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Monday, February 13, 2012

Huang on Constructivism

The pre-course reading was mainly understandable but there were a couple of things that caused some confusion.

One was self-directed approach where an adult learner is supposed to be setting his goals, looking for resources, decide on learning styles and evaluate their progress. What is the role of the teacher here then? It seems to me that if an adult can do all this, then maybe a teacher is not needed either.

Experiential learning (similar idea to pre-authentication) was another one, and this one suggests that teaching an adult should be based on the adult's experience. So if you are teaching someone presentation skills and the person has never done it before and never worked before, what prior experience can we base it on?

Another one was the evaluation of the learner. It said that the evaluation of the learner is time consuming and it is not easy to evaluate learner's learning outcomes. "For Dewey the quality of the experience is the starting point never the result. So what do we test? Why do we create quizzes?

Another thing I do not really agree with is the fact that learners can participate actively in the course design, including course objectives, prerequisites, grading scheme and teaching materials. It does seem to be connected with the first point and it does seem to me that the role of the teacher is diminishing. What is the teacher going to do?

However, I read a couple of articles which helped to understand this a bit:


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