Peer Review

Thank you, UTAKRSH PATADIA, KAREN MCDOUGALL, SHREY PATEL and TRUSHA SAVALIYA for sharing your interactive learning resource.

I am sorry for the late review, it is really difficult for me to locate any errors from your peer review. I really hope that I could give you some helpful suggestions but your work is already a well-done work. Therefore, I think the best I could do is to review the strengths of your interactive resource.

Your interactive learning resource is very well-designed because it is very easy for readers to follow the contents. The table of contents certainly helps readers to see what you are going to present. The little split you put before every paragraph is also very helpful for readers to read through your work. This level of design almost had me confused your work with the professional teachers’ work. the way you provide the module links is also fantastic as they do not take any extra place on your interactive learning resource. I am really thankful you did that because that makes your interactive learning resource less wordy and more interesting for me to read. I also appreciate the way that you planned to teach the 2nd Grade student. The way you plan to encourage students to learn is so much different than what I experienced in my 2nd Grade. It is very hard for me to remember the exact scene (not because I slept through most of the classes, it is because I do not have a strong memory of my childhood), all I could remember is that almost in every math class, my math teacher was exhausted after restlessly teaching 5 classes, walked into our class and just stand in front of the blackboard teaching and writing down what we need to do in that class. Students like me never had a chance to experience such activities. Therefore, I agree with your plan on teaching the 2nd Grade as it not only helped to develop young students’ strength and encourage them to learn, it also prevents students like myself to fall asleep during classes.

In conclusion, your interactive learning resource is a very well-complete teaching plan, it is very well organized, very well written. All of you put huge amounts of effort to finish such a great interactive learning resource. It is very difficult for me to locate anything you need to improve in your interactive learning resource; however, I believe that your interactive learning resource also follows some other learning theories such as cooperative learning. It is not a matter that is enough to be a weakness as your interactive learning resource is mostly on a cognitivist approach. I am sorry that I could not identify any weaknesses from your interactive learning resource, I really believe that your work is very well-done and I do not think I would be able to identify any weaknesses even if I read your interactive learning resource for one more week. Thank you so much for providing such a great learning resource.

Community Contributions-Learning Design

Hello Karen,

Thank you so much for sharing. I read your post on open pedagogies. I find it interesting that you use your own experience to be an example of the integration of open pedagogy. And I really enjoyed your explanation as it helped me to have a better understanding of your topic. Your experience of using OER really get my attention, I wish I had a chance to use such accessible resources for the courses I had, that could have saved me a lot of money on education. With that amount of money, I couldn’t even imagine how many snacks I could get at my young age. I really feel sorry for the fat belly I couldn’t get after reading your blog. I also learn how creating an environment of easily accessible education could help to teach pedagogy. I learn a lot from your blog. Great post! Thank you!

Hello Carla,

Thank you so much for sharing. Your post on experiential learning gives me a recall of a nightmare of an endless loop of doing math solving problems before the exam (alright, it was just a 3hour loop). It was at a night before an exam, one of my friends decided to sacrifice a night of sleep and introduce a learning method that is really similar to the method you introduced. Regardless of how much pain this learning method gave me, I have to admit that it actually helps me to understand better on those problem sets, after each time I finished a problem my friend asked me to think, reflect on the problem, I mean, he even asked me to solve that question with a different solution. Due to the fact that he sacrifices a night of sleep to try to help me, I could not reject him. Anyway, as a result, I fully understand the problems of those problem sets (at least that is what I thought). Thanks to my friend and his learning method, I gained so much confidence for the other day’s exam. However, in the middle of that exam, I encountered a stomach problem that made me swear to not eat certain food again in my life. Well, that is another story to tell. Anyway, your blog on experiential learning is really interesting to read, and the video and the podcast really help me to have a better understanding of experiential learning. Thank you for such a clear explanation. Great post! Thank you!

Cooperative Learning

What is Cooperative learning?

Cooperative learning is a learning method that has the following characteristics:
1. Students are separated into a small group, each group contains three to four members.
2. Students are positively interdependent.
3. Students need to cooperative to accomplish their common tasks or learning activities.
4. Students are individually responsible for their work and learning.

Why choosing Cooperative learning?

If you are wondering how cooperative learning works, the video below should help you to understand.

Cooperative learning separate classes into a different group, each group should contain high achievers and low achievers. Cooperative learning is all about Student Center Learning, which gives students an opportunity to actively think, discuss, and practice, making the lecture less dependent on teachers’ direct teaching. In the process of cooperative learning, every student is not only responsible for their own learning, but also for their groupmates’. Therefore, Cooperative learning has the below Advantages:
1. Correctly treat the differences between students in class.
In the traditional classes, each student has different performances on different subjects. Cooperative learning uses the strategy of dividing students by their differences, letting them discover their own strengths and helping them to optimize their strengths.
2. Motivate students.
traditional classes are often focused on teachers’ lectures, students are passively receiving knowledge from the teachers, which makes students bored and less willing to ask questions. Cooperative learning changes the format of learning, students are now more actively contribute to learning.

How does Cooperative Learning Align with my pod’s learning blueprint?

My pod designed a learning blueprint for those who want to learn Cantonese. During the process of designing our blueprints, we find out that the easiest way to language a second language is to practice more often, not only by writing and reading but also speaking and listening. And we think that separating students into different groups can make the course more effective. In that way, teachers have more times to observe students’ learning process and thus have more time to take extra care of the students needed.

Behaviorism

What is Behaviorism?

Behaviorists believe that learning is by observing demonstrated performances. They also believe that it is important to reward or punish learners for their performances within a good environment. They believe that by correcting the negative behaviours, they can predict what the learners would become in the future.

Experience of Behaviorism

The most unforgettable experience of Behaviorism I ever had happened when I was just a kid. I could not remember how old I was when that event occurred. It was a soccer match night, my father was so concentrated on the match that he forgot I was sitting right next to him, so he started to swear, using bad language whenever his favourite team was behind. I was sitting there, not understanding what was going on, I was watching my father’s reactions, thinking that I should do the same thing. So, I started to swear, no matter what was going on on the TV, I just swore. It was funny until my mother kicked it and saw me smoothy swearing, she immediately understood the situation and punished us both. This event was so remarkable because not only that was the first time I remember getting punished, it was also the first time I remember observing and copying behaviour from others. To rethink this experience, I find it so interesting because I did not understand the reason why my father swore, I just learnt it without understanding it, and the punishment from my mother actually stopped me from swearing. As an Asian, I can say that it is very common to see parents, teachers using rewards or punishments method to educate their children, and they tend to let their children learning by practicing over and over again. In most cases, the only matter they concern about is whether their students could get the correct answers. This method might seem effective as it can be effective for teachers and parents to teach large amounts of students at the same time. But, many students are like me, who do not really understand the questions, but we still have the way to get to the correct answer because of the large amounts of practice. we do not care to understand the question because we know that as long as we get the correct answer, we get our rewards. As a result, we only get motivated when there are rewards for our doings. To me, Behavorists are more like trainers than teachers. But still, I think Behavorists are the most effective when it comes to teaching a large class.