This page is a collection of my comments on other EDCI 335 students’ posts.
Post 1
Hi Enze, thanks for sharing your thoughts on learning and motivation and how it applied to your co-op work term at Maximus. I also did a co-op work term as a Business Systems Analyst at Maximus, though it may have been on a different team. When reflecting on my own motivation for learning new skills there, my mindset was probably very similar to yours in that I wanted to gain skills and knowledge that would be helpful in my future career. I can also relate to the sentiment of struggling for the first week or so, and also the fear of public speaking, but knowing that the skills I would gain would be beneficial in the future pushed me to continue learning.
Hi Kiana, thanks for sharing your thoughts on behaviorism, constructivism, and cognitivism in the classroom from a elementary education perspective. I agree that behaviorism is often seen as the “default foolproof” teaching method and probably comes easiest and most instinctively to new teachers, or regular people put into teaching positions. I think that certain types of skills benefit from some teaching methods more than others, and some teaching methods are better suited to learners at some stages of mastery more than others. For example, skills and learning involving motor skills, such as learning an instrument, may benefit from a behavioral approach for novice learners in order to build muscle memory, while the more advanced learner may benefit from a cognitive or constructivist approach to apply new ideas and incorporate current knowledge and skills.
Post 2
Hi Aini, thanks for sharing your thoughts on formative and summative evaluation. I think formative assessment exists to help inform students and teachers of how students are progressing in the course and their learning and comprehension, while summative evaluation usually provides a final “grade” for how the student performed or learned. I found what you said quite interesting: “For teachers, pass the test method is relatively easy to create and manage the assessment of students’ learning mastery, and the results obtained after the test are more intuitive”. This prompted a question in my mind: in a K-12 setting, could it be that we sometimes prepare students to ‘pass the test,’ which then means that they meet the required learning outcomes, but these outcomes are not actually measuring learning?
Hi Elben, thanks for sharing your thoughts on experiential learning. I think that experiential learning is better-suited to some examples than others, and the examples that you gave are suitable for experiential learning. An example of a situation where experiential learning would not necessarily be the best choice is learning about workplace safety – you wouldn’t want people to have to personally experience getting injured on the job themselves, but rather teach them the concepts and ways to prevent such injury from occurring in the first place!
Post 3
Hi Omar, thanks for sharing your thoughts on inclusive design. I like that your first step to creating an inclusive learning resource is to view everyone as a learner, setting the stage for creating a learning resource that assumes no prior knowledge, making the course more accessible to everyone. One question I have is what is the target audience for your Interactive Learning Resource? Will this be directed at K-12 students? Will this course be directed at a particular setting? Good work, and I look forward to seeing the rest of your Interactive Learning Resource.
Hi Stephanie, I appreciate that you brought up the importance of differentiating between ‘equal’ and ‘equitable,’ and its applicability to designing for inclusive learning. The diagram you included was also very helpful to visualize exclusion, segregation, integration, and inclusion. I look forward to hearing more about your Interactive Learning Resource.
Post 4
Hi Elben, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I’m interested to see how your final Interactive Learning Resource has evolved since this post and our peer review. In this post, you mention that students will “use personal experience to analyze,” presumably “why . . . these songs become popular and liked by everyone”. I was wondering what other types of instructions will be given to students, and how you came to the decision to make the pre-condition to this interactive exercise the assumption that these songs are indeed “popular” and “liked by everyone“. Good luck with the rest of your studies!
Hi Hanglin, thanks for sharing your ideas about interaction. You said that “educational technology is generally considered to be interactive”. I was wondering what examples you consider to be educational technology, and why it is “generally considered to be interactive”? When I think of educational technology, I think of how our courses are currently being delivered in an online environment – in this way, I would consider educational technology to generally not be interactive, as some of my courses completely asynchronous and are not dependent on interaction with other students. I think that for educational technology to be interactive, it is the content and delivery, not the medium, that matters most. For example, how the course is structured and facilitated by the instructor(s) to include interaction between students and the instructors. What do you think?
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