[Week 4] Representation for Our Project

In the previous semester, for the course project of R521, I, Megan, Scott, and Remzi created a workshop module for elementary school teachers of grade 1-4 to integrate comedy and humor strategies for their classrooms. In this semester, we invited Peter as the fifth member of our project and had a meeting on the course project of R541.

During the meeting, we agreed that we would continue to focus on

• classroom comedy strategies for elementary school teachers.
• classroom comedy's function for enhancing students' engagement.

Particularly, we analyzed that classroom comedy has the function of enhancing students' engagement because it brings

• better teacher-student relationships.
• better learning performance as a result of reduced anxiety and stress of students.

Now, for the discussion of "decisions related to representation for your project,"I'd like to follow the frame work of Dr. G's Lecture on Imagery and Representation.

Intentional Design Decisions: Accuracy, Clarity and Learner Involvement

Since we will not convey information that has a significant influence on human life like Coast Guard team (see Kipp's detailed and excellent description), accuracy of the images would not be prioritized in our project. Rather, because we are going to convey hands-on training on classroom comedy strategies, it would be important for us to show simple and easy-to-understand images. In other words, in order to decrease the complexity, the accuracy of representation in our project should not be so high. On the other hand, in order to assure learners' quick understanding of our contents, clarity of the representation should be high. Namely, representation should be figurative rather than abstract. What should be even higher is learner involvement. After learners quickly understand ideas of how they can create comedies in their classrooms, they are asked to demonstrate the understanding of the comedy strategies by actually creating classroom comedy activity plan. Again, simple, clear and easy-to-consume representation is important in our project.

Complexity of content and context, Learner Expertise, and Goals of the Environment

Although there are several things to consider such as the subject matters the classroom is going to deal with, the complexity of content and context is not so high. We will convey simple and easy-to-understand Hook-­Line-Sinker method. Additionally, while all the learners, new teachers and teachers who have desire to enhance students' engagement and/or teacher-student relationships, are expected to have knowledge on creating classroom activity plans, our research so far tells us that it is rare for teachers to received training on classroom comedy. Accordingly, learner expertise on our content is not expected to be high. Goals of the environment is clearly elementary school classroom. Regarding these things, again, our representations would not be necessarily to and should not be complex and abstract.

Resources and Constraints

Lucky enough, one of our member, Megan is very talented illustrator. Also, I, myself, have some skills of creative software and, in order to update my knowledge, attended the workshop of "Photoshop CS6: The Basics" at the IUB Library held at 9am-12pm on Saturday January, 19th. Additionally, everyone except for me has involved in or has connection with elementary school education in some ways:

• Megan's mam was an elementary school teacher and currently teaches undergraduate courses for those who intend to be elementary school teachers.
• Scott volunteers at an elementary school in summers.
• Remzi was an elementary school teacher in Turkey.
• Peter taught elementary school children classic music.

So, we would not need to be worried so much about resources and constraints!!!