OMG!!

all thanks to the mock exam, i now know where my standard lies. hah. so much so much so much to study for!

needs assessment! URGH.

hope everyone will become an expert on NAR by the time next week comes. GOOD LUCK!

Most of the times when i have a problem, i turn to google. Very much like what the heroine in ‘Confessions of a Shopoholic’ did to write her financial column. Problems that can be solved by googling can range from simple to the somewhat complex, like troubleshooting the computer. It’s amazing how much information is floating on the Internet. More complex problem solving would involve a more sophisticated cognitive strategy like what is mentioned during lecture (simulations, games)

I think case studies are very practical as it focuses on application to real world problems. It helps the learner to apply his previous knowledge and learn new things in an attempt to solve the problem. Once again, a blended format (learning software and classroom/laboratory learning) is best for the learner to learn problem solving while being exposed to different learning environments.

Attitudes

To change/shape positive attitudes is desired for almost every learning instruction.

In my opinion, some national education programs risk coming across as propaganda as we are “forced” to listen to these messages in the classroom. The willingness to listen is not there. Coupled with contrived teaching methods, students usually switch off. In addition, I think these teachings place too much of an importance on ‘organisation’ and ‘characterization’ as goals instead of ensuring the basic levels are reached.

Affective learning can be tricky to teach and the instructor should tread carefully, depending on the subject matter.

Being able to execute a procedure is basically what makes it an intellectual skill.
Hence, besides knowing the steps of say, baking or cooking, we must actually DO it. After all, words are cheap.

Just some thoughts to go about “practising” baking/cooking in an elearning environment:
- There are some very casual games out there about cooking. For eg. the Cooking MaMa game for Nintendo Wii. First, the player chooses a myriad of different recipes. After which, the player must complete a set of tasks (the game tells you step by step) following the recipe within a time limit.
Some interesting and realistic tasks:

The game is very interactive thanks to the Wii controllers. Of course, this is just for fun and should be taken with a pinch of salt. It’s a casual game after all. However, it’s good for exposing young children to the joys of cooking since there is some level of reality to the game. The game also gives feedback as to how well you’ve done. It will tell you when the food is burnt or when you’ve did a step incorrectly. The points system also let you know how well you’ve done overall.

- Instructional videos could be used, not unlike Yan Can Cook. However, since it’s an elearning envt, more interactive features would be included by incorporating flash, forums and relevant content on the webpage, together with the videos. Users can “practice” on the site first.

To get feedback, the users can upload pictures and comments of their completed products to various forums, cooking websites.

Principles

In a nutshell, principles = concepts + procedures

Principles are generally harder to teach using elearning tools because of all the different elements –  illustrations, explanations, context/conditions etc. It’s best to teach f2f so the tutor can explain properly the different concepts and give immediate feedback when the student has done it incorrectly. I feel that e-learning may be too limiting for certain subjects like econs and math where drawing/plotting graphs and writing equations can be hard to do so using elearning tools.

For lower level math (pri sch), games are usually utilized. But for higher level math, games may not be very appropriate. At most, it would be complementary. The example on Archimedes Principle is a pretty good software that a student can use for such basic principles. Once more complicated principles are inside the picture, good ol’ sit-down-and-keep-practicing is best.

Besides flash-based tools, webquests can also help them to apply and practise the principles they’ve learnt through the tasks given. The evaluation rubric and quizzes on the webquest would let them know how they’ve scored.

Personally i feel mnemonics work most effectively when you’ve been exposed to it for a long period of time. I’ve tried creating acronyms for keyterms as a last ditch attempt while mugging for finals but it has mostly been a hit and miss affair. Other mnemonic strategies ive attempted are stories and visual images. For eg. during one of my german classes, i was “tasked” to repeat keyterms every student had said in sequence without looking at their faces. So I tried thinking of what the symbolic representations of the words are and somehow managed to link them up in sequence.

Anyway, i was a little confused with organized discourse as part of verbal information. I’d first thought organized discourse was more under intellectual skill than verbal information since concepts have to be pulled in to discourse effectively. There seems to be a grey area since Alfred also mentioned that ‘Perestroika’ and ‘Zeitgeist’ are basically concepts as well. The main difference is that those 2 terms are very specific. But what about other terms? His explanation didn’t really help much but i think it’s how we manage the information? The reading said “analysis of expository structures” and i found this website which gives examples of expository text structures. From what I understand is that by taking the facts and concepts, we can organize the information into “meaningful and memorable ways” such as various mind maps (cause and effect, compare and contrast, listing definitions) which in turn would be verbal information instead of intellectual skill. Uh, not sure if ive interpreted it correctly.

major changes that we made after getting feedback:

• added in a goal
• objectives – from fuzzy to not fuzzy
• uniform the font type
• added in a feedback page

As with all coding programs, EXE can get pretty frustrating with all the formatting problems. Our formatting looks horrid on Internet Explorer as compared to Firefox (which we’ve been using to view our page all this while). Oh wells, IT’S OVER!!

Anyhow, the chapter on ‘Recognizing Fuzzies’ has been a delightful read. It was written with good humour and examples given were effective. I especially love the Hey Dad test. Brilliant, i must say.

“Hey Dad! Lemme show you how I can love the word ‘fuzzies’!”

Yep. Loving the word ‘fuzzies’ — totally not a performance.

I also learnt how to differentiate covert performances from fuzzies. For eg, identifying a person; doing mental sums etc. They are performances because there are single acts that make the conditions true — by pointing out the person and revealing the answer respectively. And of course, they pass the Hey Dad test with flying colors!

Ok, enough of fuzzies. Let’s talk about Gagné’s cognitive outcomes. As mentioned in lecture, its can be a little blurry between the the Higher-order rules and Cognitive strategies. But I think keywords (or rather, action verbs) help to differentiate them.

Cognitive strategy – originate, create
Higher-order rules – generate

And these action verbs help to identify the other intellectual skills as well.

Discriminating – distinguish
Concrete concept – identifying
Defined concept – classifying
Rule – demonstrate, show, find

The above 2 readings are probably the most interesting. All the diagrams in task analysis and curricular maps are enough to drive a student crazy. There are task listings, task detailings AND the flowchart. gulps.

The first step to determine if there is a problem or not is to always analyse the situation. This is what we’ve been learning in PR, marketing and now in instructional design. –> Are goals met? Are there any new information to be handed down? And of course, when there really is a problem, something must be done.

The Smith and Ragan model basically provides us with a very systematic approach to doing needs assessment. After the nature of the problem is established, the Problem model guides us towards another two models depending on whether there was previous instruction offered- the Discrepancy and Innovation model. The Discrepancy model determines how well goals are achieved and which performance gaps can be ideally solved by training; whereas the Innovation model sets the goals for the new information and determines how well the goals fit into the learning system.

From the hilarious examples shown in lecture, most of the problems arose because of instructional failure. This is when needs assessment comes in. It helps to identify the strengths and weaknesses of existing programs and training methods and from there, prescribe step by step solutions. As there’s no single needs assessment technique that is all-purpose, big organisations may have to carry out different needs assessments with different goals for different departments. As such, they may omit the need for doing needs assessments when it is really needed due to the plain reason that it is tedious and time consuming, especially when there are many other factors involved (other than lack of learning/instruction) when a problem occurs or when goals are not met.

The construction of the learning sequence wasnt as easy as i’d thought.

Firstly, there were different scenarios which had different placement of the squares (tasks).  For example, the design sequence of a communicative activity is different from that of an experiential activity. From what i gather, i think it is because of the synchronous/asynchronous factor in the communicative activity? So after choosing a topic, classifying it according to whether it was an information-handling, adaptive, communicative, productive or experiential activity would be useful to determine the kind of design sequence.

Secondly, the arrows!!! After getting feedback from Elmie, we realised the arrows for the supports/resources do not always point towards/away from the tasks. Ok, we kinda just copied the layout from the notes thats why. After going through the readings, i’m still a little boggled about the direction for some of the examples.

Thirdly,  it’s all about perspective! Resources are sometimes confused with supports and vice versa. And perspective is related to the direction of the arrows as well. Whether the resource is an outcome or contributes to the task depend on the perspective of the author and his intended meaning.

Overall, it was a good exercise. It raised some doubts and cleared some.

But as if triangles, squares and circles werent enough, out comes an octahedron.

i wonder… is there a learning theory that includes both non-reflection (NR) and reflection (R) components? From the examples that Conole stated, NR and R seem to be the only components on the opposite end of the spectrum that are mutually exclusive. For example, can NR be part of the process in a conversational framework? I mean, there must be some memorisation of concepts going on for the student in order to complete the task successfully. Or maybe i just interpreted it wrongly.

Anyway, here are my thoughts.

The behaviorist theory is mainly about how the educator uses reinforcements/punishments to shape the learner’s behavior. In my opinion, despite all the criticisms, i feel that it is still somewhat relevant today as rewards/punishments are still neccessary sometimes to initiate the learning process. It IS a tried and tested method that has shown results effectively, albeit a controversial one. The question is how much an emphasis do we place on this method? I guess as long as educators do not emphasise too much on behaviorism and combine with other appropriate learning theories, learning would be much more enjoyable and holistic.

I realised Singapore is still very much entrenched in this pedagogy, especially when educating the young. This reminds me of how my mom used to reward me with cash as an incentive for scoring during my sec school days. =X From what i recall, i didnt exactly study harder for that purpose but incentives definitely helped. It’s like the good ol’ days during pri sch chinese lessons where the teacher would award us with stars and when we had a certain number of stars, she would give us a little present or something. As a result, everyone was motivated to perform in class tests and class games and the teacher managed to get the responses she wanted. However, it is important to note that as we grow up, our learning patterns change and the carrot/stick approach would not have worked as well. Other learning theories would have to come in.

Compared to behaviorism, cognitivism allows more independent learning. The educator helps the learner to build new concepts while the learner has to be active in learning as well. I think cognitivism applies well to the situation whereby an adult picks up a new language. After a certain age, we would have difficulty acquiring another language. To cope with the new information, there is a tendency to relate that new info to what we already know. For eg. comparing grammar between the new language to one we are already familiar with – English. This may help the learner in instances when the grammer is similar. But ultimately, with the guidance of the teacher, the learner has to put in pure hard work. Of course, mastering a language relies on both behaviourism and socioculturalism as well since rote learning and interaction with classmates will help the student to improve faster and learn better.

Socioculturalism is pretty revelant in higher education where teamwork and collaboration with people of different cultures and skills are commonplace. Each and everyone of us has a role to play and pitch in as there is a bigger picture at hand. Sometimes I’m just thankful that I have my group mates to fall back on.

To round up, no matter which pedagogy(s) is/are used, the crux is to take into consideration the learning behaviors of the individual and it is better to use a mixture of theories rather than rely on one.

And thus i shall end this post with my favorite line from the readings.

” life is the constant pursuit of dissatisfied wants. “

We started using computers at a fairly young age, say primary sch? At that time, Internet wasn’t that prevalent. No broadband like now. So educational cd-roms were all the rage then. There was this professor thingy, the various softwares we played around with in school (happy days! going to the aircon-ed com lab!) and i distinctly remember 10/10 during the PSLE period.  These are all very basic forms of e-learning then.

And in secondary school, technology became more advanced. My school had a portal like IVLE but it was seldom used unless it was compulsory. We even had e-learning day! I remember being very excited that i didn’t have to go to school. The e-learning turned out to be some worksheet we had to download and do. Yup, it was a pretty futile attempt. At that time, blogs weren’t even considered as a learning tool even though nearly everyone had blogs. And who can forget CNM’s very own e-learning week. I heard many people complain about it, like how they still had to come to sch for other lessons and all. well, i say better than nothing. at least i can go home early.

e-learning is definitely here to stay what with all the fancy schmancy terms like interactive, integrated etc etc. I guess what will make e-learning really flourish is whether it will be used properly in education and not simply for its own sake. technology-wise, i expect better, more efficient systems to complement what’s going on in the classroom.