Group items tagged

When situated learning theory (SLT) is investigated, it can be seen that most of the articles or documents mention learning by doing within an actual context. The first thing that comes to mind is the real world environment while someone mentions the SLT. What if we want to form a "legitimate peripheral participation" environment to learn a concept by the boundaries of online platforms? How can we design online platforms by using situated learning theory?

"Participation Learning becomes a social process dependent upon transactions with others. Learning is not separated from the world of action but exists in robust, complex, social environments made up of actors, actions, and situations. How to incorporate participation in online learning? *Create discussion boards to enable students to reflect socially *Encourage engagement in discussions and issues presented *Require students to present/defend their arguments in forums, discussion groups, bulletin boards *Encourage students to engage in critical reflection with other *Instructors should continually assess the growth of the student, and let the student know " These are the principles applied in our 542 course. We are experiencing situated cognition in progress.

When I read about situated cognition, I saw that cognitive constructivism, social constructivism and situated cognition are the same in manner that all reject objectivist point of view to teaching. However, since they are three different theories, I wonder what makes them different from each other.  I encountered this article in which differences are well emphasized. According to the article: Cognitive constructivism says that people learn by building on their previous experiences with the environment. Since individuals have different history of experiences, same type of didactic teaching is not effective. Cognitive constructivism focuses on mainly individual. Social constructivism purports that knowledge are co-constructed by members of groups from different cultural backgrounds and learning environments should foster collaborative learning. Social constructivism mainly focuses on groups rather than individuals. Situated cognition, on the other hand, suggests that regardless of the fact that concepts are handled as individuals or as groups, if those concepts are not taught within their actual-natural context, learning of those concepts are meaningless and inert. Situated cognition mainly focuses on the context.

the page briefly and clearly defines what situated learning is, and shows how to create authentic learning contexts by using digital media. There are very short videos showing situated learning genres and some handouts which can be helpful in the class.

While I was reading about interactive case scenarios, I remembered some of my friends playing a game on the Internet called "fantasy role play". I am sure most of us have already heard about it because it is very popular among METU students. Actually the major aim of the game is to have some fun, but it can also be organized as a learning tool.

Thanks for sharing the examples. I already started thinking about how to integrate these into teacher training programs.

This is a nice little newsletter that mentions some characteristics of situated learning. Some resources on situated learning and its usage in learning environments are offered !

Firstly, it was a nice source to read, thanks for sharing it. I agree with you time concerns, teacher and student charateristics are prominent to implement the principles of situated learning in practice. It is really difficult to create authentic learning environment in our classes under the stess of keeping up with the curriculum which is based on traditional theories of learning. Thus, it is the work of the curriculum specialists to revise the curricula to be more in line with the improvements in the field of learning sciences.

There is a case study which I really advise you to look at it. It is about a political course in which they took a government's problem about content and design of websites. He says "given all the considerations at work in municipal government, the students will decide how the power of the web can best be brought to bear on making government work better."

There are many theories in this page that we should be interested in in this page as learning sciences students. An example of two groundbreaking research results in learning sciences is (1) Entwistle's Phenomenography theory This conceptual framework focuses on the experience of learning from the student's perspective and is based upon a phenomenological approach to research. Entwistle explains: "Our task is thus to describe more clearly how learning takes place in higher education and to point out how teaching and assessment affect the quality of learning. From these descriptions teachers should be able to draw their own lessons about how to facilitate their students' learning" (Marton, Hounsell & Entwistle, 1984, p.1). (2) Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory According to cognitive dissonance theory, there is a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions (i.e., beliefs, opinions). When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance. In the case of a discrepancy between attitudes and behavior, it is most likely that the attitude will change to accommodate the behavior.

This is the article which defines critical characteristics of situated learning enviroment. The authors used a lot of literature in the analysis part of the study. The purpose of this study was firstly, to identify critical characteristics of a situated learning environment from the extensive literature base on the subject; secondly, to operationalise the critical characteristics of a situated learning environment by designing a multimedia program which incorporated the identified characteristics; and thirdly, to investigate students' perceptions of their experiences using an multimedia package based on a situated learning framework. I think it will helpful us while we are searching for more articles on situated learning, because it has an extensive reference list.

Designing the instruction to make use of authenticity is very important as we discussed in the posts. Thank you Hatice for sharing this : )

In this study, resarchers has created a virtual learning enviroment by considering situated learning theory. The results explained that VR features and perceived usefulness variables were predictors for situated learning. Moreover,the results are found to be statistically significant and indicate that situated learning helps to improve the motivation to learn.

This web page is provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison. In the page, there is an emphasis on the technological applications of situated learning theory since the page is allocated for 'transforming teaching and learning through technology'. I've found the page interesting to share because there are very good examples of situated learning through some tools like interactive case scenarios, augmented reality and situated documentary. The page is useful both for discovering those tools and finding some particular examples of situated learning.

Here is a website telling about communities of practice, situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation. You can check for an overview about situated learning.

"Many of the ways we have of talking about learning and education are based on the assumption that learning is something that individuals do". This is a really nice article that outlines the theory and its applications and some issues related to situated learning theory are pointed out.

What is the Situated Learning Theory? Situated learning, simply put, is learning that takes place in the same context in which it is applied. It was first proposed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger as a model of learning in among group of people who share a craft and/or a profession, i.e., a community of practice.The basic tenet of the theory is that abstract knowledge usually given in the classroom is harder to retain.

"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." ― Benjamin Franklin In the area of adult learning, Ben Franklin turns out to be quite prescient.

That's true. Education is a social-emotional act. As I said in my personal learning theory, teaching humans is not like inserting lines of codes to series of robots to make them behave in a specific way. We all have emotions and our emotions to a specific event may not be same all the time as our point of views to an event are affected by our personal experiences, culture, philosophy, etc. In that sense, for a teacher, it is important to monitor students' feelings to a specific topic and to arrange learning environments in which students have positive feelings about a topic.

"Introduce failure into your learning design." something we appreciate less in our educational system.

Situated cognition theory

I like this website; it gives the connection between situated learning and current educational necessities like modeling, scaffolding. In the class, these are expected from us and it really helps students visualize the target point. Thank you for sharing it with us.

The video is generally about what is situated learning theory, how it is occurred, what is the Community of Practice and its structural elements. In the video, it is explained that Lave and Wenger observed different populations that learning takes place in social situations with other people thus the situated learning theory was born.

A case study in situated learning

The article seeks to establish the usefulness of situated learning theory as a means of thinking differently about the alleged abstraction of school learning in a range of subjects including physical education, and the issue of transfer of learning. Following a discussion of Lave and Wenger's notion of situated learning as legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice, the article explores the potential of Siedentop's sport education model as a means of providing young people with educative and authentic experiences of sport as legitimate peripheral participants. It is concluded that sport education may have the potential to provide educative and authentic experiences of sport.

The article focuses on the application of situated learning based on a game "Full Spectrum Warrior", which is useful to review.

thank you burcu for sharing this with us it reminded me the game "SimCity" :)

I wish we had been born in this era. Students are so lucky. I can't imagine learning through such tools. We were all born into textbooks:-(

A short funny video about situated learning. A teacher takes students to the supermarket so that they naturally learn basic subtraction in Math.

I have seen this post when I was searching for how can interaction with peers contribute to learning maths. It is written by ROBERT SUN who is the CEO of Suntex International and inventor of First In Math, an online program designed for deep practice in mathematics. The things that are mentioned felt very similar with our country's situation actually, as learners how do we use concepts of maths (or any other courses) except from school? May be the first reason for our students cannot learn and hate maths is behind this question.

"Teachers can encourage their students to express themselves verbally using mathematical terms; even in the early grades, children can be asked to explain what they want or mean using numbers, or relationships between numbers. Anything that encourages them to talk about math and mathematical concepts is beneficial." Social math!. It looks like article emphasizes the importance of language in information exchange. It reminds me Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory in which he also believed that language is important for learning. He also purported that language is culture-dependent so each cultures' learning may be different from each other. In addition, providing opportunity to students to express themselves verbally can give us clues about current mental maps of students as to a specific topic (what is correct, what needs improvement, etc.). In addition, students can transfer their transformed ideas (ideas transformed from scholarly language to level-appropriate language) to their friends which can facilitate their learning.

Yasin, I am curious to hear about some of the contemporary approaches towards teaching Math, a subject generally taught with more traditional methods. Regarding mathphobia, we also need to think about the culture that stimulates that.

I think that sharing our motivations of pursuing masters or PhD would be interesting. The attached video is a fun video of getting a Phd in humanities.

While I was working at a primary school, one of my students asked me:" Öğretmenim, neden hala okuyorsunuz? Tatile falan gitseniz daha iyi bence:)" I had two day off for graduate courses, that's why he thought I would go on a holiday:) (Or maybe I looked tired:) People who do not know me very well question my motivation for being a Phd student. But, those who know me well think that I should engage in academic studies. Interestingly, whenever I feel demotivated, they try to motivate me:) I love searching, learning new things and sharing them with people around me. Şermin is right: it is the hunger for knowledge and it is the most effective motive for graduate students:)

My motive for doing Master is to feel competent in my expertise field .But the main thing underlying is like everybody else is to learn and look for the best.I have always wondered `What is the best practice in teaching?` `How can I improve my skills both personally and professionally? Quest for the answers are keeping me motivated.