IMPLEMENT

‍‍‍‍‍ ‍ ‍ ** ‍‍IMPLEMENT ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍**
//At this phase the instructional designer delivers the instructional materials, which is implementation of the online learning lesson in this context.//

After development of instructional materials the next step was to implement them. Arrangements were made to try out the lesson with a group of students in a computer laboratory where all students participating in the activity had access to computers. At first I was overwhelmed with fear on how students were going to react to my request for them to participate in the online learning activity, which is not a unique phenomenon. An observation has been made in the field of educational technology that introduction of a new technology results in confusion and resistance that might have a potential to negatively affect the process and goals of the online learning activity (Harrison, Mishra and Koehler, 2009). Surprisingly, students were generally eager to participate and seemed to have enjoyed the activity. The first step was inviting students to participate in the lesson via google docs. Invitations were sent to students’ institutional e-mail addresses, but it did not materialize. Except for one student, the rest did not receive any message. The instructional designer requested the students participating in the lesson to provide their personal e-mail addresses, especially gmail ones, to be re-invited. Invitations sent via personal e-mail addresses were successful, but not all students had personal e-mail addresses. Nevertheless, students failed to access the lesson as the google docs site for students was blocked by the institution. The site was unblocked after negotiations between the instructional designer and the Bureau of Computer Services on campus, though the institution continued blocking the site occasionally. This blockage also meant that we had to organize for another laboratory session. When we finally got access to the google docs website students were divided in three groups of 4 students in each in order to follow the steps involved in writing an essay and collaboratively to produce the final product. The instructional designer ensured that there was someone with a personal e-mail address in each group so that the group as a whole could access the lesson via that individual’s address and then work as a team. Additionally, as these students needed more guidance, the instructional designer divided the groups in such a way that each group was paired with a student who had been performing well so far in the course with the intent to guide other group members. However, this information was not disclosed to students. The essay that was used is available as part of the online learning activity attached to this portfolio on the home page; it is not indicated below. The group tasks were divided as follows:

//**Group A: Planning **// //Imagine you are the ones who wrote the essay (below). Write an essay outline, that you had to prepare before writing this essay to prove that you have done some planning at Stage 2 of the writing process. Note that the essay is still a draft and not therefore perfect. You should fix the structure in your plan/outline. //

//**Group B: Revising **// //Imagine that you are now busy with Stage 3 of the writing process: revising. Identify the writing style errors that you need to fix before writing the final product. NB: You are correcting errors related to ideas and sentences in the essay, not grammar errors e.g. spelling or verb errors. Highlight the corrections made in a different colour. //

//**Group C: Editing **// //Imagine that you are now at Stage 4 of the writing process: editing. Identify and correct the grammar errors in the essay below by highlighting the error and write the correction in brackets next to the error. Highlight the corrections made in a different colour. E.g. She wrotte  (wrote) a story about it. //

//In order to expand our face-to-face lesson on writing essays as a process (Unit 4: Essay writing and analysis), visit [] <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> to learn more about the difference between revising and editing, and to practice editing paragraphs before embarking on your group task. //

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">The instructional designer led the students by supervising them while working in groups, e.g. to find answers to activities in the hyperlink website they used as an example. Even when working as a team, some groups needed guidance on how to highlight their responses in colour, or how to cut and paste, especially the group that was doing revision of the essay by rearranging some of the sentences. The activity took students longer than what the instructional designer had anticipated due to poor typing/computer usage skills, but luckily we could continue using the laboratory over the lunch hour. Students were highly delighted and impressed to see the responses of others so immediately while they were still busy working, and also by the fact that they could see what other groups were typing instantly.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">References <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Harris, J., Mishra, P. and Koehler, M. (2009). Teachers’ technological pedagogical knowledge and learning activity types: curriculum-based technology integration reframed. //Journal of Research on Technology Educcation//, 41 (4), 393 – 416.