In her book Learner-Centred Teaching [1], Maryellen Weimer discusses five key changes to teacher practice that can lead to improved outcomes for learners. We consider each of these in turn and their possible relationship to the implementation of an LMS such as Moodle or indeed a number of related tools, such as Google Apps.<\/p>\n
Teacher-centred classrooms are power-based classrooms. This conflicts with the notion of empowering the students, giving then some autonomy, as a means of motivation. Providing resources on Moodle and then requiring students to take the responsibility of studying, commenting, re-working and discussing them with peers will help shift the power base.<\/p>\n
Of course, these activities can be carried out in the classroom in the presence of the teacher \u2013 as is often pointed out – but this kind of activity has a very different flavour when done autonomously under student control. A specific example might be using a Glossary. In a teacher-centred classroom we might see the teacher give out a list of terms or words for students to study. Another way to handle this is to have the students find definitions for the terms and create their own glossary entries. These can be commented on by other students and the teacher.<\/p>\n
Careful intervention and facilitation by the teacher will achieve the original objective but the students will feel more \u201cownership\u201d of the result. As with many activities this not does absolutely need to be carried out online \u2013 it could be done with paper and pencil. However, the ubiquity of web access means that students are free to take a look at a time convenient to them.<\/p>\n
The on-demand vs the broadcast tv model at work.<\/p>\n
This is problematic because, in schools, the content to be covered is generally out of our control. It is set by external bodies such as examination boards and national curricula. In today\u2019s narrow view typically this is also controlled by national and international standardized assessments.<\/p>\n
The need to cover content and to recall it under examination conditions can work directly against the development of creativity and higher order thinking. Importantly, in his book Teaching for Tomorrow [2], Ted McCain describes methods for delivering content together with problem-solving skills, improved engagement and active learning strategies. All aimed at giving students \u201creal-world\u201d skills.<\/p>\n
Adapting this process from an active classroom to a Moodle course is a real challenge \u2013 especially if Moodle is used merely as a content repository and later chapters will discuss some strategies that can be used. One simple example of McCain\u2019s method might make use of a Moodle forum.<\/p>\n
The teacher takes on the role of an international consultant and sets up a scenario in which the students pose as members of a globally-distributed problem-solving team. Using the forum they discuss strategies for dealing with pollution in a lake, say. Such an activity would ideally require students to research the background issues (using the required curriculum content) as they work together to solve the given problem.<\/p>\n
As well as maintaining the power balance, the teacher also makes many other decisions in the classroom to the point where most students may well accept that the teacher knows everything that the student needs to know (to pass an examination for example) and the learning process is one of simple transmission.<\/p>\n
Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown [3] write that the education system \u201chas been built on the assumption that teaching is necessary for learning\u201d and they argue that an \u201cenvironmental view\u201d is need rather than a mechanistic one. In this view, our Course Management System is a garden where learning is nurtured rather than a factory where learners are processed or battery reared. Students tend not to question the strategies that a teacher may use, even when the teacher\u2019s style doesn\u2019t correspond well to their own preferred learning style.<\/p>\n
A course management system can provide for different resource types (readings, videos, interactive games) and different activities (group-based, individual, self-paced, guided), so that the students have more ways of accessing and working with the content. Students who have never been given this freedom may well find the change difficult to grasp even threatening or unnerving and teachers need to be prepared for this. As an example, merely adding a resource such as a forum to a course will not, of itself, produce peer interaction between students. Once again active teacher intervention will be required.<\/p>\n
The questions set up by the teacher in the forum are vital \u2013 particularly at the start \u2013 they must be easily accessible to students, not set initially at a high cognitive level for example. Once students enter and contribute, the teacher\u2019s role is to thread and connect the ideas as they develop \u2013 where errors of fact or grammatical errors do occur, these will quite likely be corrected by other contributors avoiding having the teacher take on that traditional role but allowing them to support those who take care to be correct.<\/p>\n
The responsibility for learning has traditionally been that of the teacher \u2013 indeed teachers are often harshly criticised by parents, politicians and news media as being \u201cbad teachers\u201d \u2013 one rarely hears of the student\u2019s responsibility to learn.<\/p>\n
The use of Moodle to provide resources and activities that may be carried out independently of the teacher can shift the responsibility for learning from the teacher to the student. For teachers, a very important, but perhaps often overlooked, point is that the teachers do indeed retain important responsibilities and providing motivation and engagement is high among them.<\/p>\n
A course in which there is reading after reading, a couple of images, a YouTube video and then a quiz is not very exciting either online or in the classroom. A quick Poll (or Moodle Choice) can be used, not only to gauge retention of \u201cfacts\u201d taught in the classroom but also as a tool to promote reflection, perhaps by asking questions to which there is no single correct response. Having asked a question such as: Which is the most effective way to secure a house?<\/p>\n
When a new topic is introduced will give students time to think through concepts and ideas associated with a subject before any content is presented.<\/p>\n
This also encourages students to make active contributions to an online course and begin to get them involved. In other words it provides the opportunity to develop a \u201ccommunity of practice\u201d where students begin to take ownership through individual and collective contributions.<\/p>\n
Weimer mentions three assumptions that are commonly made about grades: They \u201cmeasure learning precisely\u201d, \u201cobjectively\u201d and they \u201cpromote learning\u201d. In the current system, grades are generally awarded by the teachers of a course, there is little in the way of peer assessment or self-assessment \u2013 at least in terms of grades that \u201ccount\u201d. That is, grades which get students into tertiary education or meaningful employment. Peer and self-assessment promote learning and higher order thinking skills.<\/p>\n
Focus on grades which come from external assessment leads to a focus on content, recall of facts, recall of procedures, rote memorization of solutions to problems and other low-order activities. These types of knowledge tend not to be retained long after the examination.<\/p>\n
Weimer is far from the only observer to have noted the disparity between the organisation of many schools and the requirements of education for the Information Age. Writing about the \u201ccreative workforce\u201d, Erica McWilliam [4] characterises schools as \u201ca top-down hierarchy of command and control\u201d where teachers work as \u201ccontent authorities\u201d and \u201cstudents may well be living in a parallel universe\u201d.<\/p>\n
One of the dangers pointed out by McWilliam is that the dominant commercial learning management systems (Blackboard and Web CT at that time) were being \u201crepurposed for old \u2018transmission\u2019 teaching\u201d. Moodle can be misused in the same way and one of the central ideas of this post is that it should not be. Moodle supplies tools such as the workshop, rubrics, marking schemes which allow for more complex and more meaningful means of evaluation and assessment and which promote the higher order thinking skills that our students will need to succeed in a rapidly changing world.<\/p>\n
1: Learner-Centred Teaching, Maryellen Weimer, Jossey-Bass, 2002. ISBN 0-7879-5646-5.<\/p>\n
2: Teaching for Tomorrow, Ted McCain, Corwin press, 2005. ISBN 978-1412913843<\/p>\n
3: A New Culture of Learning, Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown, 2011, Self-published, ISBN: 976-1456458881<\/p>\n
4: Erica McWilliam, The Creative Workforce, UNSW Press, 2008, ISBN 978-1921410222<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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