Grants/Development of “Photovoice Online” an Innovative Teaching Technology
Describe the project you are proposing as clearly as possible in just five sentences.
Teaching online requires inventive approaches on the part of the instructor in order to facilitate an optimum educational experience. This project involves the adaptation of a known research strategy called “photovoice” (Wang & Burris, 1997) to become an interactive online teaching technology. As online educators we have experimented in a very beginning way with the use of photovoice (PV) in two graduate classes in the Masters of Nursing and Masters of Leadership Programs at Athabasca University. On initial assessment it appears that PV has great potential to influence the distance learning experience in a positive way. Specifically PV appears to focus student attention, stimulate creative thinking, and help create community in the online environment (Perry, 2006).
Detail the tangible project output (e.g., paper, blog post, written materials, video/film, etc.; this would be in addition to the final written report that successful grant recipients will be expected to deliver to CC at the conclusion of the project).
The outcomes of this project would be to: - translate the PV research strategy into an online teaching technology, - trial the PV teaching strategy and make refinements, - create a shareable database resource centre for educators who would like to use PV, and to - disseminate details regarding the PV online teaching strategy including how to use it, the location of the PV resources resulting from this project, and the possible positive benefits of PV to distance learning.
Describe the community you are targeting. How would the project benefit the community?
The community targeted is online educators in any discipline. Specifically the purpose of the project is to invent a new teaching technology that can be used by online educators around the world in their courses. The most tangible outcome would be a unique, highly useable, creative interactive teaching technology and a database of photovoice images and associated questions that could be used by online educators in many fields.br />
I have been teaching online at Athabasca University for the past 10 years in both undergraduate and graduate courses in the Faculty of Health Disciplines. My teaching philosophy is based on using creative teaching strategies to engage learners and encourage them to take risks and achieve high levels of academic accomplishment. I believe strongly in the importance on interaction in the online classroom and invent and use teaching approaches that make me real to the virtual learner. Most recently I have been studying artistic pedagogical technologies (APTs), online teaching tools founded in the arts. Photovoice is one of these strategies that has already proven successful. However it is not well known in the online teaching community and a prepared database of photovoice learning objects (the goal of this project) would provide other online teachers with a resource they could use in their own teaching. I am the best person for this project because I have experience with photovoice, I have a numerous photovoice learning objects to share and the resources to develop more.
How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact - on your main participants? Other contributors? On the larger community?
Once the photovoice database and resource center is developed and offered to the online teaching community the use could be tracked. The more users who access and employ photovoice in their courses the more successful the project would be. I propose that we follow-up with those who use photovoice in their courses to determine the impact of the teaching strategy on students and instructors. I am currently studying the effect of photovoice in selected courses using several measures focused on students and instructors who consent to participant. These measures are -
How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement?
Describe how your project will benefit Creative Commons' mission to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in "the commons".
Describe what technologies and tools your project will use. What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs?
What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them?
How do you plan to sustain your project after the Creative Commons funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future?
How can this project be scalable, or have a scalable impact?
What resources and support do you expect Creative Commons to provide to your project to ensure its success (if any)?
Describe how your organization currently communicates with its community members and network partners. (100 words)
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