Portfolio Assignment 2

Paul Kirschner: Current understanding about high quality learning

Being an instructional designer myself, I have an immense passion for developing an effective design for language courses and training programs and sessions. It is very interesting to learn what constitutes a good Instructional design from a prospective of an educational cognitive psychologist like Paul. The 5 points that interest me the most are the following;  

1-  Designing A Good Instruction

A good instruction requires thinking about certain elements such as affordances, aspects and goals. The opportunities for certain things to happen in the learning process requires also considering the usability, utility and usefulness of any tool designed for instruction. Educational, Technological and Social aspects should be integrated in the good design of instruction instead of mainly focusing on the three affordances while ignoring these aspects.

2- Complexity of Tasks in Collaborative Learning

It is very interesting to learn that a complex task does not mean how difficult it is, which means that we should design environments that would allow for learning to happen, such as solving a problems, in a way that makes it complex and beneficial enough to motivate learners to work together to achieve the goals of learning. 

3- A Group is Different from A Team

Social aspects in collaborative learning is very important, it seems very realistic to think that a group is different from a team, as per his words. In peer teaching, there should be situations that encourages good students to want or needs to help the weaker ones, otherwise it will be a waste of time, efforts and scores for the good student, he described this as a ‘Positive Interdependence’. 

4- Technological Is Not Electronics

Techniques and physical environment inside a classroom is considered a technological set up for the lecture, so it is an aspect of Educational Technology. For me this is extremely essential in developing a comprehensive understanding of what technology means. I still have some questions about using the interaction between the three aspects of tools, techniques and ingredients in order to create a very effective and efficient learning environment. 

5- Self-Regulated Learning & Abstract thinking

As per what Paul said, Self-regulated learning is a technique and a good learner should be capable of thinking abstractly in order to be able to successfully plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning during the process of learning working with the tools they have available. This for me represents a domain of my previous work on self-regulated learning of foreign languages in which am interested to research further.

There are things I would like to explore in my research thesis that are related to teaching cognitive strategies which was a question to Paul by one of the audience. His answer has inspired me, he explained that we can teach knowledge but we cannot teach a skill, a skill has to be acquired by the learner themselves. This part I agree with him as we can only help learners by giving them the procedural knowledge for them to be able to carry out a strategy which is a skill in itself. Teachers can simply give the procedural knowledge, then create situations and modeling examples for learners to use in developing the skill.  

Same thing with attitude, meaning that there are certain skills required to develop a certain attitude, also tools, techniques that can help learners develop a certain attitude but we cannot teach an attitude. 

Another area I would like to explore is the skills required by learners in collaborative learning such as communication skills, social skills…etc. Paul raised an interesting point to answer Essi question that it is the job of the instructional designer to create certain situations to promote effective learning.

Essi Vuopala: Innovating pedagogy

Moocs, Seemless Learning, Crowd learning and Gamification can succeed in coming to formal education yet without replacing the traditional approaches of learning by any means but in way that complement rather than replace. There are no future signs showing that traditional teaching will disappear, and I hold same opinion.  

Moocs are massive open online courses that provide open access to everybody without constrains on the number of participants, lasting for few weeks, can support informal education and career development of professionals. I have participated in an example of Moocs courses myself and I experienced the lack of collaboration which is not always available when there is a huge number of participants as it is difficult to get teachers support in terms of individualized feedback for all participants.  

Seamless Learning which is combining formal and informal education by connecting learners in all kinds of technologies such as mobile phones seems very interesting yet how can we see that as a separate Learning style?

It is also interesting for me to know that Wikipedia is an example of Crowd Learning which is trusting the wisdom of crowd, giving them responsibility and the chance to contribute to their own learning. I could not understand how Ispot and forvo online are good examples of crowd wisdom? They seem to me more or less social sites.

Indeed Educator’s role has changed and resulted in bigger challenges to coordinate and support learners in these communities.

Gaming and learning share certain similarities, goals, tools, strategies as a way of supporting traditional learning but still there is a long way to explore their use in formal education. There are a number of challenges to using the tools and environments of gamifications in university education and primary schools.

The discussion about the game ‘SecondLife’ as an example of virtual world by Essi and the participants is somehow intimidating from a prospective of an educator who is struggling to integrate the use ICT into a good instructional design without compromising on social aspects of learning.