The Instructional Strategy

Investing and Borrowing Money, Moodle Project

Completed as a requriement of the Masters of Learning Science and Technology course at the University of Sydney, 2007.

By Annette Culley:

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Instructional strategy
— identify strategy to achieve the terminal objectives; emphasis on presentation of information, practice and feedback, testing.

***Note- this is the original documentation created to start thinking about the instructional strategy for this course. Through the following documentation the stratetegy evolved making this document redundant. The final instructional strategy can be seen in detail in the Lessons and Tasks.

Week 1 Online Session Diagnostic test, Introduction, Discussion on resources (synchronous)
Title	Description	Purpose	Presentation	Resource	Practice	Feedback	Testing
Overview	Introductions to each other
diagnostic test	· Converting percentages into decimals · Increase and decrease by a percentage · Calculate simple interest · Basic operations with spreadsheets · Formulas in spreadsheets	To assess entry level skills and determine which of the introductory skills lessons the teacher needs to do and with whom. To determine which of the introductory skills should be read/view before they do the assignment.	Online test	Online test- (Name DiogTest)		Students are given individual feedback from the teacher on which IS skills they should view
Discuss project	Analyse promotional advertising material related to finance that is collected from a variety of sources including the Internet. eg loan repayments on a car or home purchases (applying Strategies, Reasoning, Communicating)

Week 1 Tasks Introductory Skills- (asynchronous individual work)
Title	Description	Purpose	Presentation	Resource	Practice	Feedback	Testing
IS 1	Percentage skills- writing a percentage as a decimal and Increasing and decreasing by a percentage		Text with diagrams (T+D) and Audio visual presentation (AVP)	Web page with AVP (Name PercentSkills)	Individual Spreadsheet Assignment on simple Interest to be handed in.	Teacher marks and gives written feedback via email	Formative Assesment feedback on Assignment
IS 2-	Calculating Simple Interest using a formula.		T+D	Web page (Name SimpleInt)
IS 3-	Basic operations and formulas on a spreadsheet.	To establish spreadsheet skills that will be required for problem solving with spreadsheets	T + D & AVP	Web page with AVP (Name SSOperations)
IS 4-	Calculating simple interest with spreadsheet.	Using the formula for simple interest on a spreadsheet	T + D & AVP	Web page with AVP (Name SimpleIntSS)
IS 5	calculating compound interest on investments	using repetition of the simple interest formula on	And excel spreadsheet template for students to fill out.	Web page with AVP (Name CompInt1.xls)
Week 2 Online Session Understanding the difference between simple and compound interest (synchronous)
Title	Description	Purpose	Presentation	Resource	Practice	Feedback	Testing
Problem 1 part 2	Present problem on comparing simple or compound interest options in practical situation eg loans	show that simple interest and compound interest investments differ Thinking strategy guess then investigate	Initial discussion in synchronous chat	Problem defined on a web page Classes guesses which is better in an anonymous poll		Poll results
Problem 1 part 2	Interpret spreadsheets when comparing simple interest and compound interest on an investment		A completed spreadsheet for the above problem	Need a chat room for each group	Break into small groups of 3-4 students to discuss completed spreadsheet	Present findings to whole class at end of activity
Problem 1 part 3	In CompInt1.xls how could we do it over 25 years or compound interest every 6 months?	Establish the need to find an easier way to do this.	Add on to the above spreadsheet to look at the returns over different time periods	Need a chat room for each group	Use the same groups as above	Present findings to whole class at end of activity

Week 2 Tasks Simple and Compound Interest
Title	Description	Purpose	Presentation	Resource	Practice	Feedback	Testing
	Questions and activities based on CompInt1.xls	To give students to carefully review the spreadsheet formulas
Problem 2	Give students a second problem/scenario and ask them to construct their own spreadsheet to model this problem	Get students to develop their own spreadsheet and think about what is going on in compound interest. The purpose of this is to also think in preparation for determining a formula for compound interest			This gives students a way to practice using spreadsheets for simple and compound interest

Week 3 Online Session Determining the formula for compound interest. (synchronous group and class work)
Title	Description	Purpose	Presentation	Resource	Practice	Feedback	Testing
Group activity	come up with a single formula for compound interest.	To construct a formula so several time frames can be calculated quickly		Web page on how to use absolute cell reference
Whole class activity 2.2-	present group answers and decide on class formula defining and using the formula for compound interest
	Interpret spreadsheets comparing simple interest and compound interest on an investment over various time periods	Compounding monthly or yearly?

Week 3 Tasks Compound interest over different time periods (asynchronous pair work on a problem)

Title

Description

Purpose

Presentation

Resource

Practice

Feedback

Testing

Group Activity 3.2-

Solve an investment problem using the formula for compound interest

i.e. question the advantages of interest being calculated on the basis of different time periods e.g. monthly rather than yearly

A “Which is the better investment” problem. Why? Guess then refine/justify answer

Asynchronous discussion with partner

Develop own spreadsheets and compare answers with partner.

Peer feedback and teacher feedback

Week 4 Online Session Depreciation
Title	Description	Purpose	Presentation	Resource	Practice	Feedback	Testing
	How do you decrease by a percentage?
	determining the formula for depreciation	To construct depreciation formula		Group chat rooms		peer	Report back to class
	class defines a formula to calculate depreciation	Group concensus / group cognition
	Use formula on a common problem.
Discuss project	Personal Finance-Something you plan to buy but have not got the money for yet. Look at a loan for it and the repayments versus saving money, investing it and buying the product when you have the money. Look at the pros and cons of each alternative. Analyse promotional advertising material related to finance that is collected from a variety of sources including the Internet. eg loan repayments on a car or home purchases (applying Strategies, Reasoning, Communicating)

Week 5 Class Presentation of Projects