Marquetta Strait

February 12, 2015

EDCI-531
Final Project-Option 3 (Motivation)

Introduction:
In this project, I will be discussing an eight week course module that I am designing for
in-service teachers. I aim to discuss the relationship between motivation and virtual field trips.
The overall purpose of this project is for in-service social studies teachers to see the connection
of how theories such as motivation plays an essential part in virtual field trips.
According to Robinson (2009), The students want high quality learning experiences that
are relevant to their everyday life. They want to have fun and they want to achieve some level of
success. Further, they want to have some level of control of what, how and when they learn (pg.
6). Through this course on creating virtual field trips (VFTs) through an interactive PowerPoint,
in-service social studies teachers will plan and create a virtual field trip centered on a given
theme, which is motivating to students using this VFT, but also provides opportunities for
students to apply their knowledge and provide social interaction for students to receive a more
in-depth learning experience.
Project Background:
As the accessibility of technology increases, educators want to increase the amount of
educational opportunities for students. Due to budget cuts, teachers are only allowed to schedule
an allotted number of field trips to students. To avoid exceeding this allotment, many schools
have had businesses and organizations come to their school. For example, a constellation expert
may bring his exhibit and have students explore the stars. The downside is that schools must

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provide planning as to when this expedition should take place, which grades are allowed to
participate, paying the experts fee for his service, and how teachers and students are
compensated for missing instructional time. In a different aspect, what about little Axel or Brick
that has missed school and the constellation exhibit because of the chickenpox?
To solve these field trips dilemmas, virtual field trips were designed. Popular VFTs, such
as Purdues zipTrips serves two interwoven purposes: it provides access to curricular materials
that are aligned with grade-level standards in science and technology while also providing
opportunities for students to meet with university professors as career role models. (Adedokun
et al. 2012, p. 611).
Although many virtual field trips are available online, educators have to spend countless
hours in search of what benefits their students. In this regard, this course module welcomes
teachers to create virtual field trips (VFTs) that are highly engaging, educational, and
inexpensive, which can be shown at any time in the classroom or be provided to students for
independent learning. Teachers will be able to customize their virtual field trips according to
their learners needs and their teaching style.
Front End Analysis of Course Module:
Target Learner Analysis:
The target audience for this course module are in-service social studies teachers or
parents of homeschooled students looking to increase the effectiveness of their social studies
curricula, especially those that want to increase the educational opportunities for their students
without concerning themselves with chaperones, field trip forms, lunch costs, transportation
arrangements, inclement weather, and other trip fees. Although this course module is for all

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educators, this would truly assist schools that serve a large demographic of lower socioeconomic status students. Through this course, educators will be able to increase students
desires of learning via technology, exploring careers, traveling the world, and communicating
with experts around the world.
Literature Review:
According to Robinson (2009), Pedagogically, teachers are concerned with providing a
learning environment that works: one in which the students are engaged and involved and helps
them problem solve and transfer their knowledge to other situations (p. 5). The purpose of this
course module is to teach educators how to create informative, engaging, and inexpensive VFTs
for their students. From a teacher and school districts perspective, planning field trips can be
cumbersome along with hefty costs, such as transportation fees and school insurance. Through
the creation of VFTs, teachers will be able to provide more opportunities to students without
breaking the bank.
Having virtual field trips to Costa Rica or Peru will allow students to gain a world
perspective and increase their desire to travel. Tutweiler et al. (2012) proposes that VFTs could
make students more likely to want to visit the real-world site via leveraging intrinsic motivation.
It is through intrinsic motivation, students will increase their desire to learn, not because of the
praise or the rewards, but because they want to project themselves to excel. The creation of
VFTs can assist many school settings, including those that serve predominantly lower socioeconomic status students whereas some of these students continue to stay local and are less likely
to travel to other parts of the world.

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According to Emily Bouck et al. (2009), It offers supports and scaffolds to students with
disabilities in an effort to increase their participation and achievement In addition, students
will become more self-regulated in their learning by being provided VFTs that can be used
independently, in a small group, or in a whole class context. As an alternative to the textbook,
the teacher can take on the role as a developer and a curator of the exhibit. The overall goal is
for teachers to create a well-designed VFT that can be provided to students without the teachers
assistance. Through the embedding of audio, text, videos, and interactive activities, the students
will have a purposeful yet engaging learning experience.
During traditional field trips, the art of storytelling provides the basis to how information
is transferred and made comprehensible to students. However, VFTs provide storytelling that
goes beyond the five minute allotment that many museum curators are given before going to the
next exhibit. Yoon (2012) contends that digital storytelling can be a great vehicle for increasing
language performance because it appeals to students, which keeps them engaged (Yoon, 2012).
Yoons (2012) acronym I AM TOP CAMP highlights the top ten principles that
encourage teachers to consider using digital storytelling in their classrooms, which are:
interactive, authentic, meaningful, technological, organized, productive, collaborative, appealing,
motivating, and lastly, personalized (Yoon, 2012). Educators are able to include digital stories
that reemphasize concepts that are usually challenging for students. In addition, educators are
able to customize their stories enabling their video productions to be more relatable to students
due to their interests. Toshalis et al. (2012) states A more student-centered approach would be
to ascertain what motivates individual students to achieve in a particular class and then enlist the
students help in identifying other factors that might elevate their motivation, factors that may
include changes to the context or changes to the individuals beliefs and behaviors (p. 5).

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Application:

As an instructional designer, creating virtual field trips provides a quench to an overdue

amount of adventures that students are unable to attend for various reasons. Before this course
begins, learners are to complete a brief pre-course survey that questions their motivation for
taking this course (http://missstrait.weebly.com/week-1-introduction-to-vfts.html). This informs
the instructor on not only what is motivating educators to take the course, but it also enables the
instructor to plot out the relatable themes to target the educators needs to make this course
meaningful and purposeful. In addition, by having educators create virtual field trips, they are
admitting that their students are in need of comprehensible and engaging information about
historical facts, need engaging visuals, need interaction, and need diverse deliveries of
information that can be more accommodating to all students.
Knowing the audience of the VFT is essential in how it should be developed. Through
virtual field trips, educators are able to accommodate gifted and talented students that become
quickly unmotivated in the lesson due to many teachers re-teaching or placing their unit on pause
to catch other students up to speed. Gifted and talented learners often feel withdrawn from the
class and become disruptive because they lack that motivation. Instead of feeling challenged in
their work, many teachers of gifted and talented learners provide these students with busy work.
In this regard, these students do not aim to complete their work in an appropriate amount of time
because they know more work would be given.
For an average learner, the teacher believes that the students are operating as a norm,
which means many of these students are often overlooked. For lower level learners or students
with disabilities, they are often provided intervention but can still feel withdrawn from the class
and also cause disruptions. For example, if Marlon is known to have problems with reading or

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reading comprehension, Marlon would avoid being vocal in class and would prefer to fade into
the background during this lesson. Being that social studies and other subjects are embedded
with text, Marlon could perhaps suffer in many of his classes. In addition, although he may go to
a resource teacher for an allotted time, he must still return to his class to feel withdrawn again.
In this situation, the teacher must collaborate with the resource teacher to integrate more
strategies. Although the intention is to assist Marlon, all students would benefit because they
would receive a better foundation on that particular concept.
Through VFTs, educators can take these strategies and integrate them to allow each
learner to strengthen their skills. For gifted and average learners, it allows them to challenge
their learning. For lower level learners, it allows them to relearn material for which they have
misconceptions. According to Carbonelle (2011), The assignments incorporated within the
tours encourage students to hone their critical thinking skills, especially analysis, hypothesis, and
synthesis (p. 140). Therefore, for all learners, VFTs could serve as an individualized instruction
plan or a follow-up activity to a traditional field trip.
One of the unique features of educators creating their own version of a VFT is that it
enables them to cater to their students needs, which lessens generalizing students. Through my
course module, many teachers may enter this course unaware of how to create their own website
or professional VFT. My goal is to increase teachers knowledge of a common tool that would
allow them to still provide valuable experience to their students through PowerPoint. Through
PowerPoint, users can create slides of information, which can also become uneventful if the user
creates slides on top of slides of bullet points. Many teachers are not using PowerPoint to its
fullest potential in order to make their presentations more engaging and interactive for students.
In addition, common presentations lack application, which allows students to demonstrate their

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knowledge and modeling, which also allows students to learn from an expert in some fashion.
Therefore, through my course, social studies in-service teachers will learn to create exhibits that
include digital storytelling, Web 2.0 tools, interactions with experts around the world, and
supplementary materials.
Join the Action: Below, you will get a glimpse of the course module and what all is intended for
the students this week. The students will be learning about motivation and how to increase their
motivational techniques within their digital stories, which will eventually become a component
of their virtual field trip.

Digital Storytelling Lesson Plan

Learning Objectives:

Using the theme of Ancient Egypt, the students will devise a

storyboard, which includes images, narration, music, text
overlays, and an assessment for a 5-7 minute video.

Using Camtasias video software and their completed

storyboard, the learner will be able to create a 5-7 minute
digital story that focuses on Ancient Egypt.

Lesson Content/Materials:

Skinner et.al saw the impact of digital storytelling on learners and contends that
digital stories allow students to connect their cultural identities and foundational
literacies (Skinner & Hagood, 2008).

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Eric Toshalis and Michael J. Nakkulas article Movation, Engagement, and

Student Voice

Procedures, Assessment, and Closure:

1. After reading Eric Toshalis and Michael J. Nakkulas article Movation,
Engagement, and Student Voice, the students will respond to the following
question:
a. What are factors that affect how students are motivated to learning new
material?
2. The students will be provided a storyboard template to plan out their digital
stories that focus on Ancient Egypt. Students are to specify where they plan to
place any and all images, narration, music, text overlays, and transitions.
3. Students will create quiz questions that will assess students before, during, or
after their digital story.
4. Students will get approval on their storyboard templates by the instructor whom
will also evaluate its effectiveness and provide feedback as to which parts need to
be strengthened.
5. Using Camtasia, students will create a digital story that has the following
components: images, narration, music, text overlays, transitions, and a credits
page that includes all citations.
6. The students will upload their digital stories to YouTube and categorize their
videos as unlisted.
7. On the class discussion board, for the fourth portion of this assignment, the
students will post their video links and respond to the following question:

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a. After creating your digital story, how do you feel this will motivate
students to learning about Ancient Egypt? Why is this information an
important concept for students to comprehend?

While creating your

digital story, did you make any changes from your storyboard? If so, what
were they? If provided more resources, how could you strengthen this
digital story?
8. Students will reply to at least two students videos and posts to provide insight on
what was completed.

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References
Adedokun, O. A., Hetzel, K., Parker, L. C., Loizzo, J., Burgess, W. D., & Robinson, J. P. (2012).
Using virtual field trips to connect students with university scientists: Core elements and
evaluation of zipTripsTM (Vol. 21, pp. 607-618).

Bouck, E., Courtad, C., Heutsche, A., Okolo, C., & Englert, C. (2009). The virtual history
museum: A universally designed approach to social studies Instruction. TEACHING
Exceptional Children, 42(2), 14-20.

Carbonelle, B. (2011). Virtual field trips creating customized audio tours for teaching with visual
culture. Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship & Pedagogy, 22(1).

Robinson, L. (2009). Virtual field trips: The pros and cons of an educational
innovation. Computers in New Zealand Schools: Learning, Teaching, Technology, 21(1),
1-17.

Toshalis, E., & Nakkula, M. J. (2012). Motivation, engagement, and student voice.

Tutwiler, S. M., Lin, M.-C., & Chang, C.-Y. (2012). Determining virtual environment "fit" : The
relationship between navigation style in a virtual field trip, student self-reported desire to
visit the field trip site in the real world, and the purposes of science education. Journal of
Science Educational Technology, 22, 351-361.

Yoon, T. (2012). Are you digitized? Ways to provide motivation for ELLs using digital
storytelling. International Journal of Research Studies in Educational Technology, 2(1),
25-34. doi: 10.5861/ijrsct.2012.204