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Importance of Tutorials



I enjoyed reading Dr. Dennen's Instructional Design and Development for Social Media Lessons paper to start off the week. She describes in detail how she uses social media tools in her lessons and how she designs her process. 

One of the sections I found most important was the information on providing tutorials. Dr. Dennen gives a couple examples of how students struggled with tools before being provided with a tutorial. While not all tools will require a tutorial, I think it's important to consider them for tools that might have a confusing interface. For each of the tools I've explored, I've looked up reference guides to determine how to best use the different features. While I didn't feel like I needed hand holding throughout my exploration of tools, the tutorials definitely helped me better understand how to effectively use the tools. 

I've also experienced difficulties with certain tools in my classroom because I didn't provide tutorials at first. I've used Google Classroom before and made the mistake of thinking my students were tech savvy. I didn't give much of a lesson on how to use the tool and my students struggled. There are so many tutorials on Google Classroom that I could have showed my students to help ease the process. After realizing how important tutorials were, I utilized them in my classroom whenever I introduced a new tool and students navigated them with more ease.

Dr. Dennen gives other great tips for including social media in the classroom but I found this piece of information to be the most interesting. Once the plan for including social media has been developed, it's time to implement the lesson and see how it works for your group of learners. If you've followed the steps within the paper and carefully conducted the development process, your implementation will likely go smoothly. 

Comments

  1. DMartinJune 24, 2020 at 4:38 AM

    I think tutorials are a great extension to discovery learning. As you mentioned, you looked up reference guides to each of the new tools we are learning about. I kinda wish I had thought about that. My approach was to jump in and see if it was a tool worth while. And unfortunately, because of my lack of knowledge on all the tool is capable of doing, I did not find many tools to be of use early on. I've gone back now and started using a few tools after reading other's blogs or realizing it might make my life easier.
    Thanks for the reminder on tutorials!

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  2. BDeviesJune 28, 2020 at 5:44 PM

    Great points about the need for tutorials! I have also before made the mistake of thinking students are more tech-savvy than they are. I told my college students in class that we were going to use Zoom during our COVID time in Spring and not a single one of them had used it or heard of it. We then spent the rest of that class learning it as a community which was powerful. Those tutorials are so critical in moving students from focusing on their stress with the platform to engaged in the content!

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