Analyzing the e-learning principles in my storyboard

Explain the e-learning principles your lesson includes and how they promote critical thinking skills.

My storyboard about the observation and classification of leaves contains a variety of e-learning principles. The first principle used in the storyboard is that of personalization, which can be seen in the immediate introduction of an agent (Arbor) who speaks in a casual, friendly tone of voice when giving directions and describing assignments. Learners will be shown any scientific terminology on the screen, in order to provide visual support for the new words. Students are given pre-training about the process of observing leaves via a worked example using a sugar maple leaf. The worked example is segmented into steps during which students make observations about color, size, edges, and other aspects of the leaf. The visual component of the lesson includes realistic photos of a variety of leaves as well as the animation of Arbor, and minimizes distracting additional images. Throughout the lesson, Arbor will speak to students using a calm, accent-less voice will provide additional information to the text provided on the screen. This allows students to use both their visual and auditory learning channels. All labels and questions will be placed near the graphics they discuss, which enables readers to see the question and the graphic without having to track back and forth across a screen and struggle to remember where they were looking. For practice questions, students are given the same questions that were asked in the worked examples but applied to a variety of 10-15 different types of leaves. As students answer each question in relationship to one leaf, they are guided with directed feedback that will ask them to pick more colors if they only pick one color for a multicolored leaf or directed to a help video of how to make metric measurements if they are not within a certain measurement range that was selected by the teacher. This feedback is designed to immediately respond to student errors and guide them to the correct answer. Learners have minimal control, as they cannot advance until the practice questions are answered correctly, and there is little point in going backwards once they have correctly answered a question. Additional help and support are available at every question through Arbor. Collaboration occurs once students reach the classification segment of the lesson. Once students have worked through examples and practice questions on classification systems, they will be given a leaf to place in other students' classification systems and can leave comments and feedback on those other systems regarding how challenging the classification systems are and whether they found flaws in the systems. These various e-learning principles are combined in the lesson to promote critical thinking skills by providing support for students as they learn the basics of how to observe and classify leaves, then extend from that basic knowledge to challenge the students to create their own classification system using the leaves they have just observed.