Meghan Borg

October 28, 2018

EDTECH 592
Reflection/Research Paper

Iterative Teaching and Transformation

Introduction
The process of obtaining my Master of Educational Technology degree has been a
rewarding, yet often challenging, journey. Although I did not know it at the time, my first step on
the path was attending iPad Boot Camp at the school where I taught back in 2011. At that time, a
new administrator was taking the lead at the private school where I taught in Beverly Hills, CA.
The principal was hired, in part, for having experience introducing a 1:1 iPad program in his
previous school. Though the group of us that participated in the iPad boot camp was staying a
week past the end of the school year, most of us were excited to learn more about the new tool
and bring it home to play with over summer break. The enthusiasm of our new principal and our
tech director was easy to catch and we were having a great time learning about all the new apps
and how we could use them in our class. They taught us to use the Substitution, Augmentation,
Modification, and Redefinition (SAMR) model discussed by Lindsay Portnoy (2018) as a
framework for introducing technology so that we were focusing on modifying our lessons
significantly as the higher levels of the SAMR model require. Our goal was to use the
technology tool based on tasks managed through technology or completely redesigning the
learning based on the technology. As I went through this process, I was excited to be a part of
what I thought would be a revolution in education and was subsequently inspired to apply to the
Boise State University’s Master of Educational Technology program.
Though I had wanted to pursue a master’s degree for many years, I had never found a
particular area of study that I thought would be a worthwhile devotion of the considerable
amount of time and effort required to earn a graduate degree. With educational technology, I
knew that I could become a leader in an area of pedagogy that many other teachers were
oftentimes afraid to adopt. Exploring teaching strategies that were based on the use of
technology felt a bit risky at the time. I had little experience to back up whether having students

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create animated Explain Everything presentations would be worth the amount of time it would
consume from my curriculum. However, I ultimately found the prospect of incorporating
technology into my classroom to be exciting and sometimes transformative. I not only wanted to
integrate new technology into my classroom, I also wanted to help other teachers bring it into
theirs too. This experience readied me to accept the challenge of pursuing a master’s degree and
Boise State University gave me the flexibility with time management I needed to accomplish that
goal.

Lesson One: Reflections on Learning

One of the most important topics I encountered during the MET program is that the
motivation of students is not just an abstract concept that teachers are trying to achieve. Rather
there are specific strategies that instructors can draw upon in order to help motivate our learners.
Learning about the Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction (ARCS) model of
motivational strategies helped me understand the psychology of learning in a way that I had not
considered before. In my undergraduate studies, I was taught that lessons should begin with a
“hook” that draws learners in and helps them access prior knowledge. This was the extent to
which I considered learner motivation when lesson planning. Having become familiar with the
ARCS model, I am now more aware that motivating learners is a process that continues
throughout the lesson or unit, not just something teachers use to pique the interest of students.
The “A” in the ARCS model refers to attention which is essentially the extent to which my prior
knowledge of motivation spanned. Now, I am also aware that helping learners to see that the
content I am teaching is relevant to them and that they have the confidence to believe that they
can be successful with the content are just as important as gaining their attention. In addition to
helping learners find relevance in the concepts and be confident in their skills, I also know that
learners need to have a sense of satisfaction that what they are learning is useful. What is most
helpful about this model is that it can be applied to problems that arise in instructional design. If
a particular area of the content is proving to be difficult for students, the ARCS motivational
approach can be examined to determine if a different approach should be taken so that learner
motivation increases. As Keller says (2000), “The goal of the model, like the goal of many
educators, is to assist in helping learners want to learn and develop in ways that helps them build
satisfying lives that contribute something positive to their world (p.11)”.

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 While I now have a new resource for assisting my instructional design, I have also
learned that some of the other information I was taught in my undergraduate education was not
based on research. For example, I was taught about the importance of catering to different
learning styles as an effective practice. During my time in the MET program, I had to reconcile
my past beliefs with the fact that these theories do not have evidence to support them as effective
teaching strategies. When discussing the work of cognitive psychologists, Cuevas states (2015),
“They contend there is no credible evidence that learning styles exist and that real harm may be
done by education establishment’s continued insistence on implementing instructional methods
that we know do not work” (p.312). Rather than spend time with strategies that are not supported
by research, I have turned my attention to strategies that have data to support them as effective
practices to support learning. For example, one of my favorite ways to structure learning is
through project-based learning (PBL). According to Geier et al., “In measuring basic academic
proficiency, standardized testing shows that students engaged in PBL outscore their traditionally
educated peers” (as cited in Bell, 2010,p. 39-40). The quote by Geier et al. represents just one of
the studies that support the efficacy of PBL. Some of the key characteristics of project-based
learning include engaging students in independent study, incorporation of multiple tools for
research and conveying learning, and choosing meaningful problems for which students find
solutions, and some sort of collaborative exchange. All of these characteristics were included in
many of the projects I completed as a part of the MET program.
One of the instructional units that I designed during my EDTECH 523 class was called
the Ecosystems Exchanges Unit. It nicely represents both the motivation strategies that are
discussed in ARCS as well as project-based learning. One of the key motivating strategies at play
in the unit is allowing students to select their own learning activities and make personal choices.
As the culminating final project, students have to engage in a project-based learning activity.
They are expected to choose one of two meaningful activities. The first of these activities is to
create a multimedia presentation that presents an endangered animal to a state representative
including explanations of the animal’s role in its environment and what ramifications a potential
loss of the animal could have to its ecosystem. The other project that students may select is to
create a public service announcement video with similar goals to the multimedia presentation. In
both cases, students are meant to make something that they will deliver to a wider audience
based on their personal research along with a suggestion for helping to protect the animal.

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Lesson 2: The Art and Science of Teaching
Upon entering the MET program, most of my teaching practice was already current and
aligned well with the best practices emphasized within the program. This was due to the fact that
I had to earn two additional certifications to clear my credential with California since my
undergraduate degree was earned out of state. Also, I worked for a school that was exceptional in
providing professional development. Rather than learning many new strategies for teaching, the
program required me to learn about the evidence that supports the teaching practices I had in
place. I was able to strengthen my knowledge of current best practices and the learning theories
behind them. Knowing the “why” of what I am doing in my classroom increases my confidence
in my teaching and I now do the same for my students, occasionally pausing to explain why I am
having them do certain activities to assist in their learning process.
For example, since initially entering the classroom, I have preferred a pedagogical style
that allows for a great deal of collaborative work among my students. Collaboration is a strategy
for teaching, and it is the selection of these strategies that is the art of teaching. Although I was
made aware that collaboration is part of effective teaching strategy from my undergraduate work,
what I was previously lacking was the science that supports it. For example, according to
Amineh and Asl (2015), “In a constructivist classroom, teachers create situations in which the
students will question their own and each other's assumptions. So a constructivist teacher needs
to create situations that challenge the assumptions of traditional teaching and learning” (p.12).
These statements about the constructivist classroom are based on studies and the evidence
collected. As my students come together to discuss the science phenomena we are focusing on, I
ask them to share their thoughts in both small group and whole class formats. By discussing
possible explanations of what they saw, students are challenging one another’s interpretations
and helping shape how their knowledge schema is created.
Since entering the MET program and learning about the importance of including many
problem and project-based lessons throughout my curriculum, one of the new strategies I have
incorporated is to have students conduct case studies. For example, while studying the
cardiovascular system, I ask students to analyze a medical problem in which they are given a
patient, a set of symptoms, a back story, and then conduct research online to contribute a
diagnosis to the group document. Providing students the opportunity to act as a doctor helps

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them to understand why it is important to know the functions of the organs within the system.
Bhattacharjee pointed out (2015), “Constructivist teaching is based on the belief that learning
occurs as learners are actively involved in a process of meaning and knowledge construction as
opposed to passively receiving information. Learners are the makers of meaning and knowledge”
(p. 67). Overall, I would much rather encourage my students to find their own answers to
questions and build meaning for themselves than have them memorize something because I told
them to do so.
Not only am I more aware of the science behind my teaching style after entering the
Boise State program, I have also been exposed to some new ideas that were not covered in my
undergraduate work. For example, as a user and creator of multimedia, I had not been explicitly
taught the principles to make it effective. The coursework I completed in EDTech 513 taught me
how to improve my presentations by utilizing the principles of multimedia such as redundancy,
modality, personalization, contiguity, and coherence. The emphasis of these principles serves to
remind those creating presentations that it is ineffective to include extraneous text or images that
distract viewers from the intended objective. Most of the information is based on studies
conducted by Richard Mayer. As Peter Doolittle (2002) says, “The work of Mayer, and others,
provides an example of well-grounded multimedia research that is yielding interesting and robust
findings” (p. 3). Moving forward, I will make sure to include this knowledge in the
presentations I make for students.

Lesson Three: The Design and Evaluation of Instruction

One of the ways in which my pedagogy has been most profoundly impacted as a result of
my participation in the MET program is in my approach to evaluation. Prior to entering the
program, I was already aware of the importance of evaluation to determine if learners were
achieving mastery of the subject. Since starting in education, I knew that I should be collecting
both formal and informal formative evaluation to spot areas of content that learners were
struggling to understand. I also knew that summative assessment could provide me with evidence
that learning on a broader scope was occurring. These strategies were a part of my teacher
preparation program in my undergraduate studies.
However, what had not even occurred to me is the importance of assessing whether or not
the program I was using to teach the information was effective. While I had given end-of-year

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surveys to find out about which activities the class had done were most popular or to ask for
suggestions for improvement, I had not thought to apply this to each particular unit of study as
we were taught to do in EDTECH 505. According to Boulmetis and Dutwin (2011), many
program evaluations are done for social or political purposes as a means to secure grant funding,
but it is their third purpose that resounds most loudly with me and I believe best aligns with what
is happening in the classroom. That purpose is to find solutions for what is the best teaching
strategy to use with the content (p. 37-39). As the authors state, “You may try more than one
approach and then compare the effectiveness of the two” (Boulmetis & Dutwin, 2011, p. 39).
Although many of the units I designed contemporaneously as a part of the MET program have an
evaluation component in them, nothing in my previous curriculum had anything closely
resembling program evaluation. I intend to include at least some brief reflection on the strategies
used to teach different content areas within my classroom from this point forward. This is
particularly pertinent as I am in the process of converting my curriculum to new standards for
science that my school district is in the process of adopting. The feedback I receive from students
will be an invaluable tool for determining how best to match my program content with the needs
of learners.
Another area in which the MET program has added depth to my teaching strategies is in
exposing me to the Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation (ADDIE)
method of instructional design. As part of this model, it is imperative for me to know who my
target audience is, as is required in the analysis portion of the model. Generally, as a classroom
teacher, the target audience is pretty well-established because of previous participation in the
community and experience with similarly aged students of the same demographics in the past.
While this knowledge is vital, I think it is also important to connect with students to learn more
about them individually since it assists us in understanding where students’ level of prior
knowledge is most likely to fall. The Design portion of the ADDIE model is the part that most
mirrored what I already knew about instruction. Starting with the learning objectives in the
design phase you will lead to the best choices for development of the unit. The choices made in
the design and development should be deliberate and always geared toward meeting the goals
and objectives stated in the design portion. After implementing the unit, it is then time to
evaluate it. As Larson and Lockee (2014) discuss, “Continuous evaluation produces feedback
that facilitates continuous feedback of the instruction” (p. 475). Excellent teaching requires the

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instruction to be in a state of constant improvement with new data shaping the ways in which it is
delivered to learners. While it has been true in the past that my curriculum never looks exactly
the same from year to year, the changes I made were in response to my experiences as the
teacher, with little thought as to how the experiences were received my learners. Being already
willing to go the extra mile to improve my students’ experience, I will gladly take into account
their thoughts, thereby shifting my teaching ever more toward learner-centric goals, always
keeping in mind the objectives but now more aware of how to meet learners where they are.
In a more practical sense, the MET program has also exposed me to some software that
can improve my feedback to students in their process of formative and summative evaluation.
According to Dawn Howard (1987), “...four aspects of feedback that should be considered once
the cognitive demands of a task are determined. These are feedback content, degree of
individualization, immediacy of feedback, and format, which includes delivery method and
source” (p. 53). While Howard’s article was written long before some of the tools available for
online assessment were even invented, these tools fulfill important aspects of effective feedback
for students. One great tool for formative assessment is the site Poll Everywhere which allow
students to provide quick responses to questions from the instructor. Based on the immediate
feedback, the teacher can quickly determine misconceptions and work to resolve them. Another
two sites that teachers can use for formative assessment are Kahoot and Quizizz. Both of these
sites allow teachers to ask students about their learning and immediately provide relevant,
individualized feedback about whether or not they are correct. In addition to these sites, one of
the most adaptive forms of online assessment is in Google forms. This is incredibly helpful in
providing immediate feedback, within context to students. It is also extremely useful to
instructors as it can help to assemble data on which questions the group struggled with
collectively and can even produce graphs to help illustrate points of difficulty within the
instruction. Unlike my delay in implementing unit evaluation to all aspects of my current
curriculum, these technology tools have already been integrated throughout my teaching since
they are tremendous time savers and incredibly helpful in providing immediate feedback to
learners.

Lesson Four: Networking and Collaboration

In discussing the art of teaching, I mentioned that collaboration serves an important role

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in the classroom among our students as they challenge each other’s assumptions about the
content. The same holds true with our colleagues and peers in education. For this reason, it is
essential that educators stay connected to collaborative communities. Collaboration affords us
the opportunity to discuss our ideas about best practice, brainstorm new approaches, look at
things from multiple perspectives, and also ease the burden of our workload. Terry Anderson
(2008) expresses the importance of establishing discourse among students in online classes by
saying, “Discourse not only facilitates the creation of the community of inquiry, but also the
means by which learners develop their own thought processes, through the necessity of
articulating their ideas to others” (p. 350). Whether this discourse happens within an online
classroom or with colleagues at work, it is important to maintain the position that we can learn
from others and in the process of explaining what we know to others. Prior to entering the MET
program, I still retained an indifference to collaboration that was borne of the frustrations I had in
prior experiences working with a group as a student in the K-12 system. Having been exposed to
ideas about social constructivism and experiencing collaborative practice among peers who are
often more talented than myself, I have begun to shed these old preconceptions about
collaboration as I am able to see it for the helpful practice that it is.
As I graduate, one of the ways I will maintain the community of learners experience that
I had in the MET program will be by becoming more active in the educational communities
available to me through social media. In their discussion of social networking sites (SNSs)
Brady, Holcomb, and Smith (2010) state, “Given the inherent limitations of course management
systems, the use of SNSs in education settings represents a definitive shift toward social and
community-based web applications that cultivate and sustain discipline-specific social networks”
(p. 154). I find this statement to be especially true within my discipline. As a science teacher,
there are frequent changes in my content as new studies reveal information that impacts our
understanding as a scientific community. Sites like Twitter, Feedly, and Facebook are places I go
to for updated information from publications like Scientific American, National Geographic, and
many others. In the past I would have had to limit the information I had access to because of the
budget required to maintain several magazine subscriptions, but social networking sites give me
access to headlines so that even if I cannot directly access the article, I am aware of the recent
changes to theory and can further research them.
By its very nature, social media helps promote acquisition of knowledge in the same way

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that all collaboration relies on the educational theory of constructivism. In their discussion of
how many educational writers perceive social media, Tay and Allen (2011) explain,
That is, the benefits of social media for learning emerge because these technologies
promote a way of learning in which students construct their knowledge as a consequence
of engaging with, discussing, and re–expressing the material to be learned, rather than
just acquiring and repeating that content, and more importantly do so in a combined, or
collected manner – one individual cannot learn as well as many working together (p.
155).
Although I was aware of these more popular forms of social media before starting my courses,
being a part of the MET program has exposed me to many more forms of Web 2.0 than I was
aware of previously. For example, in EDTECH 521, I had to create a list of fifteen different
social media sites and how they could be used within my classroom. This was an eye-opener for
me because I did not realize that some sites I have used for many years like YouTube are
considered social media since users can review and discuss content. Other social media that I
find incredibly helpful are communities like Pinterest and Kahoot as both have been very helpful
in my classroom. Pinterest is full of creative ideas for creating curriculum and Kahoot is a great
resource for me to search formative assessments already made by other teachers and also to share
the assessments I am making in my own classroom. Slideshare and Weebly have been two other
valuable tools that I have been using to help create curriculum. Not only can I use these ideas to
add valuable information in my own classroom, I also share and can receive feedback to improve
the content I am producing. While social media may not entirely revolutionize the classroom, it
certainly has the ability to assist in shifts toward a more connected and constructivist pedagogy.

Lesson Five: The Research-Practice Connection

While it is crucial for educators to know about the learning process as well as how to
design, evaluate, and implement instruction, the only way to keep a pedagogical practice alive is
to infuse it with some time spent researching. Research may be inspired by things we hear on
social media or by reading the New Media Consortium’s annual Horizon Report. If a teacher is
truly treating instructional design as an iterative process, he or she will need to have many
different strategies to help relay content. Again, research is a great way to determine which
strategies are effective as well as find new tools to add to your repertoire. For example in an

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article about ten best practices for teaching online, J.V. Boettcher (2011) emphasizes, “The new
focus on learners encourages a focus on learners as a priority. The new focus on the learner is to
develop a habit of asking, what is going on inside the learner's head?” (p. 6). As technology
becomes a more important presence in the classroom, the focus on student-centered instruction
increases. In order to adopt both current best practice and upcoming trends research plays an
important role.
Since becoming a teacher, I have always been interested in ways to refine my own
curriculum and have always thought of teaching as a profession in which constant evolution
towards better instruction is my goal. My experience in the Boise State University MET program
has solidified that desire to be always on the lookout for ways to improve. For example, I created
a lesson for EDTECH 501 based on technology trends. In this assignment, our instructor had us
read the most current Horizon Report available, which at that time was the 2015 report, and then
create a lesson that would incorporate one of those trends. I found the assignment incredibly
inspiring because I was able to try something new and because I found it difficult to choose
which trend to focus on because so many intrigued me. At that time, 3D printing was emerging
as a teaching tool for the engineering aspect of a STEAM education. In order to be able to
incorporate 3D printing into a lesson, I had to research a lot more about how to do it and ways it
could be applied to the content. After graduating, I intend to read the New Horizon report each
year to stay involved with the newest technologies and trends that are being used in education.
Lastly, it is also important that research informs our practice to let go of teaching
strategies that are not serving our students. As I mentioned in the Reflections on Learning section
above, at times our instructional strategies can be based on what we were told at the time we
were trained to be a teacher. For example, in my undergraduate studies, there was a lot of
discussion on how to tailor instruction to match the learning styles of our students. Joshua
Cuevas has detailed how multiple studies have debunked this claim. A teacher who is unwilling
to stay open to hearing about educational best practices may spend an entire career building
curriculum based on a false premise. With newer forms of technology entering the classroom,
there is still a lot that is not known in how well this technology enhances learning. For example,
DeLozier and Rhodes (2016) examined flipped classrooms to find out which strategies work best
and in doing so found that, “Other learning activities common in the flipped classroom (e.g.,
quizzes or clicker questions, pair-and-share activities, student presentations and discussion)

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differ both in their effectiveness and in the conditions necessary for enhancing learning
performance” (p. 147). Research not only holds us accountable for using strategies that are
proven effective in the classroom, it also presents opportunities for improvement on a consistent
basis.

Closing Thoughts
There is a Japanese term, kaizen, which I think applies very well to the process I went
through in the completion of the MET program. Kaizen means an approach that is constantly
seeking improvement to increase productivity. By treating education as something that is
dynamic and that can be consistently made better, I have had to keep an open mind to learning
more about the psychology of learning, how to select the most appropriate tools, strategies, and
technologies for each area of content and also how to properly assess whether or not these tools
and strategies are achieving their intended objectives. As part of this goal, I must also learn from
others in my field and stay current in my knowledge of research as it relates to both my subject
area and in the field of education in general. My hope is that I will now be able to take what I
have learned about using technology in the classroom and share that with colleagues. In the years
since starting my master’s degree, I have since been employed with a school district that is much
less receptive to technology in the classroom than the one that inspired me to start the program.
Although we are far away from where I would like to see my school, I am hoping that the change
is inevitable and that when it comes, I will be ready to help usher in the changes that will
accompany a more technology-integrated curricula.

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