Group items tagged

Teachers become part of the learning process. They bring the expertise in the art of learning, metacognition, research, and pedagogy. Their role should be to model best practice, to coach, facilitate, organize, ask good questions, negotiate learning contracts and to provide a safe, intriguing environment for learning.

If projects were crowdsourced out to student/teacher networks, other classes could join in and build and learn together.

The teacher could operate in the role of curator and bring in important content and resources he/she felt added to the understanding and expertise of the student designers. Technology would have an important role to play, but quietly in the background supporting the learning.

I’ve finally made the connection between theory and application.  I witnessed firsthand the benefit of social constructivism.  It can be done.  Our etap687 course is a living proof.

I added several communication tools.  I want the students to feel that I want to talk to them.  I want them to hear and see me.  (again, teaching presence and social presence.)

They understand that collecting information and putting it on their blog is not a challenging task. They understand that an entry that paraphrases information found online is not as interesting and valuable as one that shows the author in the process of analyzing and reflecting on his or her research. Finally, they can see and understand how much effort is needed to produce an entry that makes a personal statement, that constitutes a valuable and unique contribution to the studied field. In other words, they now understand that in order to produce something uniquely their own, they first need to have a solid grasp of all the facts and spend some time reflecting on them and their own thoughts about their research.

Making Assessment Personally Relevant

technologies are being described as 'cognitive tools', w

Situated cognition can be summarised as follows:

Learning is situated and contextualised in action and everyday situations;

Knowledge is acquired through active participation;

Learning is a process of social action and engagement involving ways of thinking, doing and communicating;

Learning can be assisted by experts or supportive others and through apprenticeship

Learning is a form of participation in social environments.

Is cultural pluralism possible in instructional design?

cultural variations in interpreting and communicating information are influenced by pedagogical and instructional design decisions, and the cultural dimensions of learning must be constantly problematised and not marginalised (Wild & Henderson, 1997).

the inverted curriculum approach which attempts to design an instructional component from the minority perspective but fails to provide the learners with educationally valid experiences as it does not admit them into the mainstream culture;

the culturally unidimensional approach which excludes or denies cultural diversity and assumes that educational experiences are the same for minority students as they are for others.

Establish flexible and responsive student roles and responsibilities.

instructional design model,

endorses multiple cultural realities or zones of development (

Ten design principles for culturally inclusive instructional design

Adopt an epistemology that is consistent with, and supportive of constructivist learning and multiple perspectives.

Design authentic learning activities.

Create flexible tasks and tools for knowledge sharing.

Ensure different forms of support, within and outside the community.

multiple cultural model of instructional design. T

Provide communication tools and social interaction for learners to co-construct knowledge.

Create tasks for self direction, ownership and collaboration.

Ensure flexible tutoring and mentoring roles that are responsive to learner needs.

Create access to varied resources to ensure multiple perspectives. This can be achieved by moving away from instructivist approaches where all texts are prescribed by the teacher to constructive approaches where learners actively add to the resources by posting new URL's, suggesting additional resources of interest and discussing alternatives through the bulletin boards. For indigenous learners the creation and inclusion of the indigenous perspectives is an important dimension and a means of recognising and integrating cultural knowledge.

Provide flexibility in learning goals, outcomes and modes of assessment.

Culturally inclusive Web based environments should provide learning activities, supportive contexts, and learning processes that allow for inclusivity and flexibility, while offering learners a scaffolded, structured learning environment. To achieve this balance, instructional designers need to move beyond the narrowly prescriptive boundaries of current instructional design models. It is proposed that a multiple cultural model of design that caters for diversity, flexibility and cultural inclusivity in the design process affirms the social and cultural dimensions of constructed meaning.