Category: Learning Design

Over the past couple of weeks, a group of beautiful individuals and I have been working to create an interactive learning resource about stress, targeting students in their middle years. Each member has their learning topic and activity that they will cover within the learning resource. My topic is the major types of stress, and my activity is a compare and contrast chart.

Within my topic of major types of stress, I will cover eustress and distress. In other words, I will write about the difference between good stress and bad stress. Further, we will give examples of situations where a student’s stress could be good or bad. Upon this discussion, students will be tasked to work in groups to compare and contrast good stress against bad stress. Suppose students feel uncomfortable sharing their thoughts with other students, as stress can be a personal subject matter. Students will be encouraged to work alone, or the activity will be completed as a class.

Since our topic is mental health-related, our group decided it would be best for us not to give a sizeable summative assessment to the students. Instead, we will assess students based on the student’s evaluation of themselves. Stress can be perceived differently by everybody, and it is not linear; therefore, there’s no way that we would be able to make an assessment of student learning linear. However, we have come to a consensus that students should be able to say that they have walked away with knowledge of what stress is and knowledge of techniques they can use if they encounter stress without having to complete a major project or do a test. 

As discussed earlier, stress can be a sensitive topic. When teaching issues related to mental health, it is essential to create a safe space where students feel comfortable sharing or not. It would also be necessary for students to know that they could leave class to take a break. When learning about a sensitive topic related to mental health, it is vital to create a safe space where students are entitled to privacy. 

One barrier I believe our learning design could face is the barrier of students not feeling safe discussing stress and mental health. Designs for learning should be made as designs for buildings are made—teachers are the engineers of education, just as engineers are the ones who build our buildings. Just as engineers must create safe structures, teachers must create learning designs and use learning approaches in which students will feel safe. 

Overall, I believe the interactive learning resource my group is working to create will be inclusive, diverse, and accessible to all students. Some topics might be sensitive; however, they will be addressed in a sensitive matter. The assessments we have chosen for each learning topic are all simple, and should they present any sort of barrier, each is easily adaptable. We believe teaching children about mental health and their feelings young is crucial to developing emotional intelligence and social intelligence. As I said earlier, topics such as these are not linear; therefore, the learning of these topics is not linear, and the assessments are not linear. And that is where I will leave this discussion for today. 

Thanks for reading 🙂

Amelia

Different learning approaches can be utilized in learning designs, such as inquiry-based learning, project-based, design thinking, direct instruction, and open pedagogies, to help engage students and promote education. Most of these approaches are approaches we have heard of before, and they might even be learning approaches our teachers used with us or that we use with our students. However, open pedagogies is an approach I have never heard of before. 

‘Open pedagogies’ sound pretty intimidating; however, their meaning is quite simple. Open pedagogy is the practice of engaging with students as creators of information rather than simply consumers of it (UTA, 2021). In other words, open pedagogy is a form of experiential learning where students demonstrate understanding through the act of creation (UTA, 2021). Within open pedagogy, products are produced. These products can come in the form of learning resources, such as open textbooks or editable website pages like Wikipedia. Another example of an open pedagogy can be students’ involvement in creating the school curriculum. These products are open for public access and allow for revision and reuse. 

Incorporating open pedagogy into learning design could be tricky as open pedagogy products and materials are not set in stone as they are made to be reused and revised (BC Campus, OpenED). Using open pedagogy, instructors cannot hand a PDF file of information for students to learn. Instead, students would need to collaborate to create their learning materials. 

Open pedagogy is not a learning approach for everyone. Open pedagogy requires a lot of work as the students themselves create this information. To generate this information, students need to have a strong understanding and knowledge of the topic of the product they are making or contributing to (UTA, 2021). Further, open pedagogy challenges the traditional teaching role that teachers are there to lecture and students to absorb information like a sponge (UTA, 2021). In reality, open pedagogy allows students to engage in information creation, therefore allowing students a greater understanding of the laws associated with information ownership (UTA, 2021). 

This approach to learning is much different than the traditional approaches, such as direct instruction or inquiry, in the sense that students are in charge of creating what they are going to learn, rather than the teacher making what they will learn. 

Thanks for visiting 🙂

Amelia

References

BC Campus Open Ed, (n.d.). What is Open Pedagogy? https://open.bccampus.ca/what-is-open-education/what-is-open-pedagogy/

University of Texas Arlington, (2021). Introduction to Open Pedagogy. https://libguides.uta.edu/openped

Waychoff, B., (2020). Revitalizing Teaching with Open Pedagogy. https://cetls.bmcc.cuny.edu/blog/2020/01/31/revitalizing-teaching-with-open-pedagogy/

After reading the article “Behaviourism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism” by Ertmer and Newby (2013), I started thinking about what sort of instruction style I currently employ in my classes (Question 3 from ‘Application Exercises’). Now, I’m not a teacher, but I have quite some experience educating people! I have been a swimming instructor for the past five years, where I teach swimming, lifesaving skills, and first-aid to children from as old as three months to adults of any age. Also, while taking EDCI 335 and EDCI 338 at the University of Victoria and EDUC 201 through Athabasca University, I’m substitute teaching in northern Manitoba, where I went to elementary, middle, and high school. I have also been a volunteer soccer and curling coach since I was in grade 7 (for the past eight years). All in all, I have accumulated quite a bit of teaching experience during my mere 19 years on earth. 

As a psychology major, behaviourism is a theory that I am very familiar with because it is mentioned in every class. Studying this theory so often has made it very easy for me to see how I use behaviourist strategies when instructing. In behaviourism, learning is accomplished when a proper response is demonstrated following the presentation of a specific environmental stimulus (Watson, 2017). This sounds complicated, but we have probably all experienced this in the vast amount of time we have spent in school! Behaviourism is when a child misbehaves in class, the teacher takes something away from said child, and then that undesired behaviour becomes desirable when the child stops misbehaving. Just as teachers reinforce the behaviour with punishments, they also use rewards, such as class parties at the end of the week, if the class demonstrates desirable behaviour (Staddon, 2021). 

A time that immediately came to mind when I employed the work of the behaviourists was about three years ago when I was teaching swimming lessons to a little girl named Scarlet, who was about four years old at the time. Despite only being four years old, Scarlet had the personality of a 16-year-old teenage boy—she was very goofy. Despite being incredibly socially outgoing, she hated swimming lessons, and I could not get her in the water. You can not learn to swim if you do not get in the water during swimming lessons, so this was a problem. Scarlett’s parents had signed up for seven private lessons with me, so I had seven lessons where Scarlet would not get in the water. I soon figured out that the only way to get her in the water was to promise her a lollipop after every single lesson. If I wanted her to get her hair wet, I had to give her two lollipops at the end of every class. I am sure I could have found a better way to negotiate with her, but rewarding her desirable behaviour (getting in the pool) with lollipops (reward) at the end of every lesson worked well and got the job done.

As Ertmer and Newby (2013) stated in the article and other authors, such as Beauchamp and Parsons (2000), no learning theory is better than the rest. An instructor using many learning theories within their instruction will provide the best learning experience for their students. As much as I use the strategies of behaviourism, I do believe I use some methods of cognitivism and constructivism. 

I also utilize cognitivist strategies in instructing swimming lessons, soccer, curling, and substitute teaching. Cognitivism emphasizes the role that environmental conditions play in facilitating learning (Watson et al., 2008). Instructional explanations, demonstrations, and illustrative examples are instrumental in guiding student learning (Ertmer and Newby, 2013). When learning to instruct swimming lessons, we are taught to: “Demo, Discuss, and Do.” First, we demonstrate the skill being taught, such as a back float, then discuss how to do a back float, and then practice. The same technique can be applied to coaching curling and soccer; show the players how to kick a ball, discuss how to kick the ball properly, and then practice kicking the ball. It can further be applied to school settings; show the students how to write a particular letter, discuss how to write a letter, and then practice writing a letter. These are relatively simple tasks, and cognitivism works well for them; however, it is most helpful when teaching more complex and abstract ideas, such as when knowledge can be simplified to be applied to different topics and contexts (Levy, 2018). 

Next, constructivism states that learning happens by creating meaning from experience (Ertmer and Newby, 2013). A situation in which I have used constructivism recently occurred, and I believe it was the first time I used such a strategy. While I was substitute teaching, I was working with a grade six class while they were studying Indigenous people. They were learning about residential schools and the ongoing discrimination indigenous people face. The students did not understand why indigenous peoples were so upset about these events. They were having difficulty feeling empathy for the hardships indigenous people face at the hands of our ancestors. I told them to think about how they would feel in the shoes of indigenous people. I had them imagine what it would be like if they woke up one morning to someone knocking at their door saying they would take their children away to go to a residential school and return when they were 18. They concluded that that situation would be awful (to say the least) and that no one should ever have to face a problem like this.

Further, I told them to imagine waiting years for their children to return home from school. I explained that some children returned to their families unable to communicate because they had forgotten to speak their language, and some never returned. Picturing this made the students quite sad, and I believe I helped them understand the gravity of the grim situation indigenous peoples have faced for over a century. The experience of this imaginative activity helped students create and feel the meaning behind what they were learning about indigenous peoples. I hope the students I (hopefully) helped that day remain the same kind and empathetic individuals; they are our future.

Upon analyzing my instruction style, I mostly rely on behaviouristic strategies when instructing, but with good reason. Swimming is a physical activity where techniques require practice to effectively and efficiently perform the techniques; no one does front crawl perfectly the first time. While instructing swimming lessons, I find myself providing a stimulus (such as helping someone kick their legs, or holding up someone’s back, so they maintain a streamlined body position) to help to reinforce a proper response (such as a solid continuous kick or a streamlined body position). Further, I always encourage those I instruct to go swimming on days when they do not have swimming lessons and practice what I have been teaching them. The ones who get to the pool to practice are always those with the most progress. I find that it is easiest to apply the theory of behaviourism to physical activity as it emphasizes our responses to external stimuli. 

I am unsure of what I would like to do when I graduate, but I want a career path where I have the opportunity to educate. These three learning theories discussed above—behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism—are only three of the many that exist, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. I will work towards the opportunity to apply these theories, among others, to the work I will do day to day to truly maximize the potential for one’s education. 

References

Beauchamp, L, & Parsons, J. (2000). Teaching From The Outside In. Edmonton AB: Duval House.

Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (2013). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43-71.

Levy, Y. (2018). Why cognitivism? Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 48(2), 223-244.

Staddon, J. E. R. (2021). The new behaviorism: Foundations of behavioral science (Third ed.). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Watson, J. B. 1. (2017). Behaviorism. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Watson, R., Coulter, J., Sharrock, W., Dennis, A., Read, R., Button, G., & Hamilton, R. (2008). Cognitivism. Theory, Culture & Society, 25(2)