The readings and videos have addressed the key factors and strategies of learning. The format and presentation material ordered by Colin also serve as a good teaching example. After reading the material for this week, the information that gave me the strongest impression was the video of the reverse bike. Why the video was the most memorable? Well, as an engineering student, the reverse bike, which I have never thought about before, has caught my attention and interest, quickly causing me to start questioning what is learning and how I should learn (or teach others to learn) if I was in the youtuber position. This exactly is a good example of cognitivism. By somebody else sharing their experience and thoughts, we learn the story and consequence. In addition, this video further convinced me regarding what I have just learned from the first video – the difficulties of replacing existing knowledge in our brain and confirmation bias.
I realized that the teaching method of the undergrad courses that I took mostly were cognitivist and constructivist. This is because undergrad courses usually have to explain complicated ideas and concepts. Using behaviourism method is not effective in this case. From my experience, the courses that explained the material clearly with graphs and images (cognitivist) were easier to follow than the courses that only providing text and articles to read. Personally, I might use behavioralist method to teach myself dependant on the situation, but through my experience I found that it was really difficult to transfer the knowledge that learned from behaviourism method to others. Especially, at the university level, there are many situation may require discussion and sharing information. Furthermore, if it is required to teach a large class (>100 students is common in the university), behavioralist method was not suitable as well, as everyone may need different arrangement of stimuli.
Yet, does that mean we should not learn by a behavioralist method when we deal with high level skills or knowledge? No.
As I mentioned, sometime I may still teach myself using behavioralist method. Although it may be difficult to teach other what I have learned, it speeds up my thinking process and reduced the computation memory on the unnecessary information, allowing me to apply my knowledge more efficiently. I think all the teaching theories have their own advantage. It is dependent on when and where we applying them.