Barbie's Weblog

Using Hyperstudio Design Projects to Increase Higher Order Thinking Skills

            Hypermedia design projects are excellent tools that engage students in critical thinking by promoting higher levels on Bloom?s Taxonomy such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation.  When students author their own hypermedia documents and use them to teach their classmates, they display increased motivation and engagement because they are learning in a constructionist environment rather than in a traditional lecture-oriented format.  With this tool, students progress through four different cognitive phases including planning, transforming, evaluating and revising, which reflect their personal understanding of the problem or question presented.  While planning, students are asking questions and constructing timelines.  During the transforming stage, students are researching, taking notes, and deciding how to organize their information in a way that clearly communicates their message to the target audience. Students must design several cards on the computer that present their interpretation of the information with text, graphic, sound bites, video clips or through other means and then connect these cards using links so that the user can navigate smoothly throughout the document.  While evaluating, students are examining the design of their project and finally, they move to the revising stage in which they obtain feedback from their teachers and peers so they can alter their project as needed to give more clarity to the information.

            In the article, ?The Evolution of Critical Standards As Students Design Hypermedia Documents,? the authors, Erickson and Lehrer, present several important points that teachers need to consider when guiding their students in the process of hypermedia design.  First, they address the need for teachers to put forethought and planning into the fostering of students critical standards, which they define as ?consensual patterns of student beliefs.?  The teachers in their research needed to provide students with assistance to help improve their standards for questioning during interviews and questionnaires.  Therefore, when teaching my own students I plan on asking them to share their questions in advance and to discuss as a class why their questions were good or not.  The students could then create their own standards for the types of questions they will ask when doing their research.  Another key finding by researchers was the need for skill and activity templates to provide students with appropriate modeling and practice for each stage of their project design.  For example, teachers in the study designed a ?question posing template? that illustrated the steps students needed to take when creating and selecting appropriate questions.  By breaking this task into several subskills, it made the process clearer and more manageable for students.  Finally, the authors discussed the importance of teachers guiding whole-group discussions of the students? work.  During this time students critiqued their classmates? work and openly discussed both the design and questioning aspects of their projects.  This time allowed students to discover the importance of message clarity and audience consideration when designing their projects.  Therefore, when working with my own students I intend on creating templates in advance to provide them with the necessary structure while giving them independence and on setting aside sufficient time during the entire process for students to discuss and revise their projects.

            I see several possible applications of hypermedia design within my own French classroom.  During French I, students complete a family unit and learn vocabulary related to this topic.  Normally, I have students create a family tree poster and do an oral presentation in front of the class.  However, this project could be altered so that students are presenting themselves and their family members and interests using a hyperstudio stack instead of a poster.  This project could be used to introduce first-year students to the hyperstudio design process. 

In a second project, students could work in groups on researching a specific francophone country or culture.  During this project, students could engage in a discussion about which questions they should research and what type of information would be interesting about this culture to their classmates.  Students could incorporate sound bites with authentic music and speakers from the chosen country, which students could use to launch discussion questions comparing and contrasting American and French cultures.  Students could also import graphics depicting traditional dress and foods, which could assist in diffusing various stereotypes.  In addition, students could interview their classmates or other students to discover their general impressions about various French cultures, which they could then use to guide their research.  In the end, their presentations could be used not only to teach their classmates, but could be displayed during National French Week at a display table for students? to interact with and learn from on a school-wide level. 

Students in upper-level French classes learn extensively about French history and typically read the novel, Le Petit Prince.  To make the novel more manageable, students could be assigned different chapters to teach the class.  Each group could be asked to create a tutorial hypermedia stack that students could access as a review of the novel.  In the end, all of the stacks could be linked together into one large document that the class could use as a study tool for tests and exams.  Students could also do the same type of project for different periods of French history such as the French Revolution.  Each team could research one aspect of this period of history, which could be combined to create a larger document giving a detailed overview of this entire period.

Posted at 06:34PM Oct 22, 2006 by bdbook in General  |  Comments[0]