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Mark Swartz

Role and Function of Theory in Online Education Development and Delivery - 3 views

  • According to Bonk and Reynolds (1997), to promote higher-order thinking on the Web, online learning must create challenging activities that enable learners to link new information to old, acquire meaningful knowledge, and use their metacognitive abilities; hence, it is the instructional strategy and not the technology tha
  • According to Bonk and Reynolds (1997), to promote higher-order thinking on the Web, online learning must create challenging activities that enable learners to link new information to old, acquire meaningful knowledge, and use their metacognitive abilities; hence, it is the instructional strategy and not the technology that influences the quality of learning.
  • However, it is not the computer per se that makes students learn, but the design of the real-life models and simulations, and the students' interaction with those models and simulations. The computer is merely the vehicle that provides the processing capability and delivers the instruction to learners (Clark, 2001).
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  • Online learning allows for flexibility of access, from anywhere and usually at anytime—essentially, it allows participants to collapse time and space (Cole, 2000)—however, the learning materials must be designed properly to engage the learner and promote learning.
  • Cognitive psychology claims that learning involves the use of memory, motivation, and thinking, and that reflection plays an important part in learning.
  • The development of effective online learning materials should be based on proven and sound learning theories.
  • Early computer learning systems were designed based on a behaviorist approach to learning. The behaviorist school of thought, influenced by Thorndike (1913), Pavlov (1927), and Skinner (1974), postulates that learning is a change in observable behavior caused by external stimuli in the environment (Skinner, 1974).
  • Therefore, before any learning materials are developed, educators must, tacitly or explicitly, know the principles of learning and how students learn.
  • Constructivist theorists claim that learners interpret information and the world according to their personal reality, and that they learn by observation, processing, and interpretation, and then personalize the information into personal knowledge (Cooper, 1993; Wilson, 1997).
  • The design of online learning materials can include principles from all three. According to Ertmer and Newby (1993), the three schools of thought can in fact be used as a taxonomy for learning. Behaviorists' strategies can be used to teach the “what” (facts), cognitive strategies can be used to teach the “how” (processes and principles), and constructivist strategies can be used to teach the “why” (higher level thinking that promotes personal meaning and situated and contextual learning).
  • The behaviorist school sees the mind as a “black box,” in the sense that a response to a stimulus can be observed quantitatively, totally ignoring the effect of thought processes occurring in the mind.
  • Learners should be told the explicit outcomes of the learning so that they can set expectations and can judge for themselves whether or not they have achieved the outcome of the online lesson. 2.  Learners must be tested to determine whether or not they have achieved the learning outcome. Online testing or other forms of testing and assessment should be integrated into the learning sequence to check the learner's achievement level and to provide appropriate feedback. 3.  Learning materials must be sequenced appropriately to promote learning. The sequencing could take the form of simple to complex, known to unknown, and knowledge to application. 4.  Learners must be provided with feedback so that they can monitor how they are doing and take corrective action if required.
  • Cognitivists see learning as an internal process that involves memory, thinking, reflection, abstraction, motivation, and meta-cognition.
  • Online instruction must use strategies to allow learners to attend to the learning materials so that they can be transferred from the senses to the sensory store and then to working memory.
  • Online learning strategies must present the materials and use strategies to enable students to process the materials efficiently.
  • information should be organized or chunked in pieces of appropriate size to facilitate processing.
  • Use advance organizers to activate an existing cognitive structure or to provide the information to incorporate the details of the lesson (Ausubel, 1960).
  • Use pre-instructional questions to set expectations and to activate the learners' existing knowledge structure.
  • Use prerequisite test questions to activate the prerequisite knowledge structure required for learning the new materials.
  • To facilitate deep processing, learners should be asked to generate the information maps during the learning process or as a summary activity after the lesson (Bonk & Reynolds, 1997).
  • The cognitive school recognizes the importance of individual differences, and of including a variety of learning strategies in online instruction to accommodate those differences
  • The Kolb Learning Style Inventory (LSI) (Kolb, 1984) looks at how learners perceive and process information, whereas the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Myers, 1978) uses dichotomous scales to measure extroversion versus introversion, sensing versus intuition, thinking versus feeling, and judging versus perception. In the following discussion, we consider the Kolb Learning Style Inventory.
  • Attention: Capture the learners' attention at the start of the lesson and maintain it throughout the lesson. The online learning materials must include an activity at the start of the learning session to connect with the learners. Relevance: Inform learners of the importance of the lesson and how taking the lesson could benefit them. Strategies could include describing how learners will benefit from taking the lesson, and how they can use what they learn in real-life situations. This strategy helps to contextualize the learning and make it more meaningful, thereby maintaining interest throughout the learning session. Confidence: Use strategies such as designing for success and informing learners of the lesson expectations. Design for success by sequencing from simple to complex, or known to unknown, and use a competency-based approach where learners are given the opportunity to use different strategies to complete the lesson. Inform learners of the lesson outcome and provide ongoing encouragement to complete the lesson. Satisfaction: Provide feedback on performance and allow learners to apply what they learn in real-life situations. Learners like to know how they are doing, and they like to contextualize what they are learning by applying the information in real life.
  • Online strategies that facilitate the transfer of learning should be used to encourage application in different and real-life situations.
  • Constructivists see learners as being active rather than passive.
  • it is the individual learner's interpretation and processing of what is received through the senses that creates knowledge.
  • “the process of using a prior interpretation to construe a new or revised interpretation of the meaning of one's experience in order to guide future action” (p. 12).
  • Learning should be an active process. Keeping learners active doing meaningful activities results in high-level processing, which facilitates the creation of personalized meaning. Asking learners to apply the information in a practical situation is an active process, and facilitates personal interpretation and relevance.
  • Learners should construct their own knowledge rather than accepting that given by the instructor.
  • Collaborative and cooperative learning should be encouraged to facilitate constructivist learning (H
  • When assigning learners for group work, membership should be based on the expertise level and learning style of individual group members, so that individual team members can benefit from one another's strengths.
  •   Learners should be given control of the learning process
  • Learners should be given time and opportunity to reflect.
  • Learning should be made meaningful for learners. The learning materials should include examples that relate to students, so that they can make sense of the information.
  • Learning should be interactive to promote higher-level learning and social presence, and to help develop personal meaning. According to Heinich et al. (2002), learning is the development of new knowledge, skills, and attitudes as the learner interacts with information and the environment. Interaction is also critical to creating a sense of presence and a sense of community for online learners, and to promoting transformational learning (Murphy & Cifuentes, 2001). Learners receive the learning materials through the technology, process the information, and then personalize and contextualize the information.
  • Figure 1-6. Components of effective online learning.
  • Behaviorist strategies can be used to teach the facts (what); cognitivist strategies to teach the principles and processes (how); and constructivist strategies to teach the real-life and personal applications and contextual learning. There is a shift toward constructive learning, in which learners are given the opportunity to construct their own meaning from the information presented during the online sessions. The use of learning objects to promote flexibility and reuse of online materials to meet the needs of individual learners will become more common in the future. Online learning materials will be designed in small coherent segments, so that they can be redesigned for different learners and different contexts. Finally, online learning will be increasingly diverse to respond to different learning cultures, styles, and motivations.
  • Online instruction occurs when learners use the Web to go through the sequence of instruction, to complete the learning activities, and to achieve learning outcomes and objectives (Ally, 2002; Ritchie & Hoffman, 1997).
  •  
    From:  FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY FOR ONLINE LEARNING
Jess Hazlewood

"Where's the Writer" TETYC March 2014 - 43 views

  • “Responders Are Taught, Not Born”
  • We contend that student writers will see greater value in peer response if they develop tools that allow them to participate more actively in the feedback process. With teaching suggestions like those above, writers can learn how to re-flect on their experiences with peer response. They can also learn to identify their needs as writers and how to ask questions that will solicit the feedback they need.
  • We like to limit each mock session to no more than seven minutes of back and forth between respondent and writer.
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  • class suggests that the writer’s question
  • This becomes a teachable moment. When the respondent asks for assistance from the class, this break in the session becomes an opportunity for the class to assist the writer and the respondent. The writer appears stuck, not knowing what to ask. And the respondent appears perplexed, too.
  • we follow Carl Anderson’s suggestion to teach students how to ask questions about their writing through role-playing.
  • dynamic list that students freely update throughout the semester on the class classro
  • organize the questions within categories such as tone, content, evidence-based support, style, and logistics
  • The end result is a robust list of questions for writers to ask of their respondents.
  • in-class discussion about effective and less effective questions for writers
  • raft three to five questions they have about the assignment to ask of their peers as they prepare to write or revise their assignment. When appropriate, we can direct our students to the course text, where there are
  • : pointing, summarizing, and reflecting
  • Students’ comments often point to their struggle to position themselves in peer response.
  • “What would it take for you to be in-vested as writers in peer response?” Students’ typical responses include the following:>“I need to know what to ask.” >“I don’t know what to ask about my writing, except for things like punctua-tion and grammar.”>“Does the person reading my work really know what the assignment is? Bet-ter than I do?”>“I’m not really sure if I’m supposed to talk or ask questions when someone is giving me feedback about my work, so I don’t really do anything. They write stuff on my paper. Sometimes I read it if I can, but I don’t really know what to do with it.”
  • it is important to offer activities to ensure that both respondents and writers are able to articulate a clear purpose of what they are trying to accomplish. These activities, guided by the pedagogies used to prepare writing center consultants
  • devote more attention to the respondent than to the writer, we may unwit-tingly be encouraging writers to be bystanders, rather than active participants, in the response process.
  • , “Feedback: What Works for You and How Do You Get It?”
  • highlight the value of both giving and getting feedback:In 56 pages near the end of this book, we’ve explained all the good methods we know for getting feedback from classmates on your writing. . . . The ability to give responses to your classmates’ writing and to get their responses to your own writing may be the most important thing you learn from this book. (B
  • we question whether textbooks provide emergent writers with enough tools or explicit models to engage actively in peer response conversations.
  • While such questions are helpful to emerging writers, who depend on modeling, they lack explanation about what makes them “helpful” questions. As a result, emerging writers may perceive them as a prescriptive set of questions that must be answered (or worse, a set of questions to be “given over” to a respondent), rather than what they are intended to be: questions that could advance the writer’s thoughts and agenda.
  • this information is limited to the instructor’s manual
  • llustrates the difference be-tween vague and helpful questions, pointing out that helpful questions
  • You will need to train students to ask good questions, which will help reviewers target their attention.Questions like “How can I make this draft better?” “What grade do you think this will get?” and “What did you think?” are not helpful, as they are vague and don’t reflect anything about the writer’s own thoughts. Questions like “Am I getting off topic in the introduction when I talk about walking my sister to the corner on her first day of school?” or “Does my tone on page 3 seem harsh? I’m trying to be fair to the people who disagree with the decision I’m describing” help readers understand the writer’s purpose and will set up good conversations. (Harrington 14, emphasis added
  • uestions” when soliciting feedback (like the advice we found in many textbooks), she also provides explicit examples for doing so
  • he most explicit advice for writers about ask-ing questions and, in effect, setting up good conversations is buried in an instruc-tor’s manual for The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing. In thi
  • “Getting Response” chapter later in the book, they will benefit from the textbook authors’ instructions that they should in fact use questions that will help them solicit their feedback
  • dependent on what parts of the textbook they choose to read
  • point writers to a specific set of questions that they should ask of their respondents. Such instructions take a notable step toward shifting the locus of control from the respondent to helping writers engage their peers in conversation.
  • there is no mention that writers might use them for purposes of soliciting feedback.
  • we see an opportunity for modeling that is not fully realized.
  • we argue that Faigley offers respondents specific examples that empower them to actively engage the process and give feedback. We contend that emergent writers need a similar level of instruction if they are to be agents in response.
  • textbook authors offer few examples for how to get specific feedback
  • Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff ’s first edition of A Community of Writers published in 1995, in which eleven “Sharing and Responding” techniques, d
  • we worked to understand how textbooks highlight the writer’s role in peer response.
  • We wanted to know what books tell writers about asking questions
  • lthough we do not discount the importance of teaching respondents how to give feedback, we argue that writers must also be taught how to request the feedback they desire.
  •  
    Writer's role in soliciting feedback during peer edit. Suggestions for modeling and training.
Shannon Smith

Need resources to assist in creating a 21st century learner training/ professional deve... - 133 views

Thank you! This is great information! James McKee wrote: > Shannon, > > I was recently referred to this video of Michael Wesch who teaches cultural anthropology at Kansas State University. He ...

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Carla Wimmersberger

Learning. Your time starts… now! | Betchablog - 47 views

  • If you accept that Learning is a Conversation, and that some of the most powerful learning can take place in the process of conversing and exchanging ideas with others, then setting up ways to have as many of these conversations as possible seems like an obvious thing to do.
  • It might be easy to think that the people on the stage at conferences have the knowledge and that if we simply listen to them we will get wisdom, but the truth is that sometimes it just doesn't work like that, and even if it does, most of those ideas gather far more momentum once we start to internalise them through further conversation with others. Ideas beget ideas, one thing leads to another, and you often find some of the best, most useful ideas come to you not from what was said by a speaker, but from things that came to to you as a result of further conversation about what was said.  (by the way, the same logic applies in classrooms too!)
  • If we limit our notion of learning to the "official" channel - the teacher, the textbook, the syllabus - we miss so much. Yes, learning happens at school, but what about outside school? Yes, learning happens in the classroom, but what about outside the classroom? Yes, learning happens in the act of "being taught", but what about when we are not "being taught"?
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  • Our schools system implies that when we ring the bell to signal the start of a class, we are really saying that the learning starts... wait for it... now!  And at the end of the lesson we ring it again to say the learning now stops. Ok, school's over, you can all stop learning now. Until tomorrow.
  • if we acknowledge that creativity in education is important, then how can we teach kids to be creative if we continue to focus on just regurgitating standard answers to standard questions, year after year. Because if it's only about learning pre-defined content then you don't need creativity, and you don't need conversation. Learning in messy and there is no point extending our thinking into new and creative areas if we aren't committed to that notion, because that just muddies up all those nice clean facts we have to remember.
  • Papert said that the one really valuable skill for a 21st century learner is that of being able to "learn to learn"... To be able not just to know the answers to what you were taught in school, but to know how to find the answers to those things you were not taught in school.
  • So how do virtual communities fit into this? They are an obvious and convenient way of extending conversations with other likeminded people, no matter where (or when) in the world they might be.
  • Unfor
  • If you accept that Learning is a Conversation , and that some of the most powerful learning can take place in the process of conversing and exchanging ideas with others, then setting up ways to have as many of these conversations as possible seems like an obvious thing to do.
  • If we limit our notion of learning to the "official" channel - the teacher, the textbook, the syllabus - we miss so much. Yes, learning happens at school, but what about outside school? Yes, learning happens in the classroom, but what about outside the classroom? Yes, learning happens in the act of "being taught", but what about when we are not "being taught"?  Our schools system implies that when we ring the bell to signal the start of a class, we are really saying that the learning starts... wait for it... now!   And at the end of the lesson we ring it again to say the learning now stops. Ok, school's over, you can all stop learning now. Until tomorrow.
  •  if we acknowledge that creativity in education is important, then how can we teach kids to be creative if we continue to focus on just regurgitating standard answers to standard questions, year after year. Because if it's only about learning pre-defined content then you don't need creativity, and you don't need conversation. Learning in messy and there is no point extending our thinking into new and creative areas if we aren't committed to that notion, because that just muddies up all those nice clean facts we have to remember.
Jenny Gough

An Introduction to Inquiry-Based Learning - 122 views

  •  
    "What kinds of questions make for good inquiry-based projects? As we said, they must first be questions that the kids truly care about because they come up with them themselves. In addition, good questions share the following characteristics: The questions must be answerable. "What is the poem 'Dream Deferred' based on?" is answerable. "Why did Langston Hughes write it?" may be answerable if such information exists, or if the students have some relevant and defensible opinions. "Why did he choose this particular word in line six?" is not answerable because the only person likely to know such a specific answer is Hughes himself, now deceased. The answer cannot be a simple fact. "In what year was Lincoln killed?" doesn't make for a very compelling project because you can just look it up in any number of books or Web sites. "What factors caused the assassination attempt?" might be a good project because it will require research, interpretation, and analysis. The answer can't already be known. "What is hip-hop music?" is a bit too straightforward and the kids are not likely to learn much more than they know already. "What musical styles does hip-hop draw from and how?" offers more opportunity for exploration. The questions must have some objective basis for an answer. "Why is the sky blue?" can be answered through research. "Why did God make the sky blue?" cannot because it is a faith-based question. Both are meaningful, valid, real questions, but the latter isn't appropriate for an inquiry-based project. "What have people said about why God made the sky blue?" might be appropriate. Likewise, "Why did the dinosaurs become extinct?" is ultimately unanswerable in that form because no humans were around to know for sure, but "What do scientists believe was the reason for their extinction?" or "What does the evidence suggest about the cause?" will work. Questions based on value judgments don't work for similar reasons. You can't objectively answer "Is Hamle
robert morris

Education Theory/Constructivism and Social Constructivism - UCD - CTAG - 56 views

  • Deep roots classical antiquity. Socrates, in dialogue with his followers, asked directed questions that led his students to realize for themselves the weaknesses in their thinking.
    • Manuel Condoleon
       
      Good link to Socrates
    • robert morris
       
      I think this is the essence of teaching and learning - asking questions, for nothing is really true.
  • Emphasis is on the collaborative nature of learning and the importance of cultural and social context.
    • robert morris
       
      I agree - context, and culture play a very important role. And this might change from corner to corner, it can change quickly, neighbours etc
  • Believed that constructivists such as Piaget had overlooked the essentially social nature of language and consequently failed to understand that learning is a collaborative process.
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  • Constructivist learning environments provide multiple representations of reality
  • Multiple representations avoid oversimplification and represent the complexity of the real world
  • Constructivist learning environments emphasize authentic tasks in a meaningful context rather than abstract instruction out of context.
  • Constructivist learning environments provide learning environments such as real-world settings or case-based learnin
  • Constructivist learning environments encourage thoughtful reflection on experience.
  • Constructivist learning environments support "collaborative construction of knowledge through social negotiation, not competition among learners for recognition.
  • Jonassen (1994)
  • There is no absolute knowledge, just our interpretation of it. The acquisition of knowledge therefore requires the individual to consider the information and - based on their past experiences, personal views, and cultural background - construct an interpretation of the information that is being presented to them.
  • Teaching styles based on this approach therefore mark a conscious effort to move from these ‘traditional, objectivist models didactic, memory-oriented transmission models’ (Cannella & Reiff, 1994) to a more student-centred approach.
  • Students ‘construct’ their own meaning by building on their previous knowledge and experience. New ideas and experiences are matched against existing knowledge, and the learner constructs new or adapted rules to make sense of the world
  • John Dewey (1933/1998) is often cited as the philosophical founder of this approach
  • while Vygotsky (1978) is the major theorist among the social constructivists.
  • Bruner (1990) and Piaget (1972) are considered the chief theorists among the cogn
  • Dewey
  • Piaget
  • John Dewey rejected the notion that schools should focus on repetitive, rote memorization & proposed a method of "directed living" – students would engage in real-world, practical workshops in which they would demonstrate their knowledge through creativity and collaboration
  • Piaget rejected the idea that learning was the passive assimilation of given knowledge. Instead, he proposed that learning is a dynamic process comprising successive stages of adaption to reality during which learners actively construct knowledge by creating and testing their own theories of the world.
  • A common misunderstanding regarding constructivism is that instructors should never tell students anything directly but, instead, should always allow them to construct knowledge for themselves. This is actually confusing a theory of pedagogy (teaching) with a theory of knowing. Constructivism assumes that all knowledge is constructed from the learner’s previous knowledge, regardless of how one is taught. Thus, even listening to a lecture involves active attempts to construct new knowledge.
  • social interaction lay at the root of good learning.
  • Bruner builds on the Socratic tradition of learning through dialogue, encouraging the learner to come to enlighten themselves through reflection
  • Careful curriculum design is essential so that one area builds upon the other. Learning must therefore be a process of discovery where learners build their own knowledge, with the active dialogue of teachers, building on their existing knowledge.
  • Social constructivism was developed by Vygotsky. He rejected the assumption made by Piaget that it was possible to separate learning from its social context.
    • robert morris
       
      On Vgotsky`s side here - I don`t think you can forget the role of "social learning", peer to peer learning and the role of social interaction.
  • The basic tenet of constructivism is that students learn by doing rather than observing.
  • By the 1980s the research of Dewey and Vygotsky had blended with Piaget's work in developmental psychology into the broad approach of constructivism
  • 1. Discovery Learning (Bruner) In discovery learning, the student is placed in problem solving situations where they are required to draw on past experiences and existing knowledge to discover facts, relationships, and new information. Students are more likely to retain knowledge attained by engaging real-world and contextualised problem-solving than by traditional transmission methods. Models that are based upon discovery learning model include: guided discovery, problem-based learning, simulation-based learning, case-based learning, and incidental learning.
Brandie Hayes

What are questions? by Jason Fried of 37signals - 43 views

  • “Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question – you have to want to know – in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.”
  • “Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question – you have to want to know – in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.”
    • Eric Nentrup
       
      I really like this acknowledgement of the role questions play in our cognitive process. They aren't just the knowledge equivalent of a meal ticket...they're our dinner date!
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  • Questions are your mind’s receptors for answers. If you aren’t curious enough to want to know why, to want to ask questions, then you’re not making the room in your mind for answers. If you stop asking questions, your mind can’t grow.
  •  
    Interesting statement about the role of questionging in acquiring new infomation. Your mind has to ask the question in order for your brain to have a place to hold onto the information.....interesting perspective. 
  •  
    I frequently say a similar thing when I talk about having students share their questions after a first reading. Their questions are such a great diagnostic of what they are ready to learn! Having students ask and answer their own questions not only gives them the info. they need now, but teaches them to be self-directed learners for a lifetime.
Nigel Coutts

When designing student learning, what questions guide us? - The Learner's Way - 24 views

  •  
    We ask lots of questions as we plan for our student's learning. Some of the questions we ask are about where they are with their learning. But perhaps we miss one important question along the way. Maybe we should be asking questions about how our students will apply what they learn? 
Roland Gesthuizen

A driving question is the most important element of a PBL unit « EduRuminate - 1 views

  • Questions generated for research were based on the provocation and a focus question why do teens make stupid choices? As the questions generated for this task were generated by the students themselves they found them intrinsically motivating.
  • If you want students to have a voice and to have choice as well as developing a need to know about some area of content, then they should be generating their own questions.
  •  
    "While I agree all are important, I feel the most important factor in good PBL is a great driving question. If you find the right questions then most of the other factors identified are covered automatically. How do you generate a great question and who is the right person to generate that question?"
maureen greenbaum

The Future of Learning: An Interview with Alfred Bork - 82 views

  • nteraction should be frequent
  • as in human conversation
  • active environment maintains student interest for a long period of time, even with difficult learning material.
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  • the computer, keeping detailed records on student performance and using these records in making decisions about what is next to be presented to the student.
  • In our traditional learning environments, some students learn and some do not. It is this second group of students that we want to help.
  • problem of almost all modern learning is the lecture, a noninteractive way of learning
  • , on a moment-to-moment basis, just what the student knows and just what learning problems are occurring
  • It begins immediately with a question, with no preceding text.
  • experience the joy of discovery.
  • tutorial approach to learning makes it possible for everyone to learn.
  • critical factor is that we can react to individual student problems
  • key concept for structuring highly interactive learning experiences is the Benjamin Bloom concept of mastery learning.
  • goal is for everyone to learn everything to the mastery level, grades will no longer be useful
  • A student who has not learned in one way probably needs a different approach, rather than another go-round with the material that was not previously successful in assisting learning.
  • In such an environment, learning and evaluation are no longer separate activities but are part of the same process, intimately blended. So the student is not conscious of taking tests, and we avoid the problems of cheating.
  • highly interactive learning is intrinsically motivating. Motivation is particularly important in a distance-learning environment, since none of the "threats" of the classroom, such as low grades, are available.
  • mastery-based computer segment could also offer human contact. Small groups could work together, either locally or remotely via electronic communication.
  • existing authoring systems. Since they were, and still are, mostly directed toward supplying information, these were inadequate for creating highly interactive software.
  • Bertrand Ibrahim at the University of Geneva,
  • omputer stores much of the information as the students progress through the material.
  • Teaching faculty, in the sense that we know them today, may cease to exist, except for in smaller, advanced courses. But their skills and experiences will be important in the design of learning modules.
  • High costs of development can lead to low costs per student, if many students use the material.
  • $30,000 per student-hour of high-quality learning material
  • highly effective highly interactive distance-learning courses would have a large potential market, making them much cheaper per student than current courses, and if well developed, they will be much superior for almost all students
  • The typical approach is to give some released time to faculty and to give limited support for programming and media production. It is unlikely, almost impossible, that good learning material will be developed this way.
  • Universities are too stuck in their current ways of doing things to be able to compete with well-developed material from "outside." Most university faculty and administrators do not appreciate the current problems of learning and so are not prepared for these future directions.
Lisa Francine

School Library Monthly - Student Inquiry and Web 2.0 - 54 views

  •  
    "The Stripling Inquiry Model has six phases; however, it's not a linear process but rather a recursive one in which the learner might revisit a previous stage to ask additional questions or organize information, as the need arises. Each phase involves critical thinking skills that empower young people to learn on their own and develop the thinking skills to be independent, lifelong learners. The phases are as follows: Connect: observe, experience, connect a subject to self and previous knowledge Wonder: predict, develop questions and hypotheses Investigate: find and evaluate information to answer questions, test hypotheses Construct: draw conclusions, arrive at new understandings Express: apply understandings to a new context, share learning with others Reflect: examine one's own learning and ask new questions (Stripling 2003, 8). Technology and, in particular, Web 2.0 tools and services can be used throughout the inquiry process to support the appropriate thinking skills. The key is to focus on student learning, not the Web 2.0 technology. The focus is on the phase(s) of inquiry at which students are concentrating and deciding which technology tool can best support the thinking processes and instructional strategies of that phase of inquiry. This increases the effectiveness of both the learning experience and the use of technology. An outline of the inquiry phases aligned with Web 2.0 technology tools and instructional strategies can be seen in Figure 2."
marcmancinelli

Big Ideas - Exploring the Essential Questions of Education - 46 views

  • here are at least three very good reasons, particularly for educators, to ask enduring questions. However, I will first define what I mean by an enduring question. What makes a question enduring is its transcendent quality.
  • However, I will first define what I mean by an enduring question. What makes a question enduring is its transcendent quality. That is, a question that continues to be asked again and again, despite ages and sages. It is a really profound question that goes beyond human comprehension, but if not asked, would detract from our humanity. Enduring questions are ones that challenge the greatest minds and intrigue the simplest ones (i.e. children).
  • We should ask enduring questions because they lead to thoughtful, soul searching reflection about great ideas.
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  • Enduring questions make life and learning engaging and interesting
  • Enduring questions lead to more questions.
Maureen Greenbaum

L3D Philosophy - 36 views

  • uture is not out there to be "discovered": It has to be invented and designed.
  • Learning is a process of knowledge construction, not of knowledge recording or absorption. Learning is knowledge-dependent; people use their existing knowledge to construct new knowledge. Learning is highly tuned to the situation in which it takes place. Learning needs to account for distributed cognition requiring knowledge in the head to combined with knowledge in the world. Learning is affected as much by motivational issues as by cognitive issues.
  • previous notions of a divided lifetime-education followed by work-are no longer tenable.
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  • Professional activity has become so knowledge-intensive and fluid in content that learning has become an integral and inseparable part of "adult" work activities.
  • require educational tools and environments whose primary aim is to help cultivate the desire to learn and create, and not to simply communicate subject matter divorced from meaningful and personalized activity.
  • current uses of technology in education: it is used as an add-on to existing practices rather than a catalyst for fundamentally rethinking what education should be about in the next century
  • information technologies have been used to mechanize old ways of doing business‹rather than fundamentally rethinking the underlying work processes and promoting new ways to create artifacts and knowledge.
  • important challenge is that the ?ld basic skillsº such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, once acquired, were relevant for the duration of a human life; modern ?asic skillsº (tied to rapidly changing technologies) will change over time.
  • We need computational environments to support "new" frameworks for education such as lifelong learning, integration of working and learning, learning on demand, authentic problems, self-directed learning, information contextualized to the task at hand, (intrinsic) motivation, collaborative learning, and organizational learning.
  • Instructionist approaches are not changed by the fact that information is disseminated by an intelligent tutoring system.
  • Lifelong learning is a continuous engagement in acquiring and applying knowledge and skills in the context of authentic, self-directed problems.
  • ubstantial empirical evidence that the chief impediments to learning are not cognitive. It is not that students cannot learn; it is that they are not well motivated to learn.
  • Most of what any individual "knows" today is not in her or his head, but is out in the world (e.g., in other human heads or embedded in media).
  • technology should provide ways to "say the 'right' thing at the 'right' time in the 'right' way
  • challenge of whether we can create learning environments in which learners work hard, not because they have to, but because they want to. We need to alter the perception that serious learning has to be unpleasant rather than personally meaningful, empowering, engaging, and even fun.
  • making information relevant to the task at hand, providing challenges matched to current skills, creating communities (among peers, over the net), and providing access to real practitioners and experts.
  • What "basic skills" are required in a world in which occupational knowledge and skills become obsolete in years rather than decades?
  • reduce the gap between school and workplace learning
  • How can schools (which currently rely on closed-book exams, the solving of given problems, and so forth) be changed so that learners are prepared to function in environments requiring collaboration, creativity, problem framing, and distributed cognition?
  • problem solving in the real world includes problem framing calls into question the practice of asking students to solve mostly given problems.
  • teachers should see themselves not as truth-tellers and oracles, but as coaches, facilitators, learners, and mentors engaging with learners
anonymous

Harvard Education Letter - 126 views

  • When students know how to ask their own questions, they take greater ownership of their learning, deepen comprehension, and make new connections and discoveries on their own.
  • Typically, questions are seen as the province of teachers, who spend years figuring out how to craft questions and fine-tune them to stimulate students’ curiosity or engage them more effectively.
  • to introduce students to a new unit, to assess students’ knowledge to see what they need to understand better, and even to conclude a unit to see how students can, with new knowledge, set a fresh learning agenda for themselves. The technique can be used for all ages.
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  • ask as many questions as you can; do not stop to discuss, judge, or answer any of the questions; write down every question exactly as it was stated; and change any statements into questions.
  • for an open-ended thinking process.
  • The teacher begins this step by introducing definitions of closed- and open-ended questions.
  • “Choose the three questions you most want to explore further.”
  • Students will be asking all the questions. A teacher’s role is simply to facilitate that process. This is a significant change for students as well.
  •  
    Mike and I have been using this in our classrooms for a few years and it has really made a difference...it helps to inspire learning.  
trisha_poole

A Brief Guide to Learning Faster (and Better) « Scott H Young - 82 views

  • Anything that can be learned falls broadly into two categories: things you need to understand intellectually, and skills you need to be able to perform. Most things you want to learn involve a mix of the two.
  • ee the distinction between skills and concepts, you can devise two separate learning strategies for each.
  • Rule #1: Practice for Skills, Connections for Concepts
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  • Rule #2: Concepts before Facts (95% of the time)
  • Patterns make concepts useful, patternless concepts tend to have a very limited use, so they aren’t studied that much.
  • But it needs more time to mature in the back of your head while you do other things. Worse, it utterly fails when put under intense stress or time constraints.
  • Rule #4: Concept Checklists are Useful
  • Then create a second-order list under each of the larger bullet points with sub-concepts.
  • Write out (I suggest on a word document, since it allows multiple levels of bullets) all of the major concepts covered in your course.
  • Heuristics for Learning Better
  • A concept checklist is a good way to handle those scary, “I don’t understand anything!” moments that many learners face. It allows you to dissolve the frightening implications of total ignorance into a step-by-step guide that can allow you to slowly conquer any subject.
  • Tactic #1: The 5-Year Old Method
  • Tactic #2: Metaphors
  • I recommend brainstorming for metaphors. Start with open-ended questions like: This idea reminds me of…? This idea is used in real-life situations, such as…? What phenomenon mimics this idea? If I wanted to tell a story about this idea, it would go like…?
  • Tactic #3: Visceralization
  • combine smell, feeling and motion into an image, not just a picture.
  • Tactic #4: Deep Linking
  • if you know you don’t actually have to deeply learn the material, going deeper into a subject can actually make the original idea easier to understand.
  • How to Learn Faster and Better
  •  
    1. How to Learn Faster - The basics of learning better 2. How to Learn Anything - Rules of thumb to master hard subjects 3. Tactics for Learning Better - Specific methods to learn faster
Roland Gesthuizen

Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom | Faculty Focus - 31 views

  • We need to ask good questions so that students see the importance of questions—how they make us think and help us learn. Eventually students may start asking better questions themselves, including ones we can’t answer. And those are the best questions of all.
  •  
    "Good questions make students think, they encourage participation and I think they improve the caliber of the answers students give and the questions they ask. To achieve those worthwhile outcomes more regularly, I'd like to recommend three actions that have the potential to improve our questioning."
Amy Roediger

Reading Strategies for 'Informational Text' - NYTimes.com - 172 views

  • Four Corners and Anticipation Guides:Both of these techniques “activate schema” by asking students to react in some way to a series of controversial statements about a topic they are about to study. In Four Corners, students move around the room to show their degree of agreement or disagreement with various statements — about, for instance, the health risks of tanning, or the purpose of college, or dystopian teen literature. An anticipation guide does the same thing, though generally students simply react in writing to a list of statements on a handout. In this warm-up to a lesson on some of the controversies currently raging over school reform, students can use the statements we provide in either of these ways.
  • Gallery Walks:A rich way to build background on a topic at the beginning of a unit (or showcase learning at the end), Gallery Walks for this purpose are usually teacher-created collections of images, articles, maps, quotations, graphs and other written and visual texts that can immerse students in information about a broad subject. Students circulate through the gallery, reading, writing and talking about what they see.
  • Graphic Organizers:
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  • Making Text-to-Text/Text-to-Self/Text-to-World connectionsCharting Debatable IssuesListing Facts/Questions/ResponsesIdentifying Cause and EffectSupporting Opinions With FactsTracking The Five W’s and an HIdentifying Multiple Points of ViewIdentifying a Problem and SolutionComparing With a Venn Diagram
  • The One-Pager:Almost any student can find a “way in” with this strategy, which involves reacting to a text by creating one page that shows an illustration, question and quote that sum up some key aspect of what a student learned.
  • “Popcorn Reads”:Invite students to choose significant words, phrases or whole sentences from a text or texts to read aloud in random fashion, without explanation. Though this may sound pointless until you try it, it is an excellent way for students to “hear” some of the high points or themes of a text emerge, and has the added benefit of being an activity any reader can participate in easily.
  • Illustrations:Have students create illustrations for texts they’re reading, either in the margins as they go along, or after they’ve finished. The point of the exercise is not, of course, to create beautiful drawings, but to help them understand and retain the information they learn.
  •  
    Update | Feb. 2012: We'll be exploring the new Common Core State Standards, and how teaching with The Times can address them, through a series of blog posts. You can find them all here, tagged "the NYT and the CCSS."
  •  
    A good list of reading strategies for informational text from the New York Times.
anonymous

Rethinking the Way College Students Are Taught - 52 views

  • But here's the irony. "Mary is more likely to convince John than professor Mazur in front of the class," Mazur says. "She's only recently learned it and still has some feeling for the conceptual difficulties that she has whereas professor Mazur learned [the idea] such a long time ago that he can no longer understand why somebody has difficulty grasping it." That's the irony of becoming an expert in your field, Mazur says. "It becomes not easier to teach, it becomes harder to teach because you're unaware of the conceptual difficulties of a beginning learner."
  • To make sure his students are prepared, Mazur has set up a web-based monitoring system where everyone has to submit answers to questions about the reading prior to coming to class. The last question asks students to tell Mazur what confused them. He uses their answers to prepare a set of multiple-choice questions he uses during class.
  • Mazur begins class by giving a brief explanation of a concept he wants students to understand. Then he asks one of the multiple-choice questions. Students get a minute to think about the question on their own and then answer it using a mobile device that sends their answers to Mazur's laptop. Next, he asks the students to turn to the person sitting next to them and talk about the question. The class typically erupts in a cacophony of voices, as it did that first time he told students to talk to each other because he couldn't figure out what else to do. Once the students have discussed the question for a few minutes, Mazur instructs them to answer the question again.
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    • anonymous
       
      Why do we continue to do things the same way we always have and expect different results from what we have always gotten?
    • anonymous
       
      How true this statement is!  If students want to learn, they are going to learn in spite of who the teacher is or what the teacher does - no teacher is really needed!
  • So Mazur gave what he thought was a thorough and thoughtful explanation of the concept. He went slowly, putting all kinds of helpful diagrams up on the board. "I thought I'd nailed it," he says. "I thought it was the best explanation one could possibly give of this question." Mazur triumphantly turned around. "Any questions?" he asked. The students just stared at him. "Nobody raised their hand and said, well but what if this and what if that, simply because they were so confused they couldn't," he says. "I didn't know what to do. But I knew one thing. I knew that 50 percent of the students had given the right answer."
    • anonymous
       
      How many times have we done this when we are providing direct instructions to students and then felt frustration when we assess what they know?  ARGH!
    • anonymous
       
      Watch this video!
    • anonymous
       
      The same probably goes for info that is simply read and not annotated or discussed.  It is probably also true for info gained from a video or movie...
    • anonymous
       
      This would be an effective use of Socrative or WallWisher!
Frederick Eberhardt

Powerful Learning: Studies Show Deep Understanding Derives from Collaborative Methods |... - 85 views

  • In essence, students must learn how to learn, while responding to endlessly changing technologies and social, economic, and global conditions.
  • students learn more deeply if they have engaged in activities that require applying classroom-gathered knowledge to real-world problems.
  • developing inquiring minds
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  • Studies of problem-based learning suggest that it is comparable, though not always superior, to more traditional instruction in teaching facts and information. However, this approach has been found to be better in supporting flexible problem solving, reasoning skills, and generating accurate hypotheses and coherent explanations.
  • design challenges need to be carefully planned, and they emphasized the importance of dynamic feedback.
  • When students have no prior experience with inquiry learning, they can have difficulty generating meaningful driving questions and logical arguments and may lack background knowledge to make sense of the inquiry.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      Absolutely true. I discovered this when I used inquiry-based methods with my students in Qatar who were used to rote learning. They truly did not know where to start. They first needed to learn *how* to be inquisitive.
  • Requiring students to track and defend their thinking focused them on learning and connecting concepts in their design work
  • All the research arrives at the same conclusion: There are significant benefits for students who work together on learning activities.
  • groups outperform individuals on learning tasks and that individuals who work in groups do better on later individual assessments.
  • In successful group learning, teachers pay careful attention to the work process and interaction among students.
  • "It is not enough to simply tell students to work together. They must have a reason to take one another's achievement seriously.
  • She and her colleagues developed Complex Instruction, one of the best-known approaches, which uses carefully designed activities requiring diverse talents and interdependence among group members.
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      Interesting... worth checking out.
  • They require changes in curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices -- changes that are often new for teachers and students.
  •  
    A scholarly article with tremendous real-world practical implications and suggestions. Love this.
  •  
    A scholarly article with tremendous real-world practical implications and suggestions. Love this.
  •  
    Vocational Education meets Research in the dynamic classroom of Linda Darling-Hammond, 2008. The students are doing the research, teaching and learning. They control their own destiny and they are taking the world by storm! They are not waiting to be taught, they are teaching each other and themselves as teams of researchers. Darling-Hammond, L. (2008). Powerful learning: what we know about teaching for understanding. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Maureen Greenbaum

Do Teachers Need to Relearn How to Learn? - Redefining my role: Teacher as student - 165 views

  • if a teacher can do a few basic computer skills (format in MS Word, copy and paste, attach a document to an email or upload a photo, and perhaps add a hyperlink) they should be able to transfer that knowledge across various internet programs.
  • Teachers sometimes express surprise when a student can’t write a response to a question that is virtually the same as one they answered the day before simply because it is worded differently. Yet teachers can’t apply what they know about Facebook (or shutterfly, gmail, youtube, etc.) to use edmodo or a wiki? I’m not saying they should be able to master a new program immediately – like anything new it takes time, but they should have the flexibility of thinking to apply what they already know. If teachers can’t transfer their knowledge, how are they going to teach students to do so?
  • Learners are no longer dependent on learning directly from an expert, the information is literally at their fingertips, they just need to know how to access it. And most important, learners of all ages need to be the drivers of their learning. Just like our students, teachers need to seek answers through active exploration. Again, if we are not independent learners, how can we expect our students to be?
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  • Dependent on PD
  • Besides the lack of time and/or motivation, I’m beginning to wonder if teachers really know how to learn new skills independently. We come from a system of education where everything was fed to us. As a student (even through my master’s degree), if I was told I needed to learn something there was a clear process I had to go through to learn it; sign up (and pay) for the right course with the available expert, buy some textbooks, go to class, follow directions, and collect my credits to show that I had learned it. Most PD follows a similar process (although greatly abbreviated). So that is the paradigm that teachers have for their own learning – they feel that they need to be taught something in order to learn it. I’m not sure that they know there is now another way to learn, especially where learning about technology is concerned. But how would they know this new way of learning if it’s rarely been modeled for them? And if this is how they view their own learning, can we really expect them to teach students how to be independent learners?
  •  
    Great insight and reflection on how we learn and how we expect our students to learn.
  •  
    Main points are in a slideshow here: http://www.slideshare.net/sdimbert/relearn
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