Educationalizing Instagram for Virtual Instruction in COVID-19

Learning through social media platforms is a nascent pedagogy that opens up new virtual online e-instructional modalities and avenues to be explored especially in these challenging emergency times of COVID-19. This research focuses on a self-directed initiative of a math teacher who taught her students in an open virtual class via Instagram. This study explores how the main features of Instagram -inherently used as social interaction platform - were maximized for educational purposes. It also investigates the effects, be they positive or negative, on the learning-teaching process in terms of engagement and communication. For this, a mixed-method sequential exploratory design was opted for to conduct the study which surveyed 100 students across 22 different high schools who took part in the virtual open math classes. The findings highlight the different patterns of Instagram use and platform features that lend this social media website the requisite feasibility to educationalize it. Furthermore, the results reveal both the favourable and disadvantageous aspects of Instagram.

Higher Education Curriculum in the United States

The American collegiate curriculum has undergone significant change in the past two centuries. From its beginning through much of the 19th century a classical curricular approach prevailed, focusing on ancient languages and the liberal arts, while favoring recitation and debate as instructional modalities. The rise of “land-grant” institutions with a focus on practical instruction in agriculture, engineering, and military sciences in the later 19th century was a harbinger of change. It was followed by the rise of research institutions and comprehensive universities that further emphasized the importance of practical and professional education. The adoption of an elective approach to course-taking and the development of college majors led to debates about core curricula and the need for general education. Following publication of the famous Harvard Red Book in 1948, a broad consensus regarding the need for a liberal arts core emerged in the postwar era and has broadly persisted. Since the 1980s, new debates have emerged about the content of the core and curricular innovations intended to augment student learning. Older content representing a “canon” of received knowledge or wisdom has been challenged by proponents of non-Western, feminist, or oppressed minority perspectives, not always successfully. New instructional modalities, including online and “flipped” courses, have also impacted longstanding curricular practices. New models for assessing and planning collegiate curricula also have emerged. But if a particular theme has predominated in such changes, it is that student and societal demands for more practical and marketable learning outcomes have continued to exert an outsized influence on the ever evolving American collegiate curriculum.

Teaching Strategies in Literature Subjects in Pup Taguig Branch Towards the Development of Instructional Modalities

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