04-800-F   Educational Technology Design

Location: Africa

Units: 12

Semester Offered: Fall

Course description

This course focuses on education technology design while applying learning science and learning engineering. It covers e-learning platform design with a focus on the personalization of online learning, collaboration, and gamification. The learning materials’ design follows instructional design principles by focusing on multimedia principles, universal design for learning principles, and others. This provides an opportunity to use a data-driven approach for iterative improvement of learning outcomes. Furthermore, this course will provide the application of various emerging technologies into teaching and learning such as blockchain, digital twin, and others.

During this course, students will have the opportunity to interact and practice with:

  • RwandaEquip, a national program that is implementing data-driven teaching and learning in Rwandan Primary schools
  • Kinagames, a company that implements virtual science laboratories and learning digital games for Rwandan secondary schools
  • Creativity lab that implements coding and robotics programs in Rwandan secondary schools and others

This course is a mixture of theoretical knowledge and hands-on skills in educational technology for teaching and learning processes.

Learning objectives

This course aims at providing a systematic way of using technology to create and use tools for teaching and learning to improve learning outcomes. It will build the students' capacity to design desirable and personalized e-learning as well as teaching and learning digital materials without leaving behind e-assessments. It will provide knowledge and skills to students so that they can follow an Educational Technology career with the right skills.

Outcomes

Upon completing this course, students will be able to:

  • Understand e-learning design principles
  • Design a desirable and contextualized e-learning
  • Apply multimedia principles in designing digital learning materials
  • Design online collaborative tools
  • Apply universal design for learning principles to design digital learning materials
  • Apply emerging technology to education
  • Use data-driven knowledge for tracing to improve learning outcomes

Content details

Unit 1: Learning fundamentals

  • Learning engineering
  • Uncovering implicit knowledge with cognitive task analysis

Unit 2: UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers (CFT)

  • General ICT-CFT
  • Contextualized ICT CFT
  • A talk from the expert of ICT CFT in African Context

Unit 3: E-learning

  • E-learning design
  • Instructional technology
  • Gamification
  • Multimedia principles
  • Practical exercise on open source e-learning customization such as Moodle, ATutor, Open Learning Initiative-OLI, etc.

Unit 4: Learning design principles

  • Universal design for learning principles
  • Inclusive digital learning
  • Evidence backward design

Unit 5: Culture and Epistemology

  • Contextualizing the continent/countries into the educational technology
  • Adapt the e-learning and instructional materials to the context
Unit 6: Virtual collaboration
  • Designing collaborative tools
  • Virtual collaboration

Unit 7: Foster enriching active learning

  • UX design for effective learning
  • Segmenting and Pretraining Principles
  • Personalized online learning
Unit 8: Edutainment for learning
  • Designing learning games using an open-source tool
  • Cartoon digital content design
  • Industrial experiment with Rwanda Basic Education Board Edutainment Studio and Laboratory

Unit 9: Virtual learning content

  • Virtual learning laboratories
  • Simulation
  • Digital twin technology
  • Designing of virtual laboratories using simulation, virtual reality, as well as digital twin technology
  • Industrial experiment with Kinagames

Unit 10: Blockchain application in education

  • Design a prototype blockchain technology (e.g., students’ records access, educational material access, etc.)

Unit 11: Robotics in learning science courses

  • Designing a robot prototype for a science subject learning (e.g., Kinetic Energy demonstration)
  • Industrial experiment with Creativity lab

Unit 12: Data-driven knowledge tracing to improve learning outcomes

  • AI in education
  • Intelligent Tutor Development for Non-programmers
  • Industrial experiment with RwandaEquip

Prerequisites 

None

Faculty

Christine Niyizamwiyitira