EDCI POD 9

Name: (Maxwell)

Age: 16

Gender: Male

Lives in: Oak Bay Area

Interests: video games, volunteering, tennis, debate, puzzles, and chess

Education and Interests 

Maxwell is a grade 11 student enrolled at Oak Bay high school, an institution that gives him access to multiple special needs classes. Although Maxwell suffers from color blindness, a condition diagnosed early on, he remains committed to his studies and continues to top his classes. Maxwell has been tested to establish the severity of the condition, with results indicating that he has a mild illness. Maxwell’s teachers are conscious of his color blindness and endeavor to cultivate an environment where he can learn and engage in routine classroom activities. Thus, Maxwell’s teachers avoid using colored chalks and maker pens when writing on a whiteboard, ensuring he does not strain during classes. Learning materials that address color blindness allow Maxwell to engage in multiple advanced classes that complement his intelligence. Maxwell struggles to engage in art classes, which undermines his ability to complete assignments on schedule and actively participate in discussion groups. Because of his color-blindness, Maxwell has a low self-esteem because he is afraid that his classmates will know about it, so he avoids too much contact and communication with people around him, which makes it difficult for him to participate in multi-person projects and group discussions.

Role and Responsibilities 

Maxwell desires to become an information technology scientist, making it essential to focus his efforts on scoring high grades since this improves his chances of gaining admission to computer schools. In scaling his efforts to gain admission to top computer science universities in the country, Maxwell has started taking advanced placement classes that will prepare him for the demands of programming and information technology courses. Finishing high school with exemplary skills and grades will enable Maxwell to gain an MIT scholarship, ensuring he can pursue his lifelong career dream. In preparing for the intense coursework at University, Maxwell has taken up several activities like chess and tennis that enable him to socialize and develop collaborative skills. The hobbies Maxwell has cultivated will allow him to rewind and handle the stress associated with his tight class schedule and become an all-rounded individual. Maxwell has also become increasingly committed to sharpening his skills by volunteering at the local animal shelter, an environment that allows him to cultivate his social skills. Volunteering at the shelter enables Maxwell to build skills that will allow him to become better at performing his responsibilities and becoming a leader. Interacting with animals and visitors to the animal shelter enables Maxwell to unwind and relax, ensuring he can concentrate and focus on his responsibilities at school. When Maxwell is home, his main responsibility is to take care of the family dog and his own Hognose snake. his family knows that he has a lot of school responsibilities, and they think that giving Maxwell more contact with small animals is a good way to relieve the stress and anxiety he may feel. Companionship and interaction with the family pet helps Maxwell relax.

Technical Skills 

Maxwell joined a coding camp immediately after getting his first laptop at age 13 and has been slowly building his skills to ensure he becomes proficient. The programming skills gained by Maxwell have enabled him to become effective in building websites and cracking video games comprising of programming tasks. Utilizing his personal computer and resource skills, such as the computer laboratory, has enabled Maxwell to become better at researching and writing short projects in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Subject Domain and Knowledge

Maxwell’s intelligence enabled him to thrive in multiple subjects offered at Oak Bay High School since he has mental fortitude. For instance, Maxwell takes science, technology, engineering, and mathematics classes, enabling him to develop skills that help him navigate college and his career with ease. Maxwell gained spatial intelligence, which allows him to break down complex subjects into systems and components he can effectively execute. Playing video games and chess has improved Maxwell’s visual-spatial intelligence, enabling him to envision projects and activities in 3-dimension. Engaging colleagues and visitors to the animal shelter and classmates have helped Maxwell improve his emotional intelligence. Maxwell leverages his emotional intelligence to empathize with colleagues and fellow students, enabling him to form meaningful relationships.

Motivation and Desires 

Maxwell desires to score high grades, join the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and undertake a course in computer science. The skills gained through the class will enable Maxwell to become prepared to handle software programming tasks at University and later in his career. Maxwell expects that he will score exceptional grades in high school and later in his SAT scores since this, alongside his co-curricular activities, will determine whether he will get awarded a scholarship.

Obstacles 

Maxwell struggles with large classes and learning languages, an aspect that undermines his capacity to embrace new languages and become successful. Because he does not like to interact too much with people, he gets anxious in large classes (more than 80 people in the same classroom) because of the overwhelming number of people, which makes it impossible for him to concentrate in class. Because it is in a diverse city, there are people from all countries in the city, and even though English is the dominant language, the poor uptake of new languages will make it challenging for Maxwell to work and lead cross-cultural teams where he might be required to be multilingual. The freedom Maxwell has developed as he engages in multiple social activities has affected his time management skills and focus on studies. If not immediately managed, poor concentration and time management skills are likely to undermine Maxwell’s capacity to succeed.

Ideal Learning Context 

Maxwell’s ideal classroom is an environment where face-to-face contact with people can be reduced to reduce anxiety where all students are likely to get personalized interventions. Maxwell also acknowledges the importance of environment with minimal distractions since this allows him to concentrate better on the task at hand. Maxwell prefers classes where tutors are engaging and challenging since this pushes students to become creative and better at processing the current project.

Unique Assets 

Maxwell excels in several areas like spatial intelligence and critical thinking situations since this enables him to break down complex tasks into constituent parts, ensuring he formulates an effective strategy. Maxwell’s intrinsic motivation and commitment to the goals he develops allow him to succeed and eliminate distractions that can be counterproductive.

Persona characteristic	Barrier or challenges	Face-to-face environments	Distributed environments	Open environments
Color blindness (less severe symptoms)	Slightly visually impaired, can distinguish mainstream colors such as black and white.	Face-to-face teaching environments require educators to use contrasting colors whenever possible, with little impact.	Synchronization: Instructors are asked to use as few colors as possible when teaching. He can respond directly to the instructor for help with learning materials that he cannot see. Asynchronous: Instructional materials need to contain as few colors, pictures, and video screens as possible for the instructor to use. Text, as well as tables with obvious frames, are acceptable to him. Again when he encounters learning materials that are difficult to read he can respond to the instructor via Email or other permitted social software to get help.	In open learning, he needs the educator’s educational video screen to be as bright as possible. He will not receive the information well if the video screens and pictures appearing in the teaching resources have too many colors. Ability to adapt to the text.
Do not like to communicate	Because of his low self-esteem due to his color blindness and his poor language learning ability, he resists communicating too much with others.	face-to-face environment, A lack of communication will make it difficult for the teacher to know directly how he is doing and for him to get direct feedback from his classmates and the teacher on his learning outcomes. Discussions with teachers and classmates are essential in many classes. He must try to have more communication	In synchronous teaching, he can type and use text communication instead of verbal communication. But there is still an impact on classroom activities such as lectures. In asynchronous teaching, he can connect with classmates and teachers through Email, etc., without direct face-to-face communication. Again, this has an impact on classroom activities such as lectures.	In an open learning environment, he can use various social software to communicate with teachers and classmates, completely replacing verbal communication with text communication.
Busy schedule	He had to participate in many social activities in order to be able to join MIT and later in his career. This would result in less time for his studies.	A face-to-face teaching environment would lead to more crowding of his time, requiring the elimination of some social activities or a reduction in the number of classes.	Synchronous teaching will make his time more crowded and he will need to organize his time more wisely, possibly reducing the number of social activities or classes. Asynchronous teaching allows him to access learning materials at any time and place, and he can choose his own free time slots to complete his studies and assignments.	The open learning environment allows for more freedom in his schedule, and he is free to choose his study time without changing any other schedule.
Difficulty concentrating	When he is in a class with too many students (more than 80) he gets anxious because of the overwhelming number of students, causing him to lose concentration.	The face-to-face teaching environment will inevitably involve many large classroom sessions and many exams with many students in large classrooms. He will need to adjust to studying and taking exams in this environment.	The synchronous teaching environment requires him to attend classes with many classmates and may have a larger number of students compared to the face-to-face learning environment; however, the lessons through the software video screen may weaken his anxiety to a great extent and his attention may not be affected too much. In asynchronous teaching, he has the freedom to choose his study time and does not have to study with his classmates, which can ensure his regular learning efficiency.	In open learning, if the teaching resources and online technology platform used contain too many colors, it may cause his learning and completing assignments to be ineffective; and it may be difficult to get help for the online technology platform.
Proficiency technical skills	Prefer to use various online software to complete assignments instead of handwriting.	The face-to-face teaching environment inevitably involves a lot of handwritten assignments and exams, and he needs to get used to the format.	The distributed educational environment allows him to use any technology tools that are allowed in the classroom, and he can easily use them, which will help him in his learning.	In an open education environment, he can use any technology tool he wants to use to help him learn better.

Pitch

The methods of learning have evolved over a long period of time, and finding the one that works best for a particular learner from the numerous available options has emerged as the key to enhancing learning effectiveness. Who we are Maxwell, a 16-year-old who is color blind in contrast to the majority of people, also he is very sensitive. Maxwell attends Oak Bay High School, which has program that will help him perform better in school.

Based on Maxwell situation, Synchronous education can help him in some ways, but we think he is suitable for distributed asynchronous environment learning，It enables him to study more efficiently. For example, when he feels that the teacher’s video material is too colorful, he can communicate with the teacher in a timely manner. In a distributed environment, the teacher can pay better attention to his status and make timely adjustments. But the asynchronous teaching method suits him better, because for Maxwell, who is a poor language learner, he is not efficient at receiving content in languages other than his native language. Therefore, in asynchronous education, Maxwell is able to use tools like captioning and translation software to enhance his learning efficiency. On the other hand, he had to give up his time off to attend classes and extracurricular activities that would help him get into MIT in order to achieve his dream of getting into MIT. In asynchronous education, he can arrange his time more flexibly.

In asynchronous education, many instructors combine a number of applications to form an online course in a learning environment. These media provide an opportunity to provide a native learning environment using tools that individuals often use in their daily lives (Lisa, 2015). In addition, Maxwell is interested in using computer tools and has some foundation in using them, so he can better use them to meet his teacher’s requirements. in addition, he prefers an independent learning environment to a group class or office, so asynchronous education can place him in an independent environment that can better improve his learning efficiency.

Although open learning offers benefits, it also has drawbacks that coexist with it. For children with colorblindness concerns like Maxwell, open schooling has drawbacks. In open education, the teacher could utilize too many colours to attract students’ attention and make the class less monotonous for Maxwell’s learning process. Since Maxwell suffers from colour blindness, this “teaching feature” presented challenges for him. He had to brighten the screen in order to see the colours the teacher was using, but this approach did not entirely address Maxwell’s learning issues. However, the benefits of open-ended learning include that it encourages creativity and can accommodate the unique demands of some students, like Maxwell, who dislikes face-to-face interaction due to linguistic difficulties and has a busy schedule. These issues can be resolved by open learning. The greatest approach for Maxwell to solve his communication issues is by using text in a variety of ways instead of language, which on the other hand boosts Maxwell’s self-assurance but does nothing to assist him to develop his language skills. Since Maxwell has a busy schedule, the convenience and ease of learning are the biggest advantages of open education for him. Since he is not required to attend a specific location at a specific time every day, he can complete his studies whenever it is most convenient for him, which helps him increase his learning efficiency to some extent.

In general, such a study strategy requires learning more about the particular characteristics and learning environment of the subject. For a subject where the main goal is to acquire credits, distributed learning might not be the best solution. How well students learn is significantly impacted by the unique framework and structure of distributed learning. Understanding the study subject’s learning objectives can help us build a learning plan that works for the study subject on his terms. He is still too young, though, and open learning could cause his learning foundation to be insufficiently stable, which will affect his future development. This is true even though his many scenarios make both an open environment and a distributed environment equally ideal for him. We chose asynchronous distributed learning.

Johns, Hopkins University Press. Teaching Online: A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uvic/detail.action?docID=3318874.