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.

Constructivism

Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) contend that discovery learning, experiental learning, and constructivist learning, while appealing, do not work well. They provide a rationale for this argument based on what is known about working memory (or long term working memory) and it's limitations in certain contexts. Environments that are information rich, with little structure, where learners have to navigate through the environment in search of an answer puts a load on working memory, thus making this type of instruction less effective.

We have a particular online course at our college that is very information rich. The instructor has worked for years developing photos, videos, and images in his, mostly text based course. He has short clips of various multimedia in his course including music, comedy, and videos all relating to cultural geography. Students have to navigate through all of his content and then receive an exam and discussion board with a very open ended topic. His grading seems extremely subjective in nature. One might describe the course as being very constructivist in nature because students are given very little information, except a weekly announcement as to what they should do in his course. The course has very low success and retention rates and the sheer size has been a cause of problems from our end for many years (even prior to my employment there). This particular course is very much what Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) might describe as being ineffective because of the small number of elements working memory can handle and because students have very little direction as to what they should do to prepare for the exam. It is information rich, but I do not think students taking their first cultural geography course are ready for the sheer overload of information they receive each week and are expected to retain in order to answer open ended exam questions.

This is but one example of where a constructivist approach has proven to be ineffective given the low success and retention rates in this course.

Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based experiential and inquiry-based teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75-86.