For my peer-review post, I will be covering the learning design for Pod 12. Their chosen subject is “Micro and Macro in Economics”. The blueprint designed by LiWei Chen and Tingting Li is very dense, and is clearly the product of a lot of time, thought, and hard work. The learning design included appears to be a fraction of the intended course, and focuses just on the microeconomics side of things.
The subject of microeconomics is a subject that I have no familiarity with. While I was working through the slideshow (the resource that I assume would be given to learners) I felt a bit lost, a bit unsure about what I should be taking from the material. According to the blueprint, the intended audience for the course are single parents who are learning english. I am unclear what that means: is the course intended for people without a background in economics? Does this mean that the course is intended for practical application to peoples’ daily lives?
I found the wording and the graphics in the slides to be a bit abstract. As a layman on the subject (I may be incorrect, but I think that is the intended audience for this course?) I found the type of information included to be over my head, and beyond my expertise. As a learner, I think the material would be a bit clearer to me if there were some concrete examples. For example, in the blueprint there were a number of handy graphics that described the link between consumers and businesses, or short videos that described some of the key concepts behind economics. That is, including some of the resources in your blueprint could add variety to the material, to help make it more memorable, to break up the torrent of information, and to further engage the learners, rather than simply transmitting what is meant to be learned.
The rationale for the course states that the design’s goal is to help single parents, who are learning English, to manage daily economic problems. I may be missing something, but I had trouble connecting the material in the slides with practical applications. That is, the slides seemed to mostly deal with the theory behind microeconomics, rather than with practical economic activities that we may encounter regularly. Judging from what was written in the blueprint, and with the slideshow, I felt that there was a bit of a disconnect between the intentions for the design, and how the design panned out.
What are the intended assessments for this design, and what is meant to be the interactive element? I saw some explanation in the blueprint: namely teacher and self-evaluation, tests, and a Q&A discussion. I would have liked to see what these assessments would look like. I liked the idea of discussion in particular – was the intention for learners to engage with each other, or for learners to engage with their instructors?
I’m a bit unsure about what the learning theory behind the course design would be. Some elements, like the discussion, seem to be in line with the constructivist approach, while the assessment plan seems more in line with the behaviourist approach? I could be incorrect, but it seemed that the focus was on encouraging learning through reinforcement through grades. Is this so? Are there intended opportunities for learning to apply, or reflect on what they’ve learned?
Overall, I think that there is a lot of good content in the blueprint, and your design offers a detailed overview of the workings of macro and micro economics. From what I have seen, you guys have a lot of resources in place that I think could make your learning design much more engaging and informative from a learner’s perspective. Good job!
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