Alfred gave us a mock exam and went through it
before the presentation of some groups.
I feel that the mock exam is skewed towards the technical side,
which is a bit too scary for examinations!
but Alfred assured us that the finals will be a lot easier.
I hope so too! :)
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
week 10 : WebQuest for E-learning
This morning,
Alfred briefed with us the entire WebQuest project.
He talked about people's assumptions about the internet and WebQuest.
People tend to assume that the Internet is filled with rich resources that students and educatiors can leverage on. However, he pointed out that it's very important for internet users to have the ability to sift out legitimate information (what are accurate and useful and what are not.)
He went through the components of WebQuest,
which was what our WebQuest project have to include.
Our whole WebQuest project have to include
1. introduction - introducing the project to the students (putting them into another context.)
2. task - providing directions/link/instructions for the students to follow in order to learn
3. evaluation - providing a set of benchmarks for the students to check against so that they can evaluate themselves. This also facilitates the teachers' marking/assessment of their student's end-product
4. conclusion - to wrap up the whole topic by providing other forms of self-assessments for the students.
5. teacher's page - state the learning goal and objectives of the WebQuest while providing instructions/details for the educators so that they can use this as a guide to guide their students along this WebQuest.
In this lecture,
our team (team venture) realised that we have been doing the wrong thing!
what we did all along are web-based lessons instead of WebQuest.
This is about a WebQuest is an inquiry-orientated lesson where most or all of the information comes from the Web.
This means that the WebQuest will provide students with links to facilitate their learning.
This is passive in a way that these links were given to the students (instead of them searching for the information using the search engines)
but also active in a way that students have to click on, read and look for the information that is contained in the links.
WebQuest involves a constructivist transformation of inputs to outputs.
Hence, it means that at the end of WebQuest, there is an end-product in which learners must hand up for evaluation by the educator.
I feel that this lecture is very useful for the construction of our term project,
because this provides us with in-sights to which our project should be based on.
Alfred briefed with us the entire WebQuest project.
He talked about people's assumptions about the internet and WebQuest.
People tend to assume that the Internet is filled with rich resources that students and educatiors can leverage on. However, he pointed out that it's very important for internet users to have the ability to sift out legitimate information (what are accurate and useful and what are not.)
He went through the components of WebQuest,
which was what our WebQuest project have to include.
Our whole WebQuest project have to include
1. introduction - introducing the project to the students (putting them into another context.)
2. task - providing directions/link/instructions for the students to follow in order to learn
3. evaluation - providing a set of benchmarks for the students to check against so that they can evaluate themselves. This also facilitates the teachers' marking/assessment of their student's end-product
4. conclusion - to wrap up the whole topic by providing other forms of self-assessments for the students.
5. teacher's page - state the learning goal and objectives of the WebQuest while providing instructions/details for the educators so that they can use this as a guide to guide their students along this WebQuest.
In this lecture,
our team (team venture) realised that we have been doing the wrong thing!
what we did all along are web-based lessons instead of WebQuest.
This is about a WebQuest is an inquiry-orientated lesson where most or all of the information comes from the Web.
This means that the WebQuest will provide students with links to facilitate their learning.
This is passive in a way that these links were given to the students (instead of them searching for the information using the search engines)
but also active in a way that students have to click on, read and look for the information that is contained in the links.
WebQuest involves a constructivist transformation of inputs to outputs.
Hence, it means that at the end of WebQuest, there is an end-product in which learners must hand up for evaluation by the educator.
I feel that this lecture is very useful for the construction of our term project,
because this provides us with in-sights to which our project should be based on.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
week 9: Instructional strategies for Affective learning
In this lecture,
we learnt that attitudes can actually be desirable educational goals.
It can also be combined with values.
There is actually a difference between motivation and attitude.
In actual fact, motivation is a subset of attitude, eg. being motivated is an attitude.
For instructional designers, attitude is defined as an outcome of instruction.
Hence, there are components to attitude learning as well.
These components are:
1. cognitive : "knowing how"
2. behavourial : to be able to apply the attitude into actions
3. affective : "knowing why" (the urge/desire to put the attitude to action)
From the readings, a condition for the achievement of the affective component is to provide a role model. A respected/desirable person to do the desired action.
And an attitude includes both knowing how to do something and choosing to do it.
There are subcategories of taxonomy:
1. attending - being aware, willingness to focus
2. responding - willingness to respond and take satisfaction in the desired action
3. valuing - experiencing preference and commitment
4. organisation - conceptualising and forming an organised value system
5. characterisation - taking actions as a generalised set (giving the learner a predisposition response to a wide variety of situations)
There are also three main critical conditions that must be done for the learners to attain the attitude objectives, namely
1. demonstration of the desired behaviour by a role model (already mentioned previously)
- establish appeal and credibility of the model
- stimulate recall of relevant knowledge and concepts
- demonstration of desired action by model
- reinforcement by the model
2. practice of desired behaviour (to role play)
- offers the opportunity for learner activity within an instructional environment
3. provide reinforcement for the desired behaviour
- reinforcement is to function in a surrogate function fashion for the learner.
- it was shown that the most powerful reinforcers (defined as a stimulus that increases probability of the preceding behaviour reoccurring.) are those who apply directly to learner as product of the learner's own behaviour. And this behaviour might be a application of the demonstrated behaviour in the actual situation.
we learnt that attitudes can actually be desirable educational goals.
It can also be combined with values.
There is actually a difference between motivation and attitude.
In actual fact, motivation is a subset of attitude, eg. being motivated is an attitude.
For instructional designers, attitude is defined as an outcome of instruction.
Hence, there are components to attitude learning as well.
These components are:
1. cognitive : "knowing how"
2. behavourial : to be able to apply the attitude into actions
3. affective : "knowing why" (the urge/desire to put the attitude to action)
From the readings, a condition for the achievement of the affective component is to provide a role model. A respected/desirable person to do the desired action.
And an attitude includes both knowing how to do something and choosing to do it.
There are subcategories of taxonomy:
1. attending - being aware, willingness to focus
2. responding - willingness to respond and take satisfaction in the desired action
3. valuing - experiencing preference and commitment
4. organisation - conceptualising and forming an organised value system
5. characterisation - taking actions as a generalised set (giving the learner a predisposition response to a wide variety of situations)
There are also three main critical conditions that must be done for the learners to attain the attitude objectives, namely
1. demonstration of the desired behaviour by a role model (already mentioned previously)
- establish appeal and credibility of the model
- stimulate recall of relevant knowledge and concepts
- demonstration of desired action by model
- reinforcement by the model
2. practice of desired behaviour (to role play)
- offers the opportunity for learner activity within an instructional environment
3. provide reinforcement for the desired behaviour
- reinforcement is to function in a surrogate function fashion for the learner.
- it was shown that the most powerful reinforcers (defined as a stimulus that increases probability of the preceding behaviour reoccurring.) are those who apply directly to learner as product of the learner's own behaviour. And this behaviour might be a application of the demonstrated behaviour in the actual situation.
week 9: Instructional Strategies Leading to Problem-solving
Problem solving skills are abilities to use previously acquired skills and knowledge to solve never-met-before but similar problems.
Designers normally include verbs like:
solve, determine, resolve, plan, troubleshoot
There are problem-solving processes can range in complexity from :
(the least complex)
1. puzzle problem
2. algorithm
3. story problem
4. rule-using problem
5. trouble-shooting
6. diagnosis-solution
7. case method problem
8. designs
9. issue-based
It must be noted that different level of problems have their own different strategies to tackle.
These problems have characteristics that varies with the degrees of structure, complexity and abstractness.
Problem solving tasks is simpler when there are fewer principles involved.
In the lecture notes and the reading,
problem-solving processes involves either well-structured problems or ill-structured ones.
Well-structured problems contains:
(i) all required information
(ii) limited rules & principles (the fewer the easier)
(iii) a single correct answer
(iv) a preferred method to solve
On the other hand, ill-structured problems contains:
(i) fuzzies (unclear goals)
(ii) multiple solutions
(iii) multiple methods
(iv) no general rule to doing it (hence judgement is needed.)
There is 4 components of cognitive processing in problem-solving:
1. knowledge representation
2. solution planning
3. solution implementation
4. solution evaluation
Other than the differences in the problem-solving tasks,
inidividual differences also exist.
Because different people has different mental capabilities
(familiarity with the concept; prior knowledge; high-level mental controls and beliefs; motivational factors),
designers must consider how such individual differences can be used/compromised in the designing of instructions.
To introduce problem-solving lessons,
deisigners must be able to
1. deploy attention
2. establish instructional purpose
3. promote interest and motivation
4. preview lesson
The problem-solving lesson should
1. review relevant prior knowledge
2. process information
3. focus attention
4. employ learning strategies
5. include practises
6. process feedback.
As a conclusion, it will be good to include
1. summary (followed by)
2. review
3. suggestions of methods - to organise problem schema for storage and easy retrieval
4. remotivate learners
5. conclude by giving reminders
The assessment of problem-solving learning is also an important aspect of the design of instructions.
The problems given to learners to practice should have a similar context as the examples - this is, despite the need to assess the learners requires problems to be novel and unencountered.
I believe that problem-solving instructions are very much needed in our knowledge-based economy today. There's an increasing demand in the reaction time needed to problems, and is probably due to globalisation and the ability to create massive changes with the technology we have today.
Designers normally include verbs like:
solve, determine, resolve, plan, troubleshoot
There are problem-solving processes can range in complexity from :
(the least complex)
1. puzzle problem
2. algorithm
3. story problem
4. rule-using problem
5. trouble-shooting
6. diagnosis-solution
7. case method problem
8. designs
9. issue-based
It must be noted that different level of problems have their own different strategies to tackle.
These problems have characteristics that varies with the degrees of structure, complexity and abstractness.
Problem solving tasks is simpler when there are fewer principles involved.
In the lecture notes and the reading,
problem-solving processes involves either well-structured problems or ill-structured ones.
Well-structured problems contains:
(i) all required information
(ii) limited rules & principles (the fewer the easier)
(iii) a single correct answer
(iv) a preferred method to solve
On the other hand, ill-structured problems contains:
(i) fuzzies (unclear goals)
(ii) multiple solutions
(iii) multiple methods
(iv) no general rule to doing it (hence judgement is needed.)
There is 4 components of cognitive processing in problem-solving:
1. knowledge representation
2. solution planning
3. solution implementation
4. solution evaluation
Other than the differences in the problem-solving tasks,
inidividual differences also exist.
Because different people has different mental capabilities
(familiarity with the concept; prior knowledge; high-level mental controls and beliefs; motivational factors),
designers must consider how such individual differences can be used/compromised in the designing of instructions.
To introduce problem-solving lessons,
deisigners must be able to
1. deploy attention
2. establish instructional purpose
3. promote interest and motivation
4. preview lesson
The problem-solving lesson should
1. review relevant prior knowledge
2. process information
3. focus attention
4. employ learning strategies
5. include practises
6. process feedback.
As a conclusion, it will be good to include
1. summary (followed by)
2. review
3. suggestions of methods - to organise problem schema for storage and easy retrieval
4. remotivate learners
5. conclude by giving reminders
The assessment of problem-solving learning is also an important aspect of the design of instructions.
The problems given to learners to practice should have a similar context as the examples - this is, despite the need to assess the learners requires problems to be novel and unencountered.
I believe that problem-solving instructions are very much needed in our knowledge-based economy today. There's an increasing demand in the reaction time needed to problems, and is probably due to globalisation and the ability to create massive changes with the technology we have today.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
week 8: instructional strategies for principals learning
Principles are high-ordered rules knowledge.
This is so because principles prescribe the relationships among two or more concepts.
The concepts are often in the form of variables (factors that has many values)
These conceptual relationships is described in two forms:
1. if-then
2. cause-effect
In layman terms, principles are the "knowing why".
Because not only principles enables learners to explain what has happened,
it also allows you to predict what will happen,
and most importantly, it allow the control of the effects of variables.
To truly acquire a principle,
means not only to be able to state the principle (declarative knowledge)
but ALSO to apply the principle to various unencountered situations.
Principle learning is the basis to domain-specific problems - they are the core of processing needed in problem solving: learners have to be equipped principles to explain the conceptual reltationships (meaning that certain principles are combined to solve certain problems.)
Principles learning is different from learning procedures,
but procedures are often used as alternatives to principles.
Procedures, as mentioned in the previous post, are a generalised series of steps in response to a particular class of circumstances to reach a specific goal.
However,
there are differences between principle-learning and procedure learning.
The differences include cognitive processes (the informational processing analysis for principles is different from that for procedures).
During the lecture,
Alfred taught us that the two toughest instructional events for teaching principles are feedback and practice.
However, i think that these two can go hand-in-hand.
Because by practising,
instructors can gather feedback about the learners' progress and address the learners' misconceptions.
There are many ways for handling feedbacks with e-learning:
1. analysis and interpretation by system (adaptive feedback)
2. by referring to "model" answer
3. self-reflection and self-checking
4. by referring to external feedback system (eg. e-tutor)
This is so because principles prescribe the relationships among two or more concepts.
The concepts are often in the form of variables (factors that has many values)
These conceptual relationships is described in two forms:
1. if-then
2. cause-effect
In layman terms, principles are the "knowing why".
Because not only principles enables learners to explain what has happened,
it also allows you to predict what will happen,
and most importantly, it allow the control of the effects of variables.
To truly acquire a principle,
means not only to be able to state the principle (declarative knowledge)
but ALSO to apply the principle to various unencountered situations.
Principle learning is the basis to domain-specific problems - they are the core of processing needed in problem solving: learners have to be equipped principles to explain the conceptual reltationships (meaning that certain principles are combined to solve certain problems.)
Principles learning is different from learning procedures,
but procedures are often used as alternatives to principles.
Procedures, as mentioned in the previous post, are a generalised series of steps in response to a particular class of circumstances to reach a specific goal.
However,
there are differences between principle-learning and procedure learning.
The differences include cognitive processes (the informational processing analysis for principles is different from that for procedures).
During the lecture,
Alfred taught us that the two toughest instructional events for teaching principles are feedback and practice.
However, i think that these two can go hand-in-hand.
Because by practising,
instructors can gather feedback about the learners' progress and address the learners' misconceptions.
There are many ways for handling feedbacks with e-learning:
1. analysis and interpretation by system (adaptive feedback)
2. by referring to "model" answer
3. self-reflection and self-checking
4. by referring to external feedback system (eg. e-tutor)
week 8 : instructional strategies for procedures learning
In this lecture,
we learnt the definition of procedure knowledge.
In its layman terms, it just "knowing HOW..."
Using a procedure refers to applying an ordered set of actions to achieve a goal. There is often more than one procedure to goal achievement. Procedure is sometimes referred to as a technique/ skill/method. It can be either mental processes or physical skills. Most procedures are a combination of two.
Mental processes: intellectual skill =ability to execute procedure
Physical Skills: ability to state the steps.
Procedure/Rule-using Knowledge contains characteristics of :
- Sequences of action
- Algorithm
- Physical and/or mental processes
- Decision points (for complex procedures)
- Automaticity (to execute the procedure unconsciously)
Words for procedure objectives are included:
Demonstrate, perform, practice, apply.
There are Key instructional elements for procedural learning.
Generated from Task Analysis
- "When to use procedure"
+ learners to know when to execute the procedure and when NOT to. - "Steps"
+ collecting steps and decisions points and putting them in proper sequence
Which after…
- "Demonstration"
+ to show how procedure is executed - "Whole to Parts"
+looking at the complete procedure then going step-by-step. - "Practice" OR "List the steps" OR "Execute"
+to allow learners to try - "Feedback"
+to allow learners to understand what's being correctly/wrongly done
Practice and feedback events are the hardest for teaching procedures.
I suppose it's because different learners have different way of doing a certain procedure and yet the software for e-learning is not flexible enough to tailor /customise to these details.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
week 7: instructional strategies for conceptual knowledge
Conceptual knowledge involves the ability to apply knowledge in encountered circumstances.
(This differs from declarative knowledge for declarative only involves memorising an association between different entities)
THEREFORE, concepts have both declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge.
Concepts are defined as:
sets of specific objects which are grouped together on the basis of shared characteristics and can be referenced by a particular name or symbol (Merrill & Tennyson, 1977).
To put it in layman terms, it simply means: Knowing the meaning of....
It is important to understand that there are two different types of concepts.
1. concrete concepts (can be known by their physical characteristics)
2. abstract concepts (defined; no appearance)
It is hard to determine sometimes if the concept is abstract or concrete as it usually depends on the level of sophistication of the learners.
Thus, it is crucial to know the level of sophistication of learners because the way to address these two concepts differs in strategies.
The characteristic of concepts is attributes.
There are 3 kinds of concept attributes namely:
1. intrinsic (invariant property of a class of things that can be pointed out.)
2. functional (relates to how something works and what its use might be)
3. relational (a quality a concept may possess defined in terms of something else.)
Some action verbs for concept objectives are:
sort, define, categorize, discriminate.
There is a general guide/instructional events to concept learning.
1. name the concept (the idea to be defined)
2. definition (a simple statement of description of concept)
3. show prototype (showing an example that best illustrates the concept)
4. showing more examples and NON-examples (common confusions)
5. state attributes (pointing out those important attributes that is the basis to the concept)
6. practice
7. feedback
(This differs from declarative knowledge for declarative only involves memorising an association between different entities)
THEREFORE, concepts have both declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge.
Concepts are defined as:
sets of specific objects which are grouped together on the basis of shared characteristics and can be referenced by a particular name or symbol (Merrill & Tennyson, 1977).
To put it in layman terms, it simply means: Knowing the meaning of....
It is important to understand that there are two different types of concepts.
1. concrete concepts (can be known by their physical characteristics)
2. abstract concepts (defined; no appearance)
It is hard to determine sometimes if the concept is abstract or concrete as it usually depends on the level of sophistication of the learners.
Thus, it is crucial to know the level of sophistication of learners because the way to address these two concepts differs in strategies.
The characteristic of concepts is attributes.
There are 3 kinds of concept attributes namely:
1. intrinsic (invariant property of a class of things that can be pointed out.)
2. functional (relates to how something works and what its use might be)
3. relational (a quality a concept may possess defined in terms of something else.)
Some action verbs for concept objectives are:
sort, define, categorize, discriminate.
There is a general guide/instructional events to concept learning.
1. name the concept (the idea to be defined)
2. definition (a simple statement of description of concept)
3. show prototype (showing an example that best illustrates the concept)
4. showing more examples and NON-examples (common confusions)
5. state attributes (pointing out those important attributes that is the basis to the concept)
6. practice
7. feedback
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