Planning for Significant Learning

Higher Education 1comments

Taken from http://www.allthetimegod.com/2016/03/growing-up-in-grace-rightly-dividing.html

Planning for Significant Learning

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Post 277

· Articulate the benefits of incorporating active, collaborative, and problem-based learning into your classroom.

· Include the impact these would have on the approach your students would take to learning the course material.

Deep learning provides a context and rationale for learning. That is, students are involved with the importance of theory that can be applied to specific projects, problems, or tasks that need to be developed. Incorporating active, collaborative, and problem-based learning can prove that students can develop new knowledge for new skills and competences.

Deep learning connects new concepts to what students already know. From a cognitive perspective, the instructor needs to activate learners’ prior knowledge and have them relate the new concepts to existing schemata to build knowledge and then understanding quite readily. Many times, this schema activation is better done when collaboration mediates the process of learning. That is, what some segment of the class knows can engage and guide the other sections of the class that do not have much training on various areas.

Deep learning helps instructors spend more class time on the most critical and difficult ideas. Though there should not be a negative labeling in certain course contents, there are parts that become a bit more difficult for students than others. Modeling of the new concepts by the teacher is of great importance in this section to help them comprehend and then perform a task successfully. Collaboration along with problem-based learning can provide the ground to challenge students to go beyond their immediate boundaries and transcend course content and see how newly-acquired knowledge can be used in real life situations, making learning much more active and meaningful.

Deep learning has the power to engage students in active, collaborative, problem-based activities and discussions around authentic problems. If a class is gravitating on very abstracts grounds, learners may simply get lost “in space and time.” But if authentic situations can be simulated in class, students will relate better to them after their schemata has been activated. Having them deal with real life situations they will face in their working environments can make the whole experience worthwhile for the sake of student knowledge building and their corresponding skills and competences.

Deep learning uses assessment methods that ask students to apply and synthesize concepts. Deep learning then is a great approach to a constructivist curriculum in which evaluation aims at having students interact with theory in applicable situations that can help them internalize it and collaboratively –even with the teacher- build knowledge.

Deep learning provides feedback to students on their strengths and ways to improve their performance. The teacher as the role model and guide can help students become more autonomous in their learning by providing formative assessment and guidance towards higher levels in the understanding of course theory and its applicability.

· Describe changes in your attitude toward your current teaching practices.

I wouldn’t say that there have been great changes in my attitude towards my teaching practices. I have been a follower of problem-based learning for many years and have understood the importance of schema activation due to Rod Ellis book Task-Based Instruction. It is on this ground that my teaching has been evolving in new scenarios such VLEs (virtual learning environments).

· Describe one new teaching tool you can incorporate into your teaching.

Based on Rebecca Oxford and her research on recycling in language learning, which is my field of work, I want to experiment much more with spiral learning to provide real deep learning among my students and then have them take the quantic leap towards full acquisition of the language as described by Stephen Krashen.

· Explain some of the challenges or concerns about implementing active, collaborative, and problem-based learning teaching tools in your classroom.

More than a concern regarding the implementation of more active and collaborative learning based on problem-based teaching tools for one’s classroom, it is important that instructors are certain of how to go about the experience. In other words,

1) What educational purposes should you seek to attain in your course?

2) What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?

3) How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?

4) How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?

(Tyler, 1949)

References

Tyler, R. (1949). Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Sunday, May 15, 2016