big design rationale

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Big Design/Redesign ProjectEDET 709

Spring 2012Michelle New

Client: This is intended for 4th grade math teachers to use during or entirely for their unit

on geometry.

Learning Objectives: This is a major unit from a 4th grade math classroom. The objectivesin this geometry unit are for the students to learn and understand shapes, polygons, and

3 dimensional objects. They need to know how to not only identify each figure by its

characteristics but also be able to name them. This unit is taking the students one step

further from what they learned in 3rd grade, which was just basic characteristics and

names of shapes.

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Goals:The goals of this presentation are for the students to understand geometric

shapes as well as polygons and 3D figures. They not only should be able to

name them when given characteristics, they should also be able to give the

characteristics when a shape is presented to them.

Learner Problems:Sometimes students have difficulty remembering the names of

certain polygons as well as forgetting how to name 3D figures.

Timeline: This unit could be taught in a variety of different timelines. It really is up

to each teacher and what their preference is.

Learning Process:

Present students with graphics of each shape.

Discuss characteristics and names of each shape.

Practice naming shapes Present students with graphics for each type of polygon.

Discuss characteristics and names of a select amount o polygons.

Practice naming and drawing polygons.

Present students with graphics of 3D figures.

Discuss process to naming 3D figures.

Practice drawing and naming 3D figures.

For this big design project, when choosing a presentation to edit, Imade sure to look for one that could use several changes and onethat would be fairly simple to change. The most obvious changethat needed to be made was the background color and the colorcombination throughout the presentation. Dark backgrounds arealways hard to read on and make it very hard for those with visualdisabilities to read. I changed the color scheme to a lightbackground with darker colors. These are easier to see as well as

read clearly. These changes were apart of the graphic designchange made to the presentation. While most of the presentation,dull in design, was cohesive, I did make sure that in my redesignthat there was fluency throughout. All title slides are the samesize and font type as well as the body text being the same sizeand font type. Alignment is something that most people dont


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think about, including myself. By after reading about it in one ofour articles, I decided it was important. I used the principle ofalignment when I added the images of the polygons slides. Therewere several images on each slide and I wanted them to not look

crowded or cluttered. I used the pattern that was suggested in thehandout.

The design of the original presentation was very sloppy andscattered. I wanted it to be very neat and organized and simple tofollow. The original had slides that had way to much informationas well as disorganized information that was hard to follow. Toaccomplish the less is more or keeping it simple feel, I brokeseveral slides up into multiple slides with much less informationon each. The Goldilocks Principle states that content should be

presented in a way that is not too difficult for the student tounderstand and that it should be presented just right. Too muchinformation at once can really overwhelm students and confusethem. I did away with having text in several different places onthe slide. I kept all text aligned the same way and all together inone spot. One thing I also noticed in the original was that keywords or phrases were not underlined or bolded. I underlined orbolded several key words or key parts to a definition. I used themto emphasize the importance of what was being said. Despite

there being too much information on the slides in the original, theinformation was not very well written. I felt that the informationneeded to be presented and explained in a much clearer andstraight forward way. This idea cones from one of the 25Principles to Guide Pedagogy and the Design of Learning,explanation effects. This principle states that the teacher shoulddeliver the material with good explanation and with a way thatallows the student to self-explain. I added more detail and concisedetails while shortening the amount of text on each slide. Theinformation is now presented in a straight forward, simple way. Ialso added in a slide at the end of each topic that allowed thestudent to explain in his/her own words what they think each topicmeans. This allows for the self-explanatory part of the principle.

Another issue I found was that it was hard to distinguish betweenthe topics and there was no real connection between the slides


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that were for the same topic. In the redesign, I made sure thateach topic was separated in a way that was recognizable bymaking each topic a different color. The font type and size did notchange, however, just the color. The color specific to that topic

was seen throughout all slides that were meant to be included inthat topic. This strategy and design comes from the segmentationprinciple that states that the information should be presented indiscrete units. This also helps in the effort to not overwhelm thelearner. These ideas of keeping things simple and having lessinformation on a slide and making sure that the information isorganized all are a part of the manageable cognitive loadprinciple. This principle means exactly what it implies: whenpresenting material to students, it should be free of clutter withtext information and should have a good graphic design. As you

can see, these same principles and implications keep coming up:keep things simple, less information on a page, good graphicdesign, not cluttered, etc. This just shows how important thoseare in making sure that the presentation is created in a way thatwill be most effective for the learner.

While the original presentation did have several graphics, Iwanted to add better or different graphics. Several graphics in theoriginal did not relate and I deleted those and added pictures to

each slide that related to the content on the page. These graphicshelp the learners who learn best by seeing. With this unit, I feltthat there needed to be several pictures or graphics of thegeometric figures that were being discussed. Just simplydescribing their qualities was not sufficient. Adding graphicsthatillustrate stages of a process are part of the process step ofInstructional Methods & Media. The question and answersection as well as the matching section apply to this step. Theadditions made to the original presentation on the graphics aswell as the descriptions for each image fall under the worked outexamples principle. The original presentation had some workedout examples but not nearly enough for the topic. Geometry is atopic that needs several examples and graphics and that is what Idid in the redesign.


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Other learners learn best by doing rather than seeing. Thisincludes things such as the students doing problems rather thanseeing them be done or doing hands on activities that deal withthe content or even virtual activities. These types of activities

allow the students to interact with what they are learning. Theoriginal presentation did have some pieces that relate to thisprinciple but I felt that there needed to be more. I added acollection of links after ever topic to interactive games oractivities on that specific topic. I also added more resources at theend for other activities that can be done with geometry. A newtechnology that has made its way into the classroom is the iPad.

There are several applications that can be used for education andI found a great geometry app that would go along with thislesson. I included a link to it at the end of the slide show. Drill and

practice is a very important aspect that needs to be included ineach lesson. While there was some already included in theoriginal and were efficient, I decided to use the interactiveactivities as added drill and practice for the students. The use ofthe ipad app could also be a great way to drill and practice.Theseactivities added also allow for discovery learning. They can beused before, during or even after the lesson has been presented.

These interactive activities allow the students to discovery ontheir own; they are having to guess and check and problem solve

and use critical thinking skills when completing these activities.Not only do they allow for discovery learning, they also allow forself-regulated learning. These activities could be used before anyinformation is presented to not only find out prior knowledge, butto also allow the students to learn on their own terms and toregulate their learning.

The activities included and added in the presentation could beused to find out students prior knowledge on the subject, but for amore direct approach at finding out prior knowledge, I inserted aslide that has the students list anything and everything they knowabout geometry. This not only gets the students thinking aboutthe subject, it also gives the teacher and idea of where he/sheneeds to go with the lesson. The opposite of prior knowledge isreflection on what you learned. Opportunities for reflection werenot seen in the original presentation and I think it is an important


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part to include in each lesson, especially with struggling studentsor younger students. Reflection gives the teacher an idea if thecontent is really making sense to them and they areunderstanding it correctly or if they are still completely lost or

even if they are misinterpreting the information. I includedreflection after each topic to make sure that there was noconfusion before a new topic began. If you catch themisconceptions and problems early, it is easier to fix them.

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