Goal-Based Scenarios and Learning

At first glance of this learning model I really agreed most of the major tenants that compose its make up. But as  Ibegan to dig deeper into more and more of the fine points of this module I wondered how much I truly believe it could work in my setting. First, I want to say that I really do believe that for someone to actually do something they need to see it modeled for them and then be able to do it themselves with the "master" watching over them to provide instant feedback, either being critical or appraisal. I find it similar to idea and institution of guilds from back during the Medieval Era of Europe. Now this just might be my history teacher showing but one would start out as an apprentice learning the tricks of the trade, then become a journeyman to begin taking those tricks and apply them, ultimately making a masterpiece to become a master. All of this takes place under the watchful eye of a master(s) to help give feedback as necessary to help move the student along their learning journey. I really like the real world applications that are the backbone of this model as that is what a lot of people ask about education today is what are the real world ramifications of the material in the curricula of different subjects. That could also be the major barrier to this model is that we have advanced ourselves as educators in the last 500 years and understand that there are different learning styles. Not all students can learn through the visual pedagogical style and need different viewpoints taken on the material to completely understand the material.

As the model stands as it is today I do not think that I would go take it and apply it into my classroom today. In any of the classes that I teach as a social studies teacher do not require anywhere for the students to look to me to model any sort of action(s) and then for them to follow suit. The only part that I can see using this model was used in the moving/budget project that one of Dr. Oliver's groups did in the past. In Civics and Economics we cover a personal financial literacy section and expect our students to be able to balance a checkbook and manage a budget. Outside of that I am sure I could take bits and pieces of this model such as creating a mission and cover story for different assignments, so as to give my students a different perspective to take on to complete projects.

To apply this model to the Web would take some work. To continue on the whole apprenticeship-master relationship, I believe that some sort of video-conferencing would be a must for the students to grasp the selected material. This could be in real-time or even videos created and posted to a website for the students to watch to have that model. Then some sort of e-mail alerts or notification system would need to be implemented to allow for the teacher/facilitator of this assignment to provide feedback or to answer clarifying questions.

Situated Learning Environments and Cognitive Apprenticeships

When I was first reading through these articles for this week on cognitive apprenticeships, I began thinking back about when I wanted to become a teacher. I first knew that I wanted to be a teacher while I was a junior in high school sitting in my AP United States History class. After that class was over I fell in love with history and focused my sights on becoming a social studies teacher. I was really good at Science and English, along with Physical Education (more along the lines of Athletic Training) and could have easily enjoyed teaching any of those subjects. Now I bring up this memory because I feel that I fell in love with history at that point in my life because of my teacher/mentor, Mr. Francis Bryant. He was able to teach history in such a way that I felt as if I was his individual pupil and he was teaching me the ways of historical content and using its lessons as a way to live a life as a better citizen in our society. Again, Mr. Bryant was able to achieve that master-apprentice relationship with a majority of his students and it fostered a classroom environment that was unique in where we as a class were able to learn from him as an expert but also learn from each other as we discussed readings and primary sources. I understand now the use of scaffolding much more after these readings, where I as the expert am required to build lessons around the fact that I teach/outline a concept then allow my students to complete an activity to show their understanding of what I was outlining. This model allows for students to escape the abstract and use real-life application to understand the content, which is a relief in social studies classrooms.

I believe that I use a small model of this cognitive apprenticeship model in my classroom today. Specifically, in my Honors Law and Justice class (primarily juniors and seniors) we overview the legal system of the United States through all facets of the law, i.e. criminal, civil, family, housing, constitutional. Every other week, I take the students to the library and outline a specific research assignment that is related to the type of law that we are currently studying in class. They are to complete the research assignment using the internet and any given literature within a set time period (usually 5 calendar days) and to fully complete each assignment they are to use/explain the various guidelines of the law that is being studied in class. I first outline the law in class leading up to each assignment and then scaffold the assignments to match up to the type of law where students have to use real life scenarios/cases to complete each research request.

In terms of creating this model into a Web-based module, I do not believe that this model is entirely too difficult to transition. As I explained in my example from my classroom, I have already made the majority of my assignment Web-based. I post the assignment on our digital classroom website (Blackboard), where they can download it and use any of the supplemental resources I place in each assignment to spring board their research. To make this entirely Web-based, I could place videos of my lecture(s) online and have them a sequential order to allow for the students to follow and understand the basics of the law and then assign the research assignments. Now this could be where students can skip the videos and move into the assignment right away, therefore undermining the teaching opportunities. Also, another barrier is the instant feedback that would be compromised because the teacher would not be there directly watching the student complete their research (as I am when I take my students to the library to start each research assignment). Other multi-media tools that could be to help transition this model online would Skype, Elluminate, or any other tool that would allow for simultaneous meetings and sharing of documents and ideas.

Problem-Based Learning

Looking at the Problem-Based Learning and how it works, I can agree that this method can easily make the transition from the regular classroom to the internet classroom. I think that a lot of the meetings between the students and the problems they are going to have to solve could easily be adapted to use online mediums, such as Elluminate and Skype. From initially reading about PBL, I agree with pre-testing students' knowledge to see where they stand with the material.  This would allow for me to be able to differentiate with more in depth instruction.  The PBL model seems to require even more planning on the teacher's side along with more student collaboration.  Because of the emphasis on interdisciplinary instruction, the planning could be distributed among teachers resulting in more intricate problems that are required for this model to work.  One major barrier that I recognize as most important is Hung's point about breadth versus depth of the curriculum.  This is one barrier that I don't believe you can overcome while using PBL correctly.

I would not use PBL in my classroom as a 9-12 social studies teacher because I can not sacrifice breadth of the curriculum for extreme depth.  This is because of what is required of me to teach due to the NCSCOS for world history, civics, and US history.  The curriculum standards do not let me go into depth on issues as the PBL requires.  However, PBL may be more suited to social studies electives because of fewer time and curriculum restraints. For instance, in my Law and Justice electives, I would be able to alter my research assignments to be more collaborative and specific problem based.  Unless I see myself teaching at the university level, I feel that this is a method that is much more suited for math or science classes.  Collegiate level courses would be perfect for PBL because of the flexibility and depth of these courses.

There are plenty of different web-based tools to incorporate PBL in distance education, specifically online meeting places such as Elluminate, Skype, Google Docs, and/or Wiki space pages.  By using Google Docs and Wiki space places, content can be modified by various people easily and conveniently.

Guided Design

Listening to the Camtasia presentation by Dr. Oliver and reading Wilson and Cascada,I realized this is by far my favorite model of instruction that we have studied thus far this semester. I am a huge believer in group work, especially when the students are given a problem and they are to somehow decide on a solution and then discern how to actually achieve that solution. I believe that students are able to learn more from each other through problem-solving rather than constant direct teacher instruction. The students are much more likely to learn the material from real world applications with themselves than in a classroom. There many parallels between this model and the audio-tutorial, specifically the barriers of the two models. The two big barriers I see with the guided design model are time and preparation. As with the audio-tutorial model, the time and preparation is needed to create the audio tapes and here with the guided design, the barriers are the time and preparation to get the material ready to utilize in a class setting. Now, if there is a strict organizer and authentic facilitation by the teacher then these barriers are easier to overcome for which the results speak for themselves, with the studies from WVU in the mid-1970's and the 90% passing rating in the Wilson reading.


I would gladly use this model in the future and I think it would work wonders at the high school level. On a psychological note, students in high school are trying to learn how to build relationships while working with other people under specific conditions, and this model is a perfect medium for that type of learning environment to exist. Again I tell my students all the time that they learn more about social cues and how to work with others more than the content I am trying to teach them. Therefore, I have always been a major proponent of student-centered learning where I am more of a facilitator; and this model it couldn't be better for that role. I would not have to change much of this theory's practices or guidelines to have it adapted into the traditional classroom, which is good from the planning perspective of the traditional classroom. However, placing this on the Web would be a different issue.


Again another reference into my discussion of the audio-tutorial approach is that I can see much of this guided design model being put into practice in the framework of this class, with the group projects where students are given a choice of a couple templates and then choose one and come up with theirown solution(s). The reason why I am referencing back to old posts is that, as I have said before, that to make this model work in the online environment, there are aspects that need to modified to fit the specific environment that you are trying to create. There are many  web-based tools that could be used to help create a more guided purpose for their small groups to use, such as Skype (which could provide immediate feedback), Google docs, Elluminate, Blackboard, etc.




References


Wilson, P. N. (2004). Mutual gains from team learning: A guided design classroom exercise. Cardon Research Papers in Agricultural and Resource Economics (No. 2004-07). Tuscon, AZ: University of Arizona.

The A-T Approach

Originally created in the 1960s, the Audio-Tutorial (A-T) Approach to individualized education, was seen as being light years ahead of its time concerning new approaches to education. This method was created by Samuel Postlethwait, a biology professor at Purdue University, because he needed a method to take his expertise in the biology field and make it applicable and attainable to remedial learners. This method needed to be truly multi-sensory, i.e. hearing, seeing, feeling type instruction. Because he was diligent in creating this environment for his students and was worried about assessment, he also established three types of sessions where his students would "meet" and "learn" the material:

• General Assembly Session (GAS) - large gathering where the students are introduced to the objectives at hand
• Independent Study Session (ISS) - independent study with listening to audio tapes, video demonstrations, etc.
• Small Assembly Session (SAS) - the answer to the assessment questions where a group of students and the teacher (or TA) meet and demonstrate the newly developed skills

After reading about this theory I began to think about how I could use this method. I understand how this method lost its luster but it could very well make a huge comeback as Dr. Oliver stated in  his Camtasia presentation because of the internet and its millions of uses there. Even after reading the extensive (and sometimes confusing data) findings of Kulik, Kulik, & Cohen (1979) I see that this approach has the ability to achieve some real results. Yet there are some real barriers to this method. Just as in the PSI model, this method relies solely on the motivation of the student. However, there is more accountability with the SAS to keep the students focused and working. If the students can keep themselves accountable for that short period, I strongly believe they can achieve that high level that has evaded them for so long.

In a high school setting, and especially in Wake County and the state of North Carolina, I do not believe that I would use this method for the students I am currently working with. Again, as Dr. Oliver stated, this method is not great with material that changes often because there is a large chunk of time that goes into developing the material for audio-tutorial, and my content/pace of my material changes almost yearly it seems. So this method would not be conducive at all to my work environment. I have seen Wake County use what is called the Success Series, which is a series of podcasts/videos of teachers reviewing material. I have recommended students that are in need of remedial help to watch and use this series as a way to study for the EOC in Civics and Economics, along with it being a possible extra credit/replacement grade assignment, and have seen great results come from its use.

I feel that this theory is absolutely made for the internet, despite it being created 35 years prior to the internet boom. The use of Podcasts, vlogs, audio files, and other software that I am sure I am missing could easily be utilized to apply this method to be put into use on the Web.

References

Kulik, J. A., Kulik, C. C., & Cohen, P.A. (1979). Research on audio-tutorial instruction: A meta-analysis of comparative studies. Research in Higher Education, 11(4), 321-341.

Davis, Keller, and PSI models

Davis gives a great thesis of what he believes to be the problem of education, outlines where we need to challenge students, gives his solution (in this case being the Keller Plan of the PSI model), and then finally gives an example of the proposed solution in action to strengthen his overall thesis. I agree with most of Davis' argument, but I do not agree specifically with his idea on trying to achieve a truly asynchronus learning environment is (1) too far-fetched and impossible but also (2) a turn in the wrong direction of where we, as educators, are trying to take education. To keep me from getting too philosophical, I just want to state that education is more than the content that we teach. We are to teach our students about other real-world applications, such as deadlines, working under stress, understand that we cannot control everything. Now I do not think Davis is stating all or any of this, but that is what I interpret when I hear asynchronus learning and its objectives; its all a little too Montessori for me. Davis also does a good job mentioning the barriers to this model's use but I do not see them as barriers but more as necessities to education, as I stated earlier.

At the high school level, I am not sold so far on using this method to the students that I teach right now, but I can see its utility in some aspects. If there is a course that is primarily built on or around concepts. This could allow students to really achieve that mastery level Davis was discussing. Students could then easily move from concept to concept, achieving the level on their own time, and if they are stuck on one concept they can move onto the other and come back. Using the high school course of Civics and Economics as an example, we have units that are concepts that are loosely related to one other, meaning they are not linear and it is not necessary to master one unit to move to the other. For example, it is not necessary to master the Executive Branch unit to understand the Legislative Branch unit, but a small understanding of one will help the other. You could easily move from these two distinct concepts on the PSI model, therefore achieving that asynchronus learning environment that Davis is discussing.

Although this model was created in the 1960's by Keller, I believe that the tools that Davis mentioned in his article are a great jumping point to start discussing Web-based tools that will increase the effectiveness of this model when utilized for the Internet. Using various blogs, vlogs will be essential to creating an effective course online in the PSI eye. Again, I am just thinking from my Social Studies perspective/bias, having various interatctive tools is necessary so the students can have instant feedback on their efforts. SAS, a renowned company based here in Cary, NC, created an entire database full of interactive online tools for various subjects, e.g. World History, U.S History, and Civics & Economics. These activities can easily be completed by the student anywhere and e-mailed to the teacher for keeping and instant feedback to the student.

References

Davis, R. L. & Ragsdell, K. M. (2000). Design of an effective, web-based, global learning environment using the Keller Plan.