Team Education 2.0, Week 11

1.   1. Let’s review the Group Critique I Software again. Your team reviewed the assigned site for the first 3 modules and analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of the web design. With your team, study the dimensions of divergence carefully and see if you can think of any that should be added or deleted. (It should be based on the principles for teaching each designated components, the sequence of the instructions, and the levels of complexity of the generic skill.) (Need references!)

Australian National Training Authority (2003), considers generic skills to be very important, because it allows the individual to be flexible, take initiative, and develop the ability to undertake many different tasks. This is because the individual have acquire a set of skills/knowledge which can be used across board. The acquisition of generic skills makes one versatile. Agreeing with Blom and Clayton (2003), “Generic skills are skills that are learned for lifelong learning and living”.

In the same way, the video tutorials on the AdaptedMind website teaches its audience to acquire set of skills from simplicity to complexity. The video tutorials starts from counting numbers to number sense, to addition, to subtraction, to measurements through to higher level of teaching probability and other skills. Students learn the basics of Math, advance and apply them as the concept becomes complex. Considering the above, I think it meets the principles of teaching generic skills and therefore nothing should be deleted or added.

 2. Look at the components of the generic skill for this review. How the procedure was presented – a set of steps, an important list of principles, or an un-organized laundry list?

The procedure used for presentation was “a set of steps”.

The video tutorials at this site (AdaptedMind), teaches skills by presenting a set of steps that would be used by students to perform a task. Students learn the basics of Math by counting numbers and develop to learn advance level skills by finding the probability of a number.  The procedure involves learning to count, add, subtract, multiply, divide and more. All these skills learnt will help the student perform advance skill in Geometry and Algebra.

3. Identify the cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of the attitude you found from this Group Critique I site. (Need References.)

Munro (2011) describes attitudes as,“how a person perceive things, events  or people”. Attitude can be positive or negative evaluations of objects or thoughts. Attitudes expresses ones disposition towards things. In Rustamov (2011) presentation, he explains the components of attitudes as:

Cognitive; the process by which a skill is acquired (how).

Affective; the reason or purpose for which a skill needs to be learnt (why), dealing with the emotional stimulation.

Behavioral; allowing students to practice or experience the skills learnt and receiving feedback from the teacher.

Relating these to the AdaptedMind site, Cognitive would be the video tutorials offered to help students acquire the skills or knowledge to be able to understand and solve the various Math problems. Affective would be the fun badges earned by students for their accomplishments. These give them a reason to want to implement the skills learnt. Behavioral would be the availability of the practice exercise, where students are able to practice what they have learnt. The site also measures student’s progress on skill they have practice, therefore given them feedback.

4. How do you define the attitude conflicts occurred between the principles of learning and teaching? (Need references.)

Learning takes place when there is a behavioral change.

To be able to define the attitude conflicts between the principles of teaching and learning, we need to identify the principles underlying teaching environment to allow learning to take place or a change in behavior. 

A teaching environment that starts at where students are, know where students are going, expect students to get to their goal, support students along the way, use feedback to help students get better, focus on quality not quantity and allow for flexibility. (Partrick, 2010). Students on the other hand may consider these learning principles by Mellon (2007) to close the gap between teaching and learning.

Students may have prior knowledge of a concept, be self motivated, organize their knowledge, direct their goals and target feedback as well monitor those things that have been accomplished.

Therefore a skill have to be taught to allow learning to take place where a change in attitude is visible.

References

Australian National Training Authority. (2003), Defining generic skills NCVER. 

Blom, K. & Clayton, B. (2003), “We Can’t Teach Them That”. Reinstating the place of Generic Skills in VET.

Mellon, C. (2007), Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence.

Munro, J. (2011), Psychology of Exceptional Learning. Learning Attitudes.

Partrick, J. (2010), 7 Principles for Teachers

Rustamov, I. (2011), Attitude Learning EDT 666 Instructional Design