Unit 4

The 4^th unit of study in this course focused on cases and objects. Case based learning and cognitive flexibility are learning theories, and learning objects is not a learning theory. Learning objects represent resources that could be integrated into learning theories. Case based learning is a broad term for other learning theories such as goal based scenarios and anchored instruction which is discussed in an earlier blog. Cognitive flexibility has its roots in constructivism. The biggest similarity that I noticed between the two theories is how they should be authentic learning experiences. In case based, there is a back story in which a teacher directs students towards a conclusion or prepares students for debates. In cognitive flexibility, content is built upon what students already know. Students can then build upon that knowledge and apply it. Learning objects fit in since they can be applied to any of the theories that we’ve discussed in class previously. A big difference that I noticed between the case-based learning and cognitive flexibility is cognitive flexibility puts a lot of pressure on the teacher. It states that the way the student is taught affects the ability for the student to retain, use, and apply the information in the future. Also, the cognitive flexibility theory does not rely on a back story as much as cased-based learning. Additionally, I feel that the cognitive flexibility theory stresses the connection of sources, they are not compartmentalized. The one major difference that I noticed between the two learning theories and the learning objects is the removal from context. The learning theories seem to try to integrate context. The good thing about learning objects is they can be recycled and this can certainly save money and time in the long run.

My initial reaction to these theories is one of familiarity. It seemed to me that these theories closely related to theories that I had read about earlier in the semester. This thought was confirmed when I read that case-based learning was a broad term for goal based scenarios and anchored instruction. One of the barriers to using case-based learning is the time involved in developing the case materials. One of the other issues that was raised was the storage of multiple resources. When reading about case based reasoning, one of the issues that came up was that it relied too much on previous experience and could lend itself to too much bias. Cognitive flexibility does rely on how the teacher teaches the materials, so that could certainly be considered a disadvantage or barrier. Finally, learning objects by themselves have some barriers to their use. If they are used out of context, this goes against many of the other learning theories that I have studied this year. If they are used in connection with other theories, it may be difficult to create them or tie into the standards of other learning theories. If a teacher or instructor were able to overcome the barriers of cost, time, and difficulty with integration, what they would end up with would be authentic learning experiences that allow students to learn based on their own motivation as well as being able to use what they have learned and apply it to all situations. I have noticed in my classroom that many times students struggle when they are given different types of problems that they haven’t seen before. They aren’t used to taking what they already know and applying it to new situations. I think that this should be a major area of concern for all educators. We should not be creating students that can repeat what we teach them, but we need to be teaching them to use what they know. Making connections between prior knowledge and new situations is key in real life!

Since these learning theories are used in more of a post K-12 setting, I would probably not use them in my classroom as much as some of the other theories discussed this semester. This is especially true since I teach math. I think had I taught anything else I might be able to integrate these a little bit more easily into my class. If I had to integrate one of these into my classroom, I would probably choose case-based reasoning. One of the advantages of case based reasoning is improved problem solving. If there could be some way to integrate stories about students solving math problems that didn’t seem like math problems, I think my students might be able to become engaged. This is assuming that they do have the background knowledge to solve these problems.

There are a lot of ways that you could incorporate these learning theories into an online setting. Since case based learning means that students have to interact with a story, instructors could use a variety of free web 2.0 tools to create that particular story. Instructors could record their own voices and integrate that into a Voki. Students could then go back and listen to the story as many times as they felt necessary. Instructors could create a Glog, which is like a virtual collage poster. They could embed video clips, pictures, stories, and graphics to really get the learner engaged. If the instructor taught younger students, he or she could create a slideshow using Voicethread. The students could then listen to the Voicethread as a group and then follow along with the pictures. If an instructor wanted the entire class/project to be online these tools could easily be embedded into a class site on Blackboard, Wikispaces, or even Moodle. If this were the case, resources and other learning objects could also be included in the course site. Learning objects seem like they could be incorporated into an online setting easily. Free exchange, shared exchange, and peer-to-peer would probably the most widely used since it would save a lot of time on the instructor’s part. If the instructor worked for a large corporation they may also have access to proprietary and commercial learning objects. Since one of the major disadvantages to learning objects is that they are removed from context, what better way to use them than to incorporate them back into a course or project.

Unit 3

There are many similarities that I noticed between the four learning theories in this unit. The four theories that were investigated were Goal Based, Anchored Instruction, STAR Legacy, and MOST Multimedia. It seemed after reading the articles that the main similarity is learning through authentic, meaningful situations. In goal based learning, the learner’s motivation is the driving force. The teacher provides opportunities to the child, but keeps a skill set in mind that he or she wants the student to learn. Anchored Instruction was similar to goal based in which the student learns a set skill set as well. The difference between the two was that goal based seems to allow more control by the learner. The STAR legacy model is a 5-step process that begins again with an interesting problem and then works the students through a process. This is similar to anchored instruction, as students go through a step-by-step process. The STAR legacy model is a more condensed version keeping it at 5 steps where Anchored Instruction should be around 14 or more steps. The one theory that seemed the least like the others was the MOST Multimedia approach. MOST seems to focus on low performing students where the other theories seem focused on all types of students. The MOST Multimedia approach was also literacy focused, where the other methods could probably be applied to all genres. 

The theory that I initially felt most connected to was the anchored instruction theory. In this theory, the teacher sets up an open ended question and then guides the students through a process giving them just enough information to make them think, but not too little information that the student gets frustrated. Goal Based might be a great learning theory, but allowing students that much control would be difficult for me as a teacher that is evaluated on test scores at the end of the year. I think that in middle school, many of my students are not super motivated, and many would probably not get the full extent out of the unit. STAR Legacy seems very much like the problem based learning theory. The one element of the STAR Legacy model was having students consult with “experts.” This may be done through online learning experiences or research which I thought the students would enjoy. Finally, I’ve heard of the MOST Multimedia before, but I don’t remember if it was listed under the same name. I think that I really agree with this model for low-performing students or students that are learning English as a second language. I have heard of adults saying they were able to learn English by watching TV and listening to music. I think that since this method touches on more than one sense, people remember it better. I know personally that listening to a lecture in college and taking notes (auditory and tactile) were the best way for me to learn.

I think that there are many barriers to implementing these learning theories in the classroom. In order for goal based to be successful, the teacher needs to do a great job of coming up with a list of skills you wanted to teach and then allowing yourself to give control to your students. I think this is tough for teachers to do. Anchored instruction would require a lot of work up-front, but once the scaffolding was in place, it could be very easy to use time and time again. Finally, with MOST Multimedia, working on finding appropriate videos might be difficult. This theory also emphasizes allowing the student to take on the role of a teacher. Just like giving up control during goal based learning, this might be tough.

In order to overcome these obstacles, I think that teachers should work with their professional learning teams (PLT) in order to figure out what skills need to be taught as well as sharing the responsibility for the creation and upkeep of the projects. If you share the workload, each teacher will benefit far more than if they tried to work alone. Also, the teacher could adapt these learning theories to an online environment where work could be saved and easily updated for future classes.

I thought a long time about how to integrate these theories into my 6^th grade math classes, and I had a much harder time than with any of the previous units. At the end of the year I do give my students a project that could be somewhat related to goal based. Students are given a project to design a recreation room for a wealthy client. They are given money, room dimensions, and other information such as favorite colors, and design style. They are then challenged with designing a room to please the client. At the end the students present their rooms to the class, and then the class is given an opportunity to ask questions and provide feedback. I know that there would need to be some adjustments to get this to fit goal based more closely, but I think it could be done pretty easily.

I would probably be least likely to use MOST Multimedia in my classroom. I do feel that if I adapted the videos to be math centered instead of literacy centered it might work as well.

I had so many good ideas about how these learning theories could be adapted to the web when I was reading the articles. Goal based learning and the STAR legacy could easily be adapted to a Google site or wordpress site. These are both easy to learn, so even a teacher that wasn’t great with technology could use it. The teacher could make a page for each of the 7 steps in goal based learning. It would be easy to integrate videos and a Voki in step 3 (Cover Story). The students could watch the video and listen to the voice on the Voki to get the background information. The teacher could easily assign roles and outline those roles on a website. Anchored instruction screams webquest! I think that all webquests should follow the steps of anchored instruction. The teacher sets forth an open ended question, and then guides the students through the learning process by providing resources and data. This would be so much better than just a website with links to other websites that I’ve seen in previous webquest examples. MOST Multimedia could easily be adapted for an online environment, students could use Voicethread. Voicethread allows the user to upload pictures, turn them into a slideshow, and then narrate the pictures using voice or typing of captions. Students could find pictures or the teacher could even provide the pictures for the students. Students could then organize the pictures in sequence and then narrate the story. For lower ability students, the teacher could even put the pictures on the website, and have the students just rearrange the slides.

None of these modules really seem to be group based, so a teacher could check in with students via e-mail or Skype for face-to-face communications.

Unit 2

After reviewing the four models presented in the group-based collaborative instruction and multimedia the key similarity between them has to be the dependence on a group for learning. More specifically, guided design, problem-based learning, and situated learning & cognitive apprenticeship all seem to be based on authentic learning experiences. Another important element that I saw while reviewing these theories is the role of the teacher and student. In all theories, I saw that the teacher takes the roll of the facilitator. They may create the groups and problem or situation. It is the instructor’s job to provided feedback as well. In some of the models, the teacher would comment on discussion boards, and in others, the teacher would provide feedback at the end of a project. They may give an “expert” opinion on the situation or even ask for students to go back and to think about another solution. Another similarity that I found between the four models was the reliance on one another in the group setting. Having the teacher define rolls can certainly help the group work better together. However, without each group member pulling their weight, it may be difficult for groups to succeed. The one exception to this is cooperative learning competitive. This is where group members compete against one another. In this case, you rely more on yourself than on your group members.

Initially, I was surprised at how similar guided design, problem-based learning, and situated learning & cognitive apprenticeship were. The one theory that seems a little bit different was the cooperative learning theory. I actually think that these theories have some weight to them. My assistant principal sent out an article to the staff that asked if as teachers we were creating students that were “makers.” Are we giving our students the tools to go out and do something? I think in most cases, the answer is no. We are creating students that can pass a standardized test and show growth, but we aren’t creating students that will be our future “doers.” These learning theories I believe can help created the makers and the doers. Giving students authentic and real world situations can really give students a deeper understanding of what they are learning. It isn’t enough to be able to tell what 100 divided by 8 is. Shouldn’t we be teaching our students to use that information in a real world setting? I think we should. I try to do this in my class on a daily basis. When teaching about percent I try to relate this to shopping for clothes, video games, and electronics, because that is what I know is important to 6^th graders. I think that one of the barriers to these learning theories is the time it takes to plan and supervise. I think that it is easier to plan a lecture than an authentic experience. Teachers would have to make groups, create the problem, make sure students had the correct prior knowledge, teach the students how to research, teach them how to work well in a group, and then supervise and provide feedback to each and every group in a timely and efficient fashion. This would be great in a class of 20, but what about in a class of 35 or even 100? I think one of the only ways to overcome this barrier would be to change the mindset of the higher ups in education.  We need to stop the “learn and regurgitate” method of testing. Until that happens, I don’t think that we will see a change in teaching. Another barrier that I see is the negative feelings that older students have towards group work. Personally, I like being responsible for my own work and my own grade. Group work has always made me nervous. I always feel that I am doing more than my fair share of work. I think that the way to overcome this is to have teacher defined roles for students. For example, when I used to teach language arts, we would have students rotate roles such as leader, illustrator, summarizer, question master, etc. This made sure that each student wasn’t always doing all of the work.

Since I teach 11 and 12 year olds, I think that the theory that I would most likely use is the cooperative learning theory. As a math teacher, I have so many great ideas, but with the amount of material I have to cover in such a short amount of time, group work tends to be minimal in my class. Once I teach a new concept, I tend to let my students choose to work with a partner, group, or individually. I think these activities could easily be turned into a cooperative learning experience. I can think of one instance in which I’ve used cooperative learning in the past year. During our geometry unit, we have to teach the rules of all three transformations (reflections, rotations, and translations). Instead of me just creating a PowerPoint, I give my students coordinate graphs, shapes, and activities. The students take their shapes and go through my directions (reflect the shape over the x-axis; translate 3 spaces up and one space left). Once they are finished with my directions they are then to work as a group to come up with a general “rule of thumb,” for each transformation. I think in the future if I more clearly define roles, this could be easily turned into a cooperative learning activity.

Since the four learning theories discussed in this unit and blog are all group related, I think that all of the tools that should be used must be tools that facilitate group work. I think that a great place to start should be a Google Doc, Wiki, or Google Site. These are all great tools because they allow many different people to edit. A Google doc even allows a place for group members to chat and work on the same document at the same time. I think that this would be great for a discussion board and/or note taking. Students could do their individual job and then collaborate on a Google doc. Another tool that I would think would work well for these theories is Elluminate. This tool allows students to not only use a text chat feature, but also allows students to actually talk to one another. Elluminate has the ability for one group member to actually share their screens with other group members. This could also be a great tool for groups to collaborate. In order for the instructor to interact with students, they could join an Elluminate session or leave comments on a Google doc/site or wiki as well.

Unit 1

After reading through the Personalized System of Instruction and the Audio-Tutorial approach, I noticed a few similarities. The biggest similarity that I recognized was the ultimate goal of both types of approaches was the specific mastery of goals. In both theories, students are expected to learn an objective, maybe complete a task or a discussion, and then students are tested on said objective. Students can only move forward after becoming proficient. Another similarity is that both methods allow for asynchronous classes. Students are able to individualize their education and work at their own pace. However, both do have some type of structure to keep students on some type of schedule. I think in both methods, students need to be self-motivated in order to get the work completed.

Some differences that I noted were that the Audio-Tutorial method seems geared towards catching students up that were missing pre-requsites, where as the PSI approach would be great for gifted classes and special education classes. When I first read about the audio-tutorial method all I could picture was elementary school students sitting around listening to a book on tape. Now that the technology has caught up, I actually think that this is a pretty great idea. I had been debating for many years now recording my lessons and putting them online for my students to review once they got home. One of my students has told me that they use youtube to help them if they get stuck on a homework question. This seems fundamentally the same as the audio-tutorial approach. Of course, it isn't nearly as structured, but the idea is the same.

I was pretty fascinated with the concept of the PSI. How great would it be if students could work at their own paces, and have a teacher or mentor their for guidance if necessary. As a teacher that currently has 34 6th graders in my math class, I would love for the gifted students to be able to move faster, and I would love for my lower level kids to be able to work at a slower pace. However, the county has us on a pacing guide, and we have to be teaching what the pacing guide tells us to teach.  Like I mentioned above, I thought that the audio-tutorial method seemed old-fashioned. I keep picturing dusty cassette players and tapes that have to be rewound each time. It makes sense since it was developed in the 1960's. However, if you replace audio tapes with mp3 files or voicethread, it becomes a very modern approach. The audio-tutorial method is set up like a traditional classroom. The teacher gives some background knowledge, the students do independent work, then the students come back together to have another discussion. The biggest difference I see is that a lot of the discovery is put on the students.

I think that some of the barriers that exist in both of these theories is cost and workload. The cost of creating individualized education plans for every student would be astronomical. I think it would be best suited to gear this towards the gifted and special education students. The other barrier is the workload. One teacher, school, even district could never have the time to create individualized learning plans for every student, even if were only geared towards the gifted/special education students. I think It would be great if there was a place for educators to collaborate so nobody would have to reinvent the wheel. I think another obstacle is getting around standardized tests. If the state requires students to learn concepts 1-100 in the 180 day school year, there isn't much room for individualization. However, if these barriers were overcome, then I feel that students would actually learn more. Too many times I feel when I have to start a new unit, many of my students aren't quite ready. They need a few more days to work on the old skill. Unfortunately, the pacing guides do not allow for this type of remediation.

I would love to integrate both theories into my classroom. We currently do some compacted units so that some of our gifted students can work on higher level skills. I think it would be great if we could come up with a PSI (guided design) for them. Additionally, maybe recording some of my lessons and putting them up on my class website would be a good way for students to go home and review the material since most parents aren't able to help with the math. I think that it woulnd't be too difficult to incorporate some voicthreads, screencasts, podcasts, or even straight youtube videos into a current class.