Solo Phase No.4: Assessing SRL

Planning Phase:

Describe your solo phase task:

Read the 2 articles we have been given, plan, make ICE notes and reflect.

What topics and concepts are related to your task?

• Rubrics and Self-assessment Scripts Effects on Self-regulation, Learning and Self-efficacy in Secondary Education.
•  How can Primary School Students Learn Self-regulated Learning Strategies Most Effectively? A Meta-analysis on Self-Regulation Training Programmes.

Set a goal for this work period:

3 days.

How confident are you that you will achieve your goal?

Semi-confident.

Main 3 Points From Each Article + 2 Ice Notes:

Article 1: Rubrics and Self-assessment Scripts Effects on Self-regulation, Learning and Self-efficacy in Secondary Education.

Key Points:

1. Self-assessment is a crucial process in self-regulation. Self-assessment can effected by the by the goals the student is pursuing, the teachers instructions and on the students perceived effectiveness of self-assessment. Therefore, it’s important to discover which interventions promoting self-assessment are best at developing self-regulation in students.
2. Self-regulation is a key ability needed to be successful in further education. Hence, it is important to intervene in students’ early academic years so that the students develop effective self regulation. Additionally, by intervening early in students’ academic learning, teachers can stop the development of performance and avoidance goals in students – which have a negative effect on their learning.
3. The use of both rubrics and scripts helps to promote self-assessment – and therefore self regulation. Hence, teachers should help students by providing them with both of these tools.

Ideas:

1. As a future teacher, I must remember to make sure that self-assessment criteria are clear to students from the beginning of the learning process. By doing this, my students can have clear expectations about what their goals should be – and should then be able to plan accordingly.
2. Even though rubrics help to promote self-regulation, they do so less than scripts. Therefore, it would be better for me to focus students’ attention on the process of the task/learning (as scripts do) than on performance (as rubrics do).

Connections:

After reading the article, my knowledge has been increased on how essential feedback can be in raising students self-regulation and, consequently, their ability to achieve academic success. I also learned more about the ways in which rubrics and scripts benefit student learning – and how to better implement these tools in my future learning (e.g- providing rubrics at the start of a course/task to help students establish appropriate goals).

Elaboration:

For my real life example, I’d like to explain how a rubric (provided by my teacher) was used to help me set my goals and regulate my learning for one of my courses.

Here is the rubric with which we access to at the start of the course:

By providing me with the above rubric, my teacher allowed me to see what the assessment criteria was for the task and the scale that would be used for grading.

Because I knew the assessment criteria (and what was required to reach a certain grade in that criteria), I was able to plan the time I would need to spend on research and writing more accurately than I would of been able to without the rubric. Hence, the rubric helped me manage my time wisely and also set very accurate goals for myself – as I knew what I needed to include in my final product to reach my desired grade (my goal).

Additionally, by using the rubric I was provided with, I was able to monitor my progress on my goal by self grading my work. This was done by comparing what I had written so far with the criteria in the rubric – then considering how my work compared to the criteria. Did it need editing or additional research? Did it need more of my own personal opinions or more scientific references? If so, the rubric helped me notice this – which allowed to make additions or modify my work in order to achieve my desired goal.

It is in such a way that rubrics can be used as a very helpful tool in helping students plan and achieve their goals.

Source: Panadero, E., Tapia, J.A. and Huertas, J.A. (2012). Rubrics and self-assessment scripts effects on self-regulation, learning and self-efficacy in secondary education. Learning and individual differences

Article 2:  How can Primary School Students Learn Self-Regulated Learning Strategies Most Effectively? A Meta-analysis on Self-Regulation Training Programmes.

Key Points:

1. Empirical studies have found that training programmes are more efficient if students are learning domain specific content. Therefore, learning strategy instruction should be related to context. Relating strategy instruction to context can be done easily by ingraining it within the regular course instruction itself.
2. Training programmes should create learning environments that are conductive to self-regulated learning – so that learners have the chance to apply and practice their newly acquired learning strategies.
3. Research has found that young children benefit the most from self-regulated learning training. One major reason for this is because, during their early academic years, students construct their learning and self-efficacy attitudes – and these attitudes are easier to direct towards positive learning styles and behaviour whilst they are still developing (in comparison to attempting to change the attitudes once they have already established negative learning styles and behaviour).

Ideas:

1. When trying to teach learning strategies to my future students, I must remember to try and make sure that my interventions are integrated into the learning context itself to enhance the intervention’s effectiveness. It is also important to take the various different aspects of learning into consideration – paying attention to both the metacognitive and motivational aspects of learning and making an effort to combine the two within my interventions.
2. Research has shown that the interventions conducted by researchers are more effective than the interventions conducted by regular teachers. One explanation for this is that – as researchers are the ones who developed the interventions – they better understand how best to implement the interventions. Therefore, in order to attempt to combat this problem, I should try and attempt to receive guided and detailed instruction from an expert when learning new intervention strategies. By doing so, I would hope to elevate my ability to effectively use interventions correctly.

Connections:

Although I learned a lot from this article, I feel the biggest contributions to my knowledge fell into two areas. Firstly, the importance of integrating learning strategies into context was reinforced for me. And, secondly, my knowledge on constructing effective training programmes grew: I now understand that the most effective training programmes should train cognitive (elaboration + problem solving strategies), metacognitive (planning strategies) and motivational strategies (e.g – feedback on work) – whilst providing information on strategy use and its benefit to learning.

Elaboration:

For my real life example I’d like to consider how a teacher could implement a metacognitive and motivational strategy to help a student self-regulate their learning. Within this example I will use the fictional student I used in my other elaboration – John.

It is halfway through the course year and John has been given his first graded assignment – to choose a book and write an analytical essay on it. John is fairly confused on how to begin the task and is also feeling fairly unmotivated to start work. Due to this, John asks his teacher for guidance.

Upon asking for help John is presented with a flow chart (acting as a script) and instructed to read it through thoroughly before he begins using it. He is told to come back and discuss with the teacher whenever he wants to – although the teacher informs him that he/she will come and check sporadically on his progress.

An example flow chart is given below – which I will make context related to increase it’s effectiveness (by including example questions that could be present in the flow chart):

(Source: http://www.agweb.com/article/steps_for_strategic_planning/)

In using the flow chart John is able to commence working on the task.

He visualizes his future state and writes down what he wants to achieve (setting his goals – e.g: “What book do you want to write about?”).

He then analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of his set goal – and considers what opportunities he can take to achieve his goal and what threats may hamper achieving the goal (SWOT analysis of his goal – e.g: “What are the strengths or writing about this book? Are there any weaknesses? What opportunities can you take to help yourself write about this book? Are there any threats that could hamper your progress?”).

He then reflects on why he is attempting to achieve this goal (purpose and value) and writes his reasons down (a motivational strategy – e.g: “Why do you want to write this essay? What is the point in completing this task?”).

Following this he considers critical issues that might have arisen from his SWOT analysis.

After doing so, he is able to reflect upon his goal and make changes if the critical issues are particularly bothersome.

He then begins to form an action plan (study plan/work plan) to manage his time effectively and meet the deadline set for the work.

Afterwards, he is able to begin following his action plan and commences work on the task – knowing that he must monitor and revise during the course of his work (as the teach instructed him to first read the whole flowchart).

During this whole process the teacher is able to check up on John to see if any help is required in the setting of his goals and provide feedback on his work so far (assisting the use of the metacognitive strategies and motivational strategies being used).

Hence, by providing John with the flow chart and supporting him, the teacher guides John in self-regulating his learning. Hopefully this guidance allows him to successfully achieve his set goals and complete the task at hand.

Source: : Dignath, C., Buettner, G., Langfeldt, H-P. (2008). How can primary school students learn self-regulated learning strategies most effectively? A meta-analysis on self-regulation training programmes. Educational Research Review, 3, pp. 101-129

Reflection:

Recall your Solo phase planning. How well did you succeed? Why?

I failed at succeeding in achieving my goals as I became ill during the implementation of my plan.

Describe one challenge that you had during your task performance:

Being ill has been the biggest challenge I have faced in completing this task. Due to being sick – I often found it hard to focus clearly on the task at hand. Even sometimes encountering physical problems (headaches, nausea, etc) that hampered my ability to follow my study plan.

What did you do to help yourself when facing a challenge?

I broke down my work hours into much smaller amounts and spread them out over a much longer period of time. This helped me progress slowly through the work and also allowed me to make sure the quality of work I was producing was meeting my usual standards.

What could you do differently next time?

Eat more vegetables and wash my hands?…or get a better immune system. Maybe all of three? Hahaha.

Solo Phase No.3: Strategies and SRL

Planning Phase:

Describe your solo phase task:

Read the 3 articles we have been given, plan, make ICE notes and reflect.

What topics and concepts are related to your task?

• Self-Regulation and Learning Strategies.
• Focusing the Conceptual Lens on Metacognition, Self-regulation, and Self-regulated Learning.
• Promoting Effective Task Interpretation as an Important Work Habit: A Key to Successful Teaching and Learning.

Set a goal for this work period:

3 days.

How confident are you that you will achieve your goal?

Confident.

Main 3 Points From Each Article + 2 Ice Notes:

Article 1: Self-Regulation and Learning Strategies.

Key Points:

1. Learning strategies involve the use of cognition, metacognition, motivation, affect, and behaviour to increase the probability of succeeding in learning, creating meaningful and retrievable memories, and performing higher order cognitive tasks. Additionally, learning strategies help student to take responsibility for their own learning and become lifelong learners.
2. Strategic learners have the skill, will and self-regulation needed to be effective and efficient learners. These 3 components interactive with each other to create effective and efficient learning.
3. Students need to acquire three types of knowledge for any strategy to be useful for them: declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge and conditional knowledge. Having these types of knowledge allows the student to effectively and efficiently choose learning strategies that are appropriate for the situation at hand.

Ideas:

1. The idea of will being an essential component necessary to become an effective and efficient learner is interesting to me – as it is again something that is related to self-efficacy and therefore my thesis. Having ‘will’ means that the learner is able to set, analyze and use short-term and long-term goals, use future time perspectives and goal hierarchies to generate motivation, create enabling beliefs (self efficacy) and generate a positive mindset in regards to learning. Whereas, conversely, having a lack of ‘will’ results in self sabotaging beliefs, low self-efficacy and high anxiety within students. Therefore, it would be wise to investigate and research all the affects that ‘will’ has on self-efficacy – so that I am better able to structure and analyze my thesis results.
2. It is important for students to have a large learning strategy repertoire – so that they can use the best learning strategies for the task at hand. Due to this, as a future college/university teacher, I must remember to persevere in using interventions (teaching learning strategies) to help students become more strategic and self-regulated learners. This can be done by setting up learning center workshops and creating a metacurriculum for my students.

Connections:

After reading this article my knowledge on the use, implementation and acquisition of learning strategies was expanded upon. My knowledge extended from merely knowing about learning strategies – to understanding the categories under which certain learning strategies fall (e.g. – rehearsal strategies, elaboration learning strategies and organization strategies) and how students are able to acquire learning strategies from teachers.

Elaboration:

For my real life example, I’d like to focus on how a elaboration learning strategy could be taught to a learner and then used by them to assist in their learning. Whereas, in my other elaboration notes, my constructions were merely abstract scenarios – I will instead now use my own current learning situation in this SRL course as an example.

Upon starting this SRL course we were told we would be required to write and produce ‘ICE’ notes. We were then informed on what ICE notes actually were and what they consisted of (Ideas, Connections and Elaboration). A worksheet for creating ICE notes was posted online to assist us in the construction of our notes. In doing this, our teachers instilled in us an elaboration learning strategy.

As the ICE notes require us to state the IDEAS that are most meaningful for us from each topic, CONNECT them to our previous knowledge and then ELABORATE on what we have learned (by asking us to create real life examples) – we are adding to and modifying the information we are absorbing, thus making it more memorable and meaningful to us. Therefore, in constructing ICE notes, we use an elaboration strategy to assist us in our learning.

Source: Weinstein, C. E., Acce, T. W., & Jung, J. (2011). Self-regulation and  learning strategies. New Directions for Teaching and Learning,  126, 45–53.

Article 2: Promoting Effective Task Interpretation as an Important Work Habit: A Key to Successful Teaching and Learning.

Key Points:

1. To be successful academically, students need to use a consistent approach (a work habit) when tackling academic tasks. They need to carefully interpret the demands of the tasks – otherwise they may proceed down learning pathways that are non-optimal and even harmful to their learning.
2. Within the learning environment (lectures, group discussions, individual tutorials, set reading, assignments, tests, etc) teachers have the potential to influence students’ construction of knowledge and competency over many domains.  Therefore, learning environments can be seen to shape the approaches students use for learning and their learning outcomes.
3. Understanding task purpose, structure and components are all essential for students successful navigation of academic work. For example, “a learner with a strategic learner with a clear vision of purpose can engage in work more efficiently and strategically if he/she also understands how the task is structured and typical task components.”

Ideas:

1. As students’ interpretations of tasks affects their planning, strategies and how they evaluate their performance during monitoring and self-evaluation – it is important, as a teacher, to make sure that students’ task interpretation is not faulty. Otherwise, learning will be derailed even if the student is working hard (as they will fail to focus on the intended learning goals).
2. In order to combat the above problem, teachers must make sure that all aspects of a course convey the same meaning to students in regards to what will be achieved through completing assignments and examinations. Therefore, when designing the learning environment, teachers should pay attention to the connections between the activities and tasks they use, their instructional practices and the evaluation criteria of the course. In doing this, teachers can lower the possibility of students misinterpreting the tasks.

Connections:

The contents of this article presented me with a large amount of new information. Although I always understood on a basic level the importance of correctly interpreting a task – I never knew of the many complexities that can contribute towards failing to interpret a task correctly. Additionally, my knowledge on how important the role a teacher plays in successful task interpretation and the ways in which they can assist students’ in interpreting tasks was also expanded upon.

Elaboration:

For my real life example, I’d like to consider a few ways in which a teacher can help to promote successful task interpretation for students.

A very simple and basic way of supporting task interpretation could be by highlighting the goals underlying each activity. This could be done by making a hand out with the goals written down or by clarifying the expectations of an assignment. However, in doing this it is not necessarily guaranteed that students’ will reflectively and actively (self-regulation) interpret the information.

Therefore, in order to encourage efficacious self-regulation and task interpretation – teachers can construct activities promoting such things. For example, teachers could ask students to summarize task criteria and plans before allowing them to commence work on the task. In doing this, teachers are able to discover if the students’ interpretation of the task is correct and then act accordingly if it is not.

If such support is continuous, then over time the teachers students will become more likely to adopt task interpretation as a work habit.

Source:

Butler, D. L. and Cartier, S. C. (2004). Promoting Effective Task Interpretation as an Important Work Habit: A Key to Successful Teaching and Learning. Teachers College Record,  106 (9), pp. 1729-1758.

Article 3: Focusing the Conceptual Lens on Metacognition, Self-regulation, and Self-regulated Learning.

Key Points:

1. Metacognition, self-regulation and self-regulated learning have a conceptual core binding the three of them together: that individuals make efforts to monitor their thought and actions and to attempt to gain control over them. However, the educational research community should still try to be concise when using the terms – as there are conceptual differences beyond the conceptual core.
2. Educational researchers should make a point in striving to adequately define metacognition, SR and SRL terms and use them in a concise manner. So that confusion will be lessened when it comes to creating, reading and understanding research.
3. Although SRL has qualities related to both metacognition and SR – what distinguishes it is its exclusive focus on academic learning. It did not find its way to the classroom – it was born there.

Source:

Dinsmore, D. L., Alexander, P. A., & Louglin, S. M. (2008). Focusing the conceptual lens on metacognition, self-regulation, and self-regulated learning. Educational Psychology Review.

Reflection:

Recall your Solo phase planning. How well did you succeed? Why?

I succeeded well as I managed to stick to my study plan and complete the work in the allotted time.

Describe one challenge that you had during your task performance:

Again, one challenge that I had whilst completing this task was motivation to stick to the study plan I had set myself. Although, this time it was fairly easy to motivate myself as – after talking to my teachers – I found out that only 2 ICE notes were needed from the topic.

What did you do to help yourself when facing a challenge?

I reminded myself that by sticking to my study plan I would be able to complete the work on time and alleviate any stress I might feel from the work load. I also kept in mind that I wouldn’t have to do as much work to complete the task – so I would be done sooner and be able to relax more.

What could you do differently next time?

I could try and space the studying time out over a longer period of time, so I can take a more leisurely pace in completing the work. Although I don’t really feel it is necessary as I am fairly happy with my current working schedule. I just need to remember to keep my motivation up so I can stick to my study plans.

Expertise Profile 1.

The following is a reflection on what I perceive to be my expertise in regards to self-regulating my learning. It is being written as a part of my expertise profile that will be assessed and graded for my course: Learning of Expertise.

1. Analyze and define in your own words what kind of expertise you have.

In looking at myself and thinking about the areas in which I seem to posses expertise – I have chosen to focus on expertise I may have that relates to my ability to learn. Contemplating on my expertise in learning, I feel that I have the ability to effectively self-regulate my learning when it comes to producing work. I believe this as the frequency with which I seem to consistently be able to hit my desired learning outcomes is fairly high.

Looking deeper into what results in being able to achieve my learning outcomes, I realise that I am fairly metacognitive when attempting to achieve my desired goal. I think about what I know, my original opinions on a subject matter and the ways in which I can approach the task – I then actively note what areas of knowledge I lack and what possible flaws in my own reasoning I have in relation to the task.

I then take a strategic approach when it comes to actually starting the task. After planning what I will do and starting the task – I persevere in actively monitoring and reflecting on my work as it is produced (measuring it against the standards I have set myself and/or marking criteria provided by my teachers). As I constantly try to reflect on my work I make amendments to what I feel I need to change in regards to my plan in order to achieve my final goal.

Finally, looking critically at my own behaviour, I’m able to comprehend my proficiency in motivating myself to complete tasks. I’m able to realise I have the ability to control my behaviour, as when I start to procrastinate or deviate from my study/work plan – I can (the majority of the time) effectively redirect my attention back to completing the task.

So, in short, due to my reasoning above I believe I have expertise in self-regulating my learning.

2. How have you learned that expertise?

I believe I have learned this expertise over the course of my academic lifetime. However, I speculate that I made the most significant steps in regulating my own learning when it came to completing my bachelors degree. I consider to have made the biggest steps during my bachelors as it was the first place in which I was required to complete truly difficult tasks with little to no assistance from teachers (mostly due to being bed ridden for a large period of time).

Due to the lack of assistance, it was up to me to find and examine the criteria we were being graded on for the projects; then afterwards examining my own knowledge of the tasks and considering what else I needed to know in order to meet the highest criteria mentioned. As time progressed and I completed more tasks (and received feedback/grades) – I became more effective at evaluating my learning/produced work as I compared my own evaluations of my work to those supplied by the teachers; this eventually led to me being able to effectively and efficiently produce work to a standard that met my desired goals. The ability to control my behaviour was also developed at university – as there was no one to pressure me into completing the assigned tasks, which meant it became my full responsibility to stick to my study plans and ensure that the work was completed on time. Interestingly, I had no idea of the concept of self-regulation until I graduated from my previous university – so, I suppose the expertise of self-regulation came naturally and therefore must have been self taught in my particular case.

3. How can you still improve it?

I believe I can still improve my ability to self-regulate my learning by finding a way in which to increase my motivation. Although I seem to posses enough control over my behaviour when it comes to completing tasks on time – I believe the current level of control isn’t quite enough, as I always feel like could have done better on a given task if I would of dedicated more time to it. Figuring out a way to improve my motivation to spend more time on tasks is fairly hard as there are a lot of other things I enjoy doing with my time (than just completing my academic tasks). Perhaps I would be able to increase motivation to spend more time on my produced works if I received a higher grade than I normally might (as a result of the extra time spent on the work).

Of course, this is hard as I first have to dedicate resources to the desired goal, even though I do not know if I will achieve the results I aim for. Hence, I fear wasting resources (my time) on something that will not necessarily give me as much of a positive outcome as I wish. I believe my self-efficacy is fairly high (as I seem to feel that I could achieve higher results), but I know I could maintain the same standard of work and be content with the results I am currently achieving – whilst still being able to indulge myself in my hobbies. So, it is a tricky problem to solve, as I don’t truly feel like I need to achieve higher grades at this point in time.

4. How do you manage/act as an expert in problem-solving situations?

Generally, when presented with a problem, I try to think about the problem and my current knowledge on it objectively.

I start by considering what I know in regards to the problem and then check to see if there are any gaps in my knowledge (by conducting research or perhaps asking my peers). After building up a wide base knowledge on the problem, I formulate a plan to solve the problem – then I begin enacting the plan. As the plan progresses I make sure to reflect on how well the plan is being implemented (and attempt to receive feedback from others if I can); if the plan seems to not be working I attempt to gather more knowledge. With the new knowledge I can formulate a new plan or modify the existing one. Finally, upon solving the problem, I check to see if the outcome is the desired one. If the outcome fails to meet my expectations I note what areas need to be improved upon so I can attempt to improve results in the future.

5. How do you work in groups? How do you act as an expert in group situations?

In a group situation, I will wait to see how productive the group is before deciding what role I need to play. If the group seems lost with where to start – I’ll attempt to create a discussion in which the groups base knowledge can be seen and people can bounce ideas off each other in regards to formulating a plan. Afterwards, I’ll attempt to make sure that the group stays focused on the task at hand and that everyone is being involved in the collaborative process. Otherwise, if the group itself seems to be motivated and well organized, I’ll simply make sure to reference the criteria we’re expected to meet whilst helping to formulate a plan to tackle the task; I’ll also impart what knowledge/ideas I have to the group during the course of the task.

In the case that I find myself being an expert in the group, I will try to facilitate discussion between the group members in order to find out how much the group knows about the given task. Then I will inform the group on what I know about the task in relation to what they’ve already discussed. By attempting to add my knowledge to their existing framework, I try to make it easier for them to assimilate any new knowledge. This lessens the chance that the group will be confused as I try to adapt my own knowledge to fit and expand on their current understanding of the problem. I will then proceed to act as I would if I possessed no expertise for the task at hand.

Global Perspectives on the Educational use of ICT

Today we were put into groups where we each presented articles we had read in our spare time. The articles all discussed the global perspectives on the educational use of ICT. After presenting the articles within our groups, each group collaboratively made a SWOT analysis poster (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) – which we then presented to the whole class.

My groups poster:

We started by defining a few strengths that ICT brings to education:

• open source software makes the cost of using EdTech very cheap – as open source software is quite literally free. Meaning that institutions only need to pay for the technological equipment in order to take advantage of the software.
• with the use of the internet it’s easier to perform collaborative learning globally – as students anywhere in the world are able to communicate with each other instantaneously through such applications as Google Drive.
• feedback in on work/ideas is facilitated with EdTech – again thanks to the internet easing communication between students and teachers via the use of e-mail or dedicated school/university websites or web mail.
• software can be created to suit the needs of the learner – for example, a dyslexic university student could be given a program facilitating their essay writing. Such things would allow students with learning problems to progress without the need for assistance from others – which they may tend not to accept as they find asking for help embarrassing.

Afterwards we considered what opportunities ICT offers education:

• education is more accessible world wide through the net – as online courses make education available to students who may live in remote locations.
• if open source software increases then educational technology will spread faster as the software is free – meaning that, once again, beneficial educational tools reach more people which then promotes and allows effective education to be taught.
• as educational technology spreads the internet will allow students to test their ideas against other cultures – which will help to promote growth and understanding around the world.

After tackling the positive aspects of ICT in education we took time to look at the negatives that come with it. Starting with the weaknesses:

• teachers may know how to use technology but do not understand how to use technology – but they don’t understand how to use it pedagogically. This can be seen as a weakness as teachers may use technology inappropriately, which in turn may hinder or even hurt the learning of the students.
• not only teachers but students themselves might use technology inappropriately. As, for example, students might use the technology assigned to them to play games or check facebook – instead of using it to complete the task at hand. Which, again, would hamper or hurt their learning.
• there might also be problems when it comes to providing the same level of educational technology between urban and rural areas due to lack of technology/infrastructure in the more rural locations.

Finally we took a look at the threats technology poses when integrating it into education:

• the current economical climate around the world means that – in the future – educational ICT might not be properly supported if another recession occurs. For example, technology previously purchased could break and schools would not be able to afford the maintenance costs in order to repair it.
• the benefits of ICT might be misunderstood when it comes to learning. Meaning that we might end up discovering that we have misused it in some way.
• we could also end up impairing our ability to learn effectively without technology in the future – if we become too over reliant on its use.

Personally, I believe that the potential benefits technology brings to education are far too great to be ignored. Speaking as someone who was bed ridden for a lengthy period of time at one point in my life – the correct use of educational ICT allowed me to finish my studies and graduate from my previous institution on time due to the online facilities that my university had. Without them, it may have taken me up to an extra year or two to reach where I am today.

Although I can admit that weaknesses are indeed present when it comes to the educational use of ICT – I feel that most of them are fairly easy to remedy. For instance: teachers themselves can be taught the best way to use ICT pedagogically, students can be monitored when using technology to make sure they do not misuse it and if a funding plan is properly produced by the government – technology could be distributed adequately between both rural and urban areas. However, I still harbour some concerns that the overuse of technology could result in some unavoidable negative effects; I fear that people may become too reliant on technology and there is also the very real threat that, by introducing technology to schools, students may come to physically harm themselves from over using technology if they use it both at home and in school (indeed, eye strain is something that I myself suffered from during the time I was bed ridden).

Regardless, as long as EdTech is used appropriately and in moderation – I think it is very beneficial to the future of education.

Updated Mindmap:

What I learned this week: Self Regulated Learning, Collaborative Learning and the Learning of Expertise.

Coming into class this week was a bit tough as I succumbed to the flu. However, I managed to gather up what little energy I have and force myself into university to find out more about the different types of learning. Firstly, in this post, I will briefly recap on what I gathered were the key points in the different learning perspectives. After summarizing what I’ve learned I will proceed to give my own opinion on each perspective – analyzing the perceived strengths and weakness of each approach.

Self Regulated Learning.

Self-regulated learning is – as the name would suggest – a process in which the learner takes control of their learning and behaviour through metacognition. This metacognition involves being able to plan, monitor and evaluate your personal progress; as well as being able to motivate yourself to learn via the use of goals. These “goals” can be either master orientated goals (which involve wanting to learn for the sake of learning/increasing you skills) or/and performance orientated goals (which relate to simply wanting to succeed due to social pressures on the learner). Also, it should be noted that teachers can have an influence on improving a students self-regulation in various ways (e.g. helping to increase their motivation for a task, help student set their goals or demonstrating ways in which learners are able to more effectively manage their time).

It is my belief that helping students become effective self-regulated learners is perhaps the most important facet of learning out of the 3 perspectives being discussed in this post.  I hold this notion for two perceived reasons:

1. Only students themselves have full control over the effort/time they put in to learning. Hence, by helping students set and realize their goals, teachers can try to raise student motivation and self-efficacy; and in raising these values teachers are able to create students who are more dedicated to spending time and effort on learning.
2. Students who are able to accurately reflect critically upon their own work are better able to improve/correct their learning/produced work during out of school hours; this, I would argue, results in a deeper understanding of the knowledge being learned (as students organize facts/information in to ways which are easily understandable for them) and promotes further learning as the student may search for additional information to strengthen their perceived weaknesses.

So, by helping the learner become self-regulated, teachers effectively give the leaner tools with which they can raise their own self-efficacy and increase their ability/willingness to learn and produce higher quality work.

Collaborative Learning.

Again, the name represents the approach of the perspective: collaborative learning generally involves 2 or more people working together in order to increase their understanding on a subject. Unlike self-regulated learning, collaborative learning creates an active learning environment and allows the learner to take advantage of the group dynamic by allowing the members to make use of each others skills and knowledge whilst also allowing for a lot of feedback on work/ideas being produced by other group members.  Collaborative learning can take place in the form of such activities as: joint problem solving, collaborative writing and group projects (e.g. jigsaw work, which I partook in this week – we each read individual articles before forming groups and presenting what we learned to each other, followed by collectively constructing a mindmap and a list of key points). Generally, though, collaborative learning results in the students creating some sort of product demonstrating what they have learned.

Whilst I believe that collaborative learning has its advantages over self regulated learning (such as the ones described above), I believe it also has some very real disadvantages that aren’t too often brought to light; and which, in my personal experience as a learner, tend to occur all too often.

For example, in a group setting it is not necessarily true that every group member will contribute to the work being produced – in fact – in extreme cases it may even come to pass that only one group member contributes meaningfully to the produced work.
This lack of contribution could be for such reasons as the group members not having done the reading (if the collaborative task was a jigsaw) or something more troublesome, like a lack of motivation to contribute to the group work. If one out of five group members fail to contribute for whatever reason – the impact on the other members is not necessarily detrimental (unless the single non-contributing group member is distracting the other members from completing the task). Although, in collaborative activities like jigsaw learning, if one group member hasn’t read the material – he automatically interferes with ever other group members learning.
Of course, these problems can be avoided with adequate monitoring from the teachers – but it is not necessarily true that the teacher will always be aware of what is happening in the classroom (e.g. the class might be particularly large making it harder to monitor all the students). However, regardless of the problems that could arise, collaborative learning still provides many positive results when it comes to contributing to students learning if conducted properly.

Learning of Expertise.

Finally, the learning of expertise investigates experts and how experts effectively solve problems and think. By looking at experts researchers are able to see the results of successful learning which ,in turn, can then help researchers to figure out ways to teach that results in the same successful learning in students (simply, the goal is to teach so effectively that other experts can more easily be created).

The main points that I gathered from my research are:

• Experts are able to notice meaningful patterns of information and have a lot of content knowledge on their subjects.
• Experts are able to easily and quickly draw on their vast knowledge for the most correct/relevant information in order to solve the problem at hand.
• Although experts may understand their particular subject areas incredibly well – there is no guarantee that they will be able to effectively pass on their knowledge to others; as others may not have enough knowledge to put the experts teachings into context.

I believe that studies into the learning of expertise are useful for a couple of reasons mainly. Firstly, in examining how experts access their content knowledge to tackle problems we are better able to figure out how to raise future experts (due to the insight provided by examining what exactly makes experts experts in their field). Secondly, we are reminded that – what may be easy for experts to know or understand – may be far more complicated for novices. This allows us to teach/inform experts on the best way to pass on their knowledge to future generations.

Ultimately, I believe that In each approach to learning discussed above there are many useful merits to be found. In the brief examinations on each perspective I have only touched on some of the underlying theories and practices within each approach; further into my studies I expect my knowledge on these learning concepts to increase…perhaps then I will revisit the concepts in more detail. Until that time though, I consider that the strongest teaching method will incorporate attributes from all of the above perspectives.

My updated mindmap:

Material read:

Learning of expertise:

Bransford, Brown and Cocking. (2000):  How experts differ from novices. In Bransford, Brown and Cocking. ‘How We Learn’ (pp. 29 – 50).

Collaborative learning:

Dillenbourg, P. (1999): What do you mean by collaborative learning? In P. Dillenbourg (Ed) Collaborative-learning: Cognitive and Computational Approaches. (pp.1-19). Oxford: Elsevier.

Self regulated learning:

Pintrich, R. P. (2000). The Role of Goal Orientation in Self-Regulated Learning. In M. Boekaerts, P.R. Pintrich, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of Self-Regulation (Chap 14). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

My current understanding about Learning and Educational Technology.

My personal knowledge on Learning and Educational Technology (EdTech) leads me to define EdTech, generally, as an academic endeavor to discover how best to use current technology in order to help students learn. Also, to my understanding, the term ‘technology’ is used quite broadly in EdTech as ‘technology’ can range from material objects (such as projectors, computers) to user systems and techniques. Learning, by itself, tends to investigate the multiple ways in which people (and animals) are able to learn and what the most effective methods of teaching may be.

To my knowledge, Learning and Educational Technology encompass such theories and concepts as: Self Regulated Learning, Collaborative Learning and Instructional Learning which all investigate the way in which we learn and how better to facilitate our ability to learn/organize information.

Personally, I believe that the future of education lies in fully grasping the benefits of what technology has to offer us. Not only does technology allow us to organize ourselves faster (storing articles, essays and digital books in easy to navigate folders) but it also removes the physical burden of having to be present in order to learn (distance teaching via webcam, e-learning, etc). With EdTech, I believe the chance to learn is offered to a wider audience and our ability to collect and organize information increases; which can only be seen as good things.

However, I do believe a physical presence cannot be completely replaced by EdTech – as everyone learns in different ways. Instead, I consider a hybrid of face-to-face teaching with a mixture of educational technology thrown in will ultimately result in an overall stronger educational system/teaching method. But, at present, I do not believe that the current education systems are utilizing EdTech to the best of its abilities.

A mindmap that my group put together on Learning and EdTech: