It is a bit difficult for me to understand what is meant by components. Short answer would be: learner, teacher, and environment. After some thoughts I added to the list content and materials. After materials structure, methods and goals came. Then it seemed like an outline. To create some circle development and analysis are missing. I tried to draw these components, but it needs some improvement as learner and teacher /coach / facilitator are missing in the chart. But as I can not show this drawing here, I just type keywords:
* goal and need analysis
* content
* environment
- structure
- methods
- materials
* improvement / evaluation
- feedback
- analysis / reflection
* in the middle of this is construction of knowledge
* motivation
* interaction
Now it seems to me that feedback is very important component in elearning course. In classroom it is possible to see and hear the teacher talking and commenting the content, answering to the questions, opening the context in the same moment. In elearning course this is not happening and therefore continuous interaction and feedback are very important to compensate that.
I hope that I will come back to this and perhaps add some more thoughts about components. There are too many terms/words to have a nice chart...
About materials of this week ...
Somehow I don't like problem-based approach or activity-based approach. I call it "pragmatic view" to learning – shoot, shoot, shoot – think when ever you have time, analyse, discuss, reflect not before but after. First it was teacher-centred, then student-centred and now it is activity/problem-centred approach. When I read materials of problem or activity-based learning it makes me wonder: isn't this actually behaviouristic approach? Yes, it takes into consideration context, but something is missing, something what student-centred approach had. I don't like very much the name: problem-based learning. I believe in learning-by-doing, but I don’t see that this takes place only while solving problems. As in that case the base of learning is some situation from real life then it is perhaps better to call it case-based learning. Not every case is a problem!
I‘ve got it now: I don’t believe in student-content interaction. I believe in student-teacher interaction. But problem-based approach has student-content interaction background. Human part/role of/in learning is missing!
2 comments:
I somewhat agree with you that problem-based learning is not the best term. If we think about most of the terms that have come with e-learning, most of them don't make much sense. Anyway, on the other hand we can say that all we have to do in this life is to solve problems, really different ones, some of them are very complex, open-ended, some of them just simple with one solution. After all it is an important skill to consider. Problem-based approach doesn't have to be definitely student-content interaction only. Problem-solving can be done also in groups. In this case we can talk about student-student interaction.
I like the line of thought here about the course components, although I am not sure if I understood motivation as a course component. Perhaps you can explain this a bit more.
About problem-based approach... some of the argumentation is the same as in conflict-based learning.
But to me problem- and activity-based learning is a 'pragmatic view of learning'. Somehow it seems that everything you learn you must be able to employ straight away. Otherwise this is useless. I have been a presenter of this kind pragmatic approach not long ago. In some sense I still do think that this is the best way to learn, but… In Estonian paper called "Eesti Päevaleht" there was one guy writing an article "Koosinuse vaba elu" (Life without cosines) and he augmented that he has never used cosines in his life and therefore this was useless to study this. Well … I before education science I spent 3-4 year studding math. Mathematics in university level is absolutely useless in my everyday life, but after my 3 year I started to understand what was good about mathematics: it force me think in some certain way. As in mathematics everything is logical, it somehow shaped my way of thinking. And this has been very useful although it was never a goal of this study.
My husband told me a little story about Harvard education. Allegedly they use problem- and case-based learning. After graduating Harvard students go to work and the anecdote is that after this they are sitting by the table and are waiting when somebody brings them problems to solve….
Problem-based and activity-based learning seem to me according to Ermter-Newby’s taxonomy 'how'-approaches and not 'why'.
About motivation - this perhaps does not suit to the line (neither does interaction?), but as it seems to be the most problematic part of elearning I decided to add motivation to the list.
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