Category: edci335

Cooperative learning is a learning approach dividing students into groups and grading them as a team by completing specific tasks together. Because each person in the team has its responsibility and the students are graded as a team rather than an individual, the quality of the work dependent on everyone in the group. Through the learning process, students will need to share information and cooperate. Therefore, cooperative learning can enhance student independence and cooperating skill.

In addition, cooperative learning allows discussion and teamwork. Students are active participants; hence, the students are more engaged and motivated. The role of the teacher is changed as well. Instead of the information provider as in the traditional classroom, the teacher facilitates the student’s learning. Students learn through research and teaching each other.

Although cooperative learning offers opportunities for discussion and self-motivation, it does not align our group topic. Our group topic is to offer an English class to higher educated people, introducing a concept of English grammar. The problem of cooperative learning is that students cannot be graded/measured independently. In this case, it is hard to tell if a student has learned how to implement what they learned in reading/writing. Furthermore, rather than a complicated concept, the course will introduce several simple concepts to students. The number of concepts to introduce may be quite a lot throughout the course. Couple group assignments or final project is difficult to include all the knowledge taught from the course. Perhaps it will be great to include a cooperative group project as part of the final assessment of the course. Our team decided to select another learning approach that will meet the learning objective better.

Interactive learning often allows digital technology to play an important role in the learning experience. It is a learning process inviting students to interact socially and practically. Indeed, this is quite convenient and efficient in introducing learning materials. However, this also creates new issues that the traditional learning process has not faced before. One problem I found that interactive learning may have is the ability of communication. Unlike traditional education, interactive learning encourages students to interact with digital devices, teachers, or other students. A typical problem we will find here is the ability of languages and socializing. Besides, interactive learning is more difficult to ensure the learning efficiency of each student. If it is a kind of group activity or group discussion, it is hard to produce the same experience to the individual who is absent as well. Therefore, interactive learning is even more important to ensure the resource is delivered as the learning designer expected to the individuals.

One strategy to meet the goal is to keep things digital. Lectures and discussion can always be transferred to videos or audios. With digital technology, we can eliminate the boundaries of language, time, and space. When an unexpected event occurs, students can still have access to the lectures (like most of the University do under COVID-19), preventing them from losing their learning opportunities. For example, it is possible to translate a lecture into a different language and reproduce it on a different time and location for a student who could not attaint the class due to an unexpected event.

Furthermore, the class size should be reduced. Students should spread into smaller groups instead of a large class, such that students with similar abilities or difficulties can be treated at the same time to allow the teacher to easier keep track of their learning progress. This also offers another opportunity for the students who would like to join the activity or discussion again. Reducing the class size also increases the chance for students to participate and present themselves.

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.