Natalia Arias

 INTRODUCTION I currently serve at the Blended Learning Specialist at Uvalde CISD. In this role, I provide support for the blended learning intiative at my district through professional development, coaching, job-embedded support, and program management. The course I have designed is called Blended Learning 101 and it will serve as an introduction for teachers new to the district on the Uvalde CISD Blended Learning model. Instructional Design Theories  I believe that every instructional design theory could lend itself to the development of online learning environments given the right context, audience, and purpose. For Blended Learning 101, I used the constructivist theory to drive the design of my online learning environment. Blended learning is complex and involves many moving parts, so I felt that this set up was ideal in helping the learners/teachers connect the moving parts in the ways most relevant to them. For this reason, I included project-based applications for stu...

Two courses in my district that could be redesigned into online courses are The 4Cs in the Virtual Classroom, and Schoology = Success: Setting Up Schoology to Set Your Students Up for Success. The 4Cs in the Virtual Classroom course is one that many teachers seek out, but it is hard to reach everyone that wants the training with our current set up of offering the course once a month throughout the school year. I think this course would lend itself perfectly to the online environment, especially since we utilize Schoology district-wide now and the instructor(s) can utilize the same tools and strategies that our teachers have access to in their virtual classrooms.  Schoology = Success: Setting Up Schoology to Set Your Students Up for Success is another course that I have offered virtually through Google Meet, but I think would and could be much more effective if it were an online course. Through this course, I could model for teachers how things can be designed in Schoology with the ...

I have decided to "chunk" my course content into modules, based on the levels of understanding the learners need to build upon to reach mastery. For example, the foundation of blended learning truly is data-driven instruction, but in order for a teacher to understand our DDI cycle, they have to first understand our learning framework so they understand how to build the DDI cycle into their lesson planning. So, the teacher would need blended learning basics, then the learning framework, then DDI, and THEN, finally, they should have the capacity and knowledge to understand true blended/personalized learning as we have envisioned it for our district.  Each module will begin the same way, following our learning framework, with a thought-provoking discussion tied to a short video or quote to "Captivate" the learners, then it will move into "Discover" where the student gets the opportunity to learn more about the topic asynchronously through a series of videos a...