Competency 4: Think Critically and Reflectively

In these artifacts, I

Develop a personal vision of inclusive educational practice
Describe the relationship between Educational Technology and the broader field of Education
Critically evaluate theory and practice

Develops a personal vision of inclusive educational practice

I achieved this competency in this lesson plan, where I designed a lab activity that introduces the concept of whiteboxing levels in video games. The goal of this project was to meaningfully implement generative AI tools into the lesson to enhance learning. The lab is intended to be integrated into an undergraduate game development class.

Reflecting on my own game development experiences at the beginning of the design process, I noticed that open-ended creative tasks like whiteboxing can be problematic for students with varying levels of prior experience, creative confidence, and/or attention spans. To address this, I intentionally implemented AI tools as a scaffold to support learning through means like generating ideas and providing assistance to the brainstorming process.

Through this project, I began to develop a vision of inclusive educational practice that emphasizes flexibility, scaffolded support, and thoughtful use of technology. To me, inclusive design involves the intentional planning of learning environments and experiences that reduce barriers while maintaining meaningful learning/engagement.

Describes the relationship between Educational Technology and the broader field of education

I met this competency in this critical reflection I wrote after completing the AI for Oceans unit on the Code.org site. The AI for Oceans unit provided an informative experience about machine learning and its role in facilitating AI decision-making. Activities I completed primarily involved labeling training sets in order to train an AI to identify patterns in the data.

The activities in the unit had a substantial impact on my views of machine learning and AI. I originally viewed machine learning as mostly a technical component, but I realized that there's a human element as well that must be carefully considered. The human element is where the risk of AI perpetuating bias originates, as people choose what data sets to use when training AI.

This experience demonstrated that educational technology, such as machine learning and AI, is often not neutral. The human element greatly influences whether these technologies reinforce inequities or support inclusive learning environments. As AI becomes more integrated in education, educators and instructional designers will need to consider its ethical implications as well as how it aligns pedagogically.

Critically evaluates theory and practice

I achieved this competency in my constructivism family tree, which examines several constructivist approaches that have been developed over time. It contains an overview of the theorists behind each approach, including their major contributions to constructivism and their connections/relationships to other constructivist theorists. Theorists highlighted in this paper include Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner, Dewey, and von Glasersfeld.

Throughout this paper, I evaluated the theoretical assumptions that contributed to the development of cognitive, social, and radical constructivism. For example, I assessed how Piaget's background in early cognitive development and genetic epistemology informed his cognitive constructivism framework. Additionally, I examined how each theorist's perspective was intellectually influenced by other theorists and where tensions arose regarding how learning occurs. For example, Vygotsky challenged Piaget's emphasis on individual cognition, proposing that learning instead primarily involves social interactions and collaboration.

Overall, this assignment allowed me to evaluate how each theorist's perspective reflected a shared philosophical commitment to student-centered learning, active engagement, and activation of prior knowledge/experiences. This has helped me develop my own instructional philosophy, which integrates Bruner's emphasis on discovery learning and scaffolding with Dewey's focus on collaborative problem-solving/inquiry.