with communicating online and this can also help to adjust

future content to accommodate the needs of the students. As a group, they will look at key

questions like “what is an online relationship, what are the positive and negative aspects of an

online relationship, what is grooming and how do people use online relationships to manipulate

others? The activity helps to develop their understanding of online relationships through sharing

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experience, it also helps to promote collaboration amongst students and promotes inclusivity in

the classroom. Sharing their own experiences makes them take ownership of their learning and

creates a community of learning where students relate to prior learning through common

experiences.

Instructional Objective 2: Students must be able to identify what negative sexual relationships

are and explain the legal implications around them at the end of the lesson.

Learning Domain/s: Cognitive/Interpersonal

Explanation of characteristics designed to meet learning objective:

The objective has been developed to promote communication, collaboration and conflict

resolution that falls under the interpersonal domain taxonomy. Students will also have to

formulate a cognitive strategy to analyze images and discover the legal implications of these

sexually explicit images. The objectives have been designed to include action and criteria as

students need to describe the meaning of a negative sexual relationship and identify the legal

implications that go with the relationship (Sousa, 2016). The task is discussion-based and

requires students to actively participate and form their own opinions which lead to developing

interpersonal soft skills like communication, group work and conflict management.

The goal of the activity is designed around a performance technology approach where the

instructional goals are set against problems or opportunities that arise from the class or group

discussions (Lucks, 2015). The terminal objective requires the students to know the difference

between a positive and negative online sexual relationship and identify the legal implications that

go with it.

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Learning Activity: Think/Pair/Share activity.

Justification:

Students are divided into groups by the educator. The educator will ask them to come up

with words they associate with a sexually explicit image. During this time the educator will

explain any confusion with regards to the students' suggestions. The class will then watch a

short video that is based on a girl that has experienced a negative sexual relationship. Students

will be given time to reflect on the video and come up with their own questions about the story.

These questions can be displayed through an online tool that anonymously shows their questions

on the board and can then be used as a point of discussion. This gives every student a chance to

be part of the learning and post questions without the fear of being laughed at. This also

promotes inclusivity and gives students a chance to see what their fellow students think of a

sensitive topic.

The educator can start by posting the first few questions: What was the reason behind

sending the photo or what happened to the photo when it was sent? This will help students the

confidence to start asking questions and see in which direction the learning is being moved in.

After a group discussion, students will get the opportunity to research the implications behind

sexting or sending nude photos. Students will then create a campaign to make all the year 10

students aware of the dangers of negative sexual relationships and the legal impact that it can

have on their lives.

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Content Area: Communication Studies

Grade Level: 10

Content Curriculum Focus: Conducting academic research on the internet

Learning Goal: Students will learn how to use the internet as a research resource for conducting

academic research.

Instructional Objective 1: Students should be able to identify different online scholarly sources

that are acceptable with regards to reliability and credibility for use in academic research.

Learning Domain/s: Cognitive/Affective

Explanation of characteristics designed to meet learning objective:

The cognitive domain is designed to improve the thinking skills and knowledge of the

learner. The cognitive domain covers six categories: knowledge, understanding, application,

analysis, synthesis, and assessment (London School of Management Education, 2019).

Knowledge requires the ability of the learner to retrieve data or facts. This is accompanied by an

understanding that evaluates the learner's capacity to grasp the meaning of what is known. This

would be the case where a student can explain an existing theory in his or her own words

(Anderson et al., 2001).

The affective domain encompasses the feelings, emotions and attitudes of the person.

Affective domain types include receiving phenomena, reacting to phenomena, valuing,

organising, and characterising (Anderson et al., 2001). Receiving phenomenon is a subdomain

that creates the perception of feelings and emotions and the ability to use selective attention. This

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can involve paying attention in class to lectures. The next sub-domain for reacting to phenomena

includes the learner's active involvement in the classroom or during a group discussion (Cannon

& Feinstein, 2005).

Learning Activity: Discussions, Question and Answer sessions, Information searches.

This activity will require students to discuss in their own words the influence of internet

usage on academic research. They will further discuss how they search for information on the

internet and their understanding of the meaning of online scholarly sources. To support their

understanding of scholarly sources, the students will be given a research topic and asked to

conduct an online search on the topic and provide a list of scholarly sources. This activity aims to

demonstrate the student's ability to recall previously learned material, explaining and

communicating ideas, and applying new knowledge.

According to Corley and Rauscher (2013), Questioning as an educational method can be

traced back to the fourth century BC when Socrates used questions and answers to test

assumptions, exposed inconsistencies and led to new insight. Used in this context, questioning

can be an undeniably effective approach to teaching. When teachers ask higher-order questions

and offer students the opportunity to create in-depth explanations, learning is improved across

subject areas. Higher-order questions frequently begin with questions such as Why? What

caused..? How did it happen? What if? What is the proof? or How does it compare? (Corley &

Rauscher, 2013).

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Justification:

The process of learning must go beyond reading and memorising facts and details to

objectively interpret new information, demonstrate understanding to others in one's words, and

apply new knowledge. The evaluation of information sources is an essential part of the research

process. Not all information is accurate or valid, and not all information is appropriate for a

paper or project. Print and internet sources differ significantly in their credibility, accuracy,

objectivity, currency and coverage. It is imperative that they use the library to locate scholarly,

peer-reviewed sources. Webpage sources such as .com and .org are not scholarly. Resources from

.edu or .gov are not scholarly, peer-reviewed sources. These sources may be credible, but they

are not scholarly. Users must be able to objectively assess all forms of information sources'

appropriateness before depending on the information.

Instructional Objective 2: Students must learn how to paraphrase existing information and give

the author of the material credit by documenting and citing sources.

Learning Domain/s: Cognitive (Comprehension, Synthesis, and Evaluation)

Explanation of characteristics designed to meet learning objective:

The ability to understand the meaning of the material is known as comprehension. This

can be demonstrated by translating information from one form to another (words or numbers),

analysing information (explaining or summarising), and forecasting future trends (predicting

consequences or effects). These learning outcomes reflect the lowest level of understanding and

go beyond merely recalling information (Herr, 2007).

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 The ability to bring pieces together to form a new whole is referred to as synthesis. This

could include creating a theme or speech, a research proposal, or a scheme for classifying

information. The emphasis is to formulate new patterns or structures (Herr, 2007).

The ability to assess the importance of material for a particular reason is referred to as

evaluation. The decisions must be based on specific parameters. These requirements may be

internal or external. Evaluation is the highest in the cognitive hierarchy containing elements from

all other categories and value judgments based on explicitly specified criteria (Herr, 2007).

Learning Activity: Summarising material, review material, Judge a material.

This activity will require the student to paraphrase/summarise given texts without

misrepresenting the original idea/s of the author/s. The student will engage in a scholarly review

by describing, analysing, and evaluating an article. The students will also be asked to discuss

their sources' relationship and value to a research topic and, finally, create a list of in-text

citations and corresponding bibliography for every scholarly source they used in their academic

research.

Justification:

The objective of citing or recording the sources used in research is that it properly

acknowledges the writers of the words or concepts used in a paper. It enables those who are

reading the work to find the sources and learn more about the concepts discussed in the paper.

Citing sources consistently and correctly helps prevent plagiarism in writing (University of

Nebraska Kearney, 2020).

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Content Area: Communication Studies

Grade Level: 10

Content Curriculum Focus: Analysing Visuals

Learning Goal: Students will evaluate how visuals are composed to create meaning and evoke

emotion.

Instructional Objective 1: Students will describe the features of a visual text, drawing

inferences to spark inquiry questions.

Learning Domain/s: Cognitive/Affective

Explanation of characteristics designed to meet learning objective:

At the lowest level of the cognitive domain (knowledge), “individuals are able to

remember basic information without necessarily understanding, using, or manipulating it”

(Brown & Green, 2016, p35). This is the ‘see’ level of the thinking routine where students

describe what they see in the image.

The affective domain levels incorporate “receiving, responding, valuing, organizing, and

valuing” (Brown & Green, 2016, p. 35) which is the ‘think’ and ‘wonder’ dimensions of the

task.

This activity includes the actions of describing, thinking and wondering and recording

these observations and questions on a jam board (or other digital collaboration space). The visual

texts are provided by the teacher with a focus on a particular theme, issue or context derived

from the unit of study. This is a very self-contained introductory activity whereby all students are

expected to contribute at least one observation, one idea and one question to the shared space

(criterion). In this way, the inquiry-based structure of the classroom is reinforced and valued as

the students learn to articulate their questions within the curiosity context. Moreover, the

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instructional designer can incorporate the learners’ questions into their programming, promoting

them as subject-matter experts, creating an excellent opportunity for shared ownership of the

learning (Plotinksy, 2019).

Finally, in reflecting on this activity students can evaluate through the ABCD (Heinich,

Molenda, Russell, and Smaldino, 2002 cited in Brown & Green, 2016) applicability to the stated

outcome. These elements are a fundamental consideration in the initial instructional design

process as derived from data and needs analysis of the class. Students would be supplied with a

checklist for evaluation and reflection that includes prompts for how effectively the activity

targeted the audience if they understood what was expected of them, if the context promoted

critical and creative thinking for them and if this was reflected in the range of responses

published. The focus of this activity is enabling as it provides supporting descriptions of

observable behaviours or actions that indicate learning.

Learning Activity: See/Think/Wonder (PZ, n.d.)

Justification:

The See/Think/Wonder thinking routine (Harvard, n.d.) involves students viewing an

image, describing what they see, make thoughtful interpretations of what they are seeing (think)

and posing questions about what they wonder. This thinking routine stresses the importance of

inquiry-based thinking through close observations following a three-step process” (Rochester

Schools, n.d.). It operates to powerfully stimulate curiosity and establish an inquiry focused

learning environment.

This learning activity helps students clarify their thinking individually before evaluating

it within an informal discussion with peers. The value lies in its ability to increase participation

and engagement through peer support networks. Moreover, when students are prepared and

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communicate with their peers they become more confident in their answer and are more willing

to share their idea (Wright, 2015, cited in Strategies, n.d.).

Instructional Objective 2: Students will understand and demonstrate how visual techniques

create meaning and effect.

Learning Domain/s: Cognitive/Psychometric/Interpersonal (Vinson, n.d.)

Explanation of characteristics designed to meet learning objectives:

This activity accesses the highest cognitive and psychometric domain in Bloom’s

taxonomy that includes digital creation (Churches, 2008) of an instructional text. The

collaborative structure of the activity also supports the development of interpersonal domain

strengths. Simpson (1972) outlines the psychometric domain as having seven levels: perception,

set, guided response, mechanism, complex overt response, adaptation, and origination” (Brown

& Green, p. 35) and this activity is highly effective in addressing the final psychometric domain

as it encourages students to create something original while modifying their analytical skills with

a new digital design skill (Brown & Green, 2016).

The activity is best utilised as a concluding activity for the learning outcome program of

study as students can demonstrate their understanding by modelling effective strategies and

examples. The activity will be completed in teacher designated groups with specific role

allocation, delivered through a collaborative platform like Google Docs/presentation. The

students should be provided with success criteria that include how effectively the presentation

inculcates learning outcomes and uses design elements for the specified audience.

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In determining the roles within each group, the instructional designer is reflecting the

performance technology approach, as individual strengths, derived from data/needs analysis, can

be utilised for the optimum efficacy of the collaborative process.

In its problem-based focus, this activity places students into the role of teacher, designing

their instruction through the ABCD approach. The collaboration is asking the students to

determine who their students are, what they want them to know and how best to engage them

through the learning progression. As this activity takes place near the conclusion of the program

of study, it is a terminal objective that could form the basis of the summative assessment.

Learning Activity: In collaborative groups, students will produce a multi-modal presentation

that models effective visual metalanguage analysis and analytical strategies for instruction of

year 7 students.

Justification:

The collaborative nature of any classroom is highly desirable and, not only is it an

“effective and efficient instructional activity” (Ellis, 2005, cited in Brown and Green, 2016) but

students genuinely enjoy activities where their individual strengths can be used in collaboration

with others’ individual strengths. This activity is a highly engaging and authentic assessment of

the learning process. The learning takes place on a number of levels as students apply the

knowledge they have gained to a new context, which facilitates transfer (Yale, n.d.). This activity

also reinforces the learning for the year 10 students, which has been proven to be an effective

learning strategy (Jarrett, 2018).

Significantly for this task, students become digital designers who are the dynamic drivers

of the design process “who use their knowledge, experience, and intuition to navigate the design

space and recursively refine both problem and solution until an innovative outcome is reached”

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(Tracey et al, 2014). This will activate interdisciplinary studies as students navigate and evaluate

digital platforms, problem-solve around engagement and desired outcomes but also reflect on

how they learn best to apply these strategies to an impactful and effective teaching tool.

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Content Area: Communication Studies

Grade Level: 10

Content Curriculum Focus: Analysing Debates and Group Discussions

Learning Goal: Students will evaluate how debates and group discussions help to enhance

learning and gaining knowledge.

Instructional Objective 1: Students will participate in a debate after they research a topic and

then analytically present their sides and understand the dynamics of the situation.

Learning Domain/s: Cognitive/Affective

Explanation of characteristics designed to meet learning objective:

The cognitive domain is primarily concerned with the process in which a learner acquires

knowledge. It can also be termed as the thinking domain. This is the research process level where

students undertake some research and try to apply the knowledge to their prior learning.

The affective domain has its main concern over attitude, motivation, willingness to

participate, valuing learning and last but not the least incorporating the discipline values into real

life, which is the actual debate or group discussion level of the activity.

Research by Bonwell and Eison (1991) defines the classroom debate as “a powerful

learning tool for promoting classroom interaction and the development of skills such as

communication, argument-construction, discussion and critical analysis”. Debates will help the

students to gain knowledge at multiple levels and across different and varied subjects as well.

This strategy will increase their confidence and self-esteem. The students will be active and

engaged learners with critical thinking and analytical skills. The debate will help the learner

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structure his thoughts and work and learn the skill of note-taking and researching. This activity

will help them to make balanced and reasoned arguments and speak clearly with confidence.

This activity will build teamwork and make them good listeners as well. Group discussions are

another part of debates that also fosters similar skills and gets the student to start thinking about

what was taught and to apply their knowledge as well as their facts and make their judgement.

Learning Activity: Debate/ discussion on a topic

Justification:

The activity is a topic given to the students and they form two teams, one in favour of the

topic and the other against the topic. Both the teams get a week to read, research and find more

details to support the topic along with their team. On the final day, both the teams get a chance to

present their points and then debate the same with the other team. The outcome of this activity

definitely will be that the students learn to find details and apply them to the topic and the

knowledge they have gained making it more strong and factual.

At the end of this activity, students will realise how much more they have gained as when

they listen to each and everyone talk they will create a bank of knowledge knowing all the

aspects of the topic.

Instructional objective 2: Students must be able to solve real-life case studies and apply the

knowledge they have gained here by finding a solution.

Learning domain: Cognitive /affective

Case method teaching is an active form of instruction that focuses on a case and involves

students learning by doing (Davis, 2009). The cognitive aspect and the affective aspect of

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learning deal with varied objectives. The cognitive aspect will focus on gathering learning and

applying it whereas the affective will focus on the behaviour and attitude of the group working

together.

Explanation of characteristics designed to meet learning objective:

The selection of case studies is extremely important as the case study has to be a learning

case study compared to a regular one. The case study has to be

● Questioning - one which is capable of raising questions

● Open-ended - one which encourages learners to think and apply their knowledge rather

than fixed answers

● Decision forcing - one which enables the students to take decision-based on the facts and

the research they have taken

● Engaging - one which engages students from research to analysis to evaluation and

grasping knowledge at multiple levels

Case studies will also enhance collaborative learning and reflective practice among

learners. The learner needs to be open to the thought of collaborating and working together. The

learner must have an urge to grasp and assess different situations and apply their knowledge and

not be worried about the consequences.

Learning activity: Real-life case studies given to groups to study, discuss and to find a global

solution.

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Justification:

A major advantage of case studies teaching is that the students in different groups will be

engaged and find solutions to the different citations faced in the case study. It will help them

focus on problem-solving, making decisions and train them to work in groups as well.

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