Reflection on Module 2 (part 1 of 3)

During our first week, we read about Epistemologies by reviewing several open resources including Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/education-philosophy/. It was interesting reading about the various origins and know that this is an open resource for anyone wanting research related to education. Prior to this week, I could barely define epistemology. It was good that the module started here to enable me as a learner with little prior knowledge about the subject to put the major theories of educational philosophies (behaviorist/objectivist, cognitivist, and constructivist) theories discussed later in the module into perspective.

The You Tube video we watched this week was a good preview of the different views of learning.

After reading about behaviorism, I learned that it is based on only observable behavior and ignores the incorporation of the mind. It does this because of the epistemological differences in whether the mind can indeed be observed. Technological advances in brain scans have actually made observation of the mind in specific contexts (the brain itself) more empirical and scientifically based than was previously possible. I also learned that behaviorist approaches are seen in common true/false multiple choice (drill/practice) approaches to education.

While I realize that behaviorist approaches to educational assessments are more measurable and are still pervasive in many colleges, I have come to learn that my role at our college is to seek out more ways to introduce alternative types of assessment that are from another theoretical approach. This coming Friday, I am doing a presentation on using the Self and Peer Assessment tool in Blackboard 9.1. I have found myself researching various disciplines and their approaches to these more open ended approaches that engage students in online course content in a different and deeper way. I very much intend to place some discussion on the difference between assessments that are behaviorist in approach and those that are constructivist. This peer assessment tool uses rubrics and more open ended questions to allow students to rate their peers and themselves on coursework. Given we are a community college, many students are used to the same behaviorist approaches to assessments, so I'm interested to see how the use of this tool challenges traditional approaches to assessments (drill/practice, true/false, multiple choice style questions that tend to be mostly factual), and more importantly, how many instructors will begin to use a different approach to helping students control their learning.