Let me summarize about the class first. Since the first week of the class, personally I found that this class would be a challenging and demanding class. The expectations are high and honestly I’m struggling to meet the expectations of the facilitator and I know that I’m yet to reach the expectations set in the syllabus. Anyhow, I did learn a lot in this class compared to some other classes I took few semesters back. The facilitator (Dr. Tee) is continuously giving support and adjusting the teaching to suit the students taking this class.
Basically, most subjects under Education studies are revolve around learning theories, pedagogy, methods, approaches and learners’ differences. But, the difference is when the theories need to be applied, how to apply and its suitability to be applied in what circumstances. In this class, it’s all about applying whatever learning theories and concepts we know in the context of Distance Education. Hence, when planning or designing module to be use in distance education, consider your target audiences’ learning styles and preferences other than the technology and its content.
Question 1: What are 2 or 3 most meaningful things you have learned in this class?
I get to know and understand my learning style better. Every individual is special either in the way they learn or react on something. My prior knowledge, my learning style, my thinking and my understanding would be different from my partners and classmates. Before, I always thought that I can be a good Distance Education (DE) student (if I’m taking that medium of learning), that I’m always flexible with online studies, and will excel in the way the DE course wanted me to be. Unfortunately, I’ve come into conclusion that, I’m not comfortable and ready to adopt fully 100% distance learning. If need to it will be a blended mode so that I can be more focus and concentrate on the course. I started to evaluate myself, my presence and my contribution either during face2face (classroom) or during distance learning (online, elearning), and I notice the differences on the way I react and respond to the discussions and the impact of my participation.
In the classroom, the environment is engaging where as a learner I’m more comfortable when discussing face2face, where I can get immediate feedback, respond and reaction from facilitator and friends. This in contrast when using online medium (although I’m tech-savvy) such as wiki, blog and forum, in which I’m not really 100% active participation. But, in real life this technology does bring benefit to distance learners in improving communication and for collaborative works. Anyway, for my future learning experience, I will definitely going to use all available technologies to support my learning and acquisition of knowledge.
In this class, I learned to shape and train myself to become an active learner. This class was designed to enable learners to take full responsibility on their learning and share the learning with others as well. This is in consensus with Chickering and Gamson (1987) that suggests that students must do more than just listen: They must read, write, discuss, or be engaged in solving problems. Most important, to be actively involved, students must engage in such higher-order thinking tasks as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
To become an active learner, my learning and knowledge is socialized with others (collaborative works in wiki), thinking and evaluating my learning (using blog, forum, discussion) and making connections on my prior knowledge and past experiences with what I learn today so it will be meaningful to my learning and life. I admit that I seldom blogging or writing my reflections on what I learnt on particular topic or issues, it’s not that I hate blog, I’m OK with blogging, but personally I’m having difficulties putting my thoughts into words or I can say that I’m not good on telling and describing my thoughts and pen it for others to evaluate my learning. But, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t learn anything for this semester, in fact I’m grateful that I’m able to apply my knowledge from my learning in this class to my work (doing instructional design for electronic mediums). Knowledge on how people learn, strategies for learning and various instructional strategies that I learnt when taking courses for Masters of Instructional Technology here in UM have been very useful for me when designing instructional materials for teachers, schools and other clients.
What will you do with the knowledge you have cultivated from this class?
I’m a designer by profession and always a passionate educator at heart. As a designer, knowledge is more powerful than skills, and from the new knowledge I gained from this course, it would certainly affect and improve my delivery of instructions and my design of instructional materials. To be able to produce good learning products or materials, I would adopt the same process of learning I acquired in this class into my job processes; that is evaluate the design, justify it, improve it and think of ways to do it differently but the impact to the learners is they’re able to get benefit from it.
This class also taught me to be creative to deliver meaningful contents and knowledge to target users (learners). By knowing how people learn, I will apply the designers’ instinct to be more sensitive to learners’ needs and preference on learning.
As a student, definitely I will improve my learning style to be more active and engaging so that I’m able to go far beyond my potential and giving it back to others (students, learners and communities).