ICTs for Learning Design provides a framework for developing the technical skills, and understanding of learning theories which enable us to effectively facilitate the learning experience, in this digital age.
Before we can successfully achieve this facilitation however, we must first understand the individual learners – their current knowledge, skills, motivation, attitudes, intelligences, learning styles and personalities.
In our first activity students were instructed to complete an online wiki profile. Once completed, students were to reflect on this activity in a public blog. Through this method of profiling, we were given an insight into how our each of our fellow students learn.
Felder and Solomon (n.d) have established an online learning style questionnaire which provides a summary of learning tendencies once completed.
Howard Gardner (1975) also saw value in establishing individual learning needs, as he argued for the importance of understanding the many forms of intelligence students possess. Through observation, Gardner
In the second activity, students were required to collaborate in pairs to summarise an article relating to one of the learning theories. The 3 key learning theories assessed within this curriculum are:
- Behaviouralism – is the study of overt behaviour which can be observed and measured (Good & Brophy, 1990). It describes the mind as a “black box” (Mergel 1998) responding to stimuli in a predictable manner.
- Cognitivism – builds on behaviouralism by describing the thought processes behind behaviour via reduction (Mergel 1998).
- Constructivism – argues that individuals construct their own perspectives of reality via individual experiences and schema (Cennamo & Kalk, 2005).
As described in my reflection blog, this activity is a direct example of how the theory of constructivism can be applied to learning environments to encourage students to construct their own understanding of key concepts.
Due to the factual basis of this required knowledge, a “rote” learning approach is often effective in retaining information. This activity has simplified this task for learners by summarisation through collaboration. Students can then avoid reading excessive article by reflecting on peer summaries.
The third activity required students to engage in an interactive discussion forum on a controversial topic regarding the use of mobile phones in schools, using de Bono's (1985) Six Thinking Hats scaffold. This scaffold provided students the opportunity to discuss the topic in-depth, from number of angles to completely explore the complexity associated with the effects of mobile phones as a learning and teaching tool in schools, and is thus an effective scaffold for such a contentious topic.
In addition to constructivism, social cognitive theory, described by Vygotsky (1962) suggests that an individual’s acquisition of knowledge can be directly related to observing others in within the context of experiences, social interactions, and external media influences. This theory supports the intended purpose of this group activity, which brings individual learners together to learn in collaboration with each other, thus refining the individual’s current schema of a concept and improving acquired knowledge (Sweller 1988).
With a sound understanding of individual learning styles and the different learning theories, it becomes possible to construct learning frameworks aimed at learners in the 21st century. Bloom (1956) proposed a taxonomy of learning domains essential to designing such effective frameworks.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Bloom%27s_Rose.png
This taxonomy classifies the learning objectives within a learning environment educators set for students. These objectives are broken up into 3 domains with subsequent sub-domains, which can be thought of as “the goals of the learning process.” (Clarke 2004):
- Cognitive
- Knowledge
- Comprehension
- Application
- Analysis
- Synthesis
- Evaluation
- Affective
- Receiving
- Responding
- Valuing
- Organizing
- characterizing
- Psychomotor
- Perception
- Set
- Guided response
- Mechanism
- Convert overt response
- Adaptation
- Origination
Whilst it is not within the scope of this reflection to investigate and describe each of these learning objectives in detail, it is sufficient to note that the third activity within this course (Mobile Phone Wiki) successfully addressed a great number of these learning objectives through the creative application of an in depth understanding of pedagogical and content knowledge, demonstrated with refined technical skills in e.Learning design.
This type of e.Learning design is referred to as Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPaCK) scaffolding, which adds the effective use of Technology (ICT) to the Pedagogical Contents Framework described by Shulman (Mishra 2006).
This framework presupposes the teacher’s expertise in the teaching subject area:
For example: My teaching specialisations are Science and HPE and have been allocated due to my experience and qualifications in Podiatry and the Health Sciences.
And that teachers, in their areas, have specific pedagogies (ways of learning) to support its learning.
The feature that brings these skills together and engages learners most successfully is the ability to combine them with appropriate technologies from the vast array currently available. This is effective use of TPaCK framework.
Within the first few weeks of ICTs for Learning Design, students have been exposed to a variety of different readings and activities prescribed to engage students and facilitate learning. As previously discussed, this has been achieved by firstly establishing the understanding that learners learn in a variety of different ways, and through knowledge of different learning theories, the teacher can create a learning environment to engage different types of learners.
To achieve this in the 21st century however, teachers must adopt a variety of different technologies (ICTs) suitable to the learning content as effectively demonstrated in activities 2 and 3.
These concepts form the foundations for the development of educators who do not teach, but facilitate learning.
The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to
discover new ways of thinking about them.
—Sir William Henry Bragg
References
de Bono, E. (1985). Six Thinking Hats: An Essential Approach to Business Management. Little, Brown, & Company
Bloom B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: The Cognitive Domain. New York
Cennamo, K. & Kalk, D. (2005). Real World Instructional Design. Thomson Wadsworth , Belmont , CA
Clark, D. (2004), Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Domains: The Three Types of Learning Retrieved March 22, 2011, from http://nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/ahold/isd.html
Felder, R. & Solomon, B. A (n.d) Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire. Retrieved February 23, 2011, from http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html
Gardner, H. (1975). The Shattered Mind. New York
Gardner, H. (1979). Developmental psychology after Piaget: An approach in terms of symbolization. Human Development. 15, p570-58O.
Gardner, H. (1982). Art, mind and brain.New York
Gardner, H. (1979). Developmental psychology after Piaget: An approach in terms of symbolization. Human Development. 15, p570-58O.
Gardner, H. (1982). Art, mind and brain.
Mishra, P. & Koehler, M. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record 108 (6), p1017 - 1054
Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning, Cognitive Science, 12, p257-285.
Vygotsky, L. (1962). Social Development Theory Retrieved March 1, 2011, from http://tip.psychology.org/vygotsky.html
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