Student Centered Learning
Student Centered Learning
The student learning experience and measurability of course learning outcomes are often influenced by practical instructional design practices, but student centered learning always begins with the teacher. Student centered learning is based on several actions.
First, students should always be allowed to share in decision making. Placing students at the center of their own learning requires their collaboration. They need a voice in why, what, and how learning experiences take shape. Student centered learning must include explicit skill instruction Learner-centered teachers teach students how to think, solve problems evaluate evidence, analyze arguments, generate hypotheses all those learning skills essential to mastering material in the discipline. They do not assume that students pick up these skills on their own, automatically. Students need to be aware of themselves as learners and to make learning skills something students want to develop. The biggest contribution and development of student centered learning has been technology. In addition, open source and shareware technology tools allow learners an endless ability to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of learning. Implementing learning elements like videos are one of the most effective ways to successfully create a vibrant learning environment. However, instructional designers must be cognizant the length of videos to ensure the message maintains an identified perspective while delighting the view pleasures of others. Student centered learning models have continued to replace commonly used passive learning practices. While passive learning continues to demonstrate effective opportunities like the consumption of large quantities of information and promoting a more and relaxed learning environment; it does not require consistent use of higher-level cognitive skills while quickly losing learner appeal. Instructional designers need to maintain a student first perspective in learning development to increase critical thinking, increase their autonomy, and stimulate their desire to try new approaches to learning.
From Video script
Consider this example from earlier about the online geography class. A professor comes to you and says, "I teach geography. I'm told I have to put my course online. Can you help me with that?"
So how could you organize that? Are students going to read things, take tests, and write papers? Is the information kind of a pile of facts? Or are they going to do something more active? Are they going to start by reading and end by doing something--or the other way around?
Well, the first learning approach is called experiential learning. Consider this: you may have taken a class where you start by reading about something and then later you do it. For example, you read the textbook, and then you work in the lab. In experiential learning, you experience something first. After actively participating in something (a lab, simulation, exploration, etc), you reflect on the experience, share your observations, and acquire knowledge/facts only after you’ve actively engaged in the learning experience. Click here to read more on experiential learning.
So for a geography class, you might ask people to explore spaces that are near them. You can't have everyone fly to Peru or Colorado or wherever it happens to be that has an interesting geographical feature. You might ask people to explore the areas around them, talk to each other about their findings, and then introduce a geographical concept that people could use. In asking learners to explore local geography and share ideas before reading about or formally studying geographical features, you’ve transformed an online geography course into an interactive, experiential environment that has relevancy for each individual learner.
From https://learning.edx.org/course/course-v1:USMx+LDT100x+3T2021/block-v1:USMx+LDT100x+3T2021+type@sequential+block@1bab908e5ace43969c6bc499d8e06783/block-v1:USMx+LDT100x+3T2021+type@vertical+block@5ff88a067dd14433bae8943f671a7237
Students learn to cook Thai food by doing.
Project-Based Learning (PBL)
Another learning approach is project-based learning, something that many of you pointed out in your observations of adult learning. Many educators believe they are incorporating PBL into their instruction when they require students to develop posters, PowerPoint presentations, or dioramas demonstrating their understanding of a concept or unit. True project-based learning is not that simple. True PBL happens when an instructor incorporates a project as a challenge for learners, and learners dig deep into content knowledge, acquiring skills they need in order to meet the goals of the project. Learning happens during the completion of the project; the project is not simply a demonstration of earlier learning or facts acquisition. Click here to read more on project-based learning.
Here are two additional readings describing how to create a project based learning activity. Take a few minutes to review the content and ideas presented:
This article provides ideas on how you might incorporate them into your design approach.
So, revisiting our geography class example, how might we establish a project-based learning approach when we transition the course to an online environment? Perhaps we give the learners a final project in which they have to use geography to solve a real-world problem: for example, learners might be placed into the roles of advisors of a production company looking to expand. Learners would need to work in teams to develop a proposal about where the next production facility should be built based on research they conducted about geographical features that might impact the costs of or time required for production/distribution. While their final project is a proposal, milestone tasks would be assigned to ensure learner groups made adequate progress; the products they developed for these milestones (such as geographical maps, data visualizations about costs, etc) could be incorporated into their final proposals.
From https://learning.edx.org/course/course-v1:USMx+LDT100x+3T2021/block-v1:USMx+LDT100x+3T2021+type@sequential+block@e2902c4c7aea4b4ebba8733c1532513d/block-v1:USMx+LDT100x+3T2021+type@vertical+block@746ea5fee3e54e4e96cdc1b8ded5adba
Gamification has become popular. Gamification is, you could say, Behaviorism on steroids. It's taking mechanisms you find in games (rewards, leaderboards, points, immediate feedback) and using them very systematically to get people to (usually) compete but sometimes to cooperate towards some particular end. But really the idea in gamification is that the whole learning experience is gamified. So you would want to give students rewards for certain things. Maybe you want to reward them for cooperating. They could work in teams and compete against each other. And all those kinds of game mechanics could be brought together, essentially kind of lots of Behaviorism in different dimensions to make the learning experience more exciting. Click here to read a short article on gamification strategies and how to use them in education.
As you can start to imagine, using gaming strategies and approaches can have a positive impact on teaching and learning environments. Continue your exploration of gaming by reading at least two of the following articles:
Keeping up with the times is imperative. At this point in the game (no pun intended), gaming is almost old-school. It is beyond escape. The interactive component ensures that passive participant can hardly yield success. Gaming helps support active engagement in the classroom.
A discussion of gaming wouldn’t be complete unless we talked about badging. Badging is the idea of earning rewards and recognition for achievements. The following article discusses why achievements, trophies, and badges Work. Click here to access the article.
The following article published by Abramovich, Schunn and Ross Higashi present results of the study titled "Are badges useful in education?: it depends upon the type of badge and expertise of learner". Click here to read the article.
The outward recognition of digital badges can provide internal motivation to complete learning experiences or tasks. Motivation means a reason for doing something, our degree of interest in or desire to do a given thing in specific circumstances. If learners are not motivated, it's hard to get much learning to happen. Psychologists distinguish broadly between two types of motivation: extrinsic and intrinsic.
Extrinsic motivation is some kind of external reward: it could be money or praise or a candy bar.
Intrinsic motivation refers to the personal concerns and interests which draw us to, say, an activity.
Think about it this way: I may play chess for money, or I may play chess because I love the game, because I am curious about how it works, because I want to improve, etc. The first motivation is extrinsic, the other is intrinsic. Extensive research shows that intrinsic motivation is more successful in supporting learning. Extrinsic rewards can increase specific behaviors which will lead to learning, but not the learning itself. Applications to teaching are not hard to find. Review Vanderbilt University's Center for Teaching and Learning discussing motivating learners. Click here to access the article.
From https://learning.edx.org/course/course-v1:USMx+LDT100x+3T2021/block-v1:USMx+LDT100x+3T2021+type@sequential+block@3e292026e16440bb8099091dbcfaab03/block-v1:USMx+LDT100x+3T2021+type@vertical+block@4f066b4122194bc0ac901876fd9c3d1d