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This course provides the opportunity for participants to examine teaching that aims to learners' learning. It will examine literature on current research and practice concerning contemporary constructivist instructional strategies considered to be canonically effective. It will provide the opportunity to examine personal beliefs/worldviews about the nature of knowledge and truths and how these impact or influence our pedagogy of teaching and learning. Key instructional approaches and methods including project-based teaching/learning and cooperative learning will be critically discussed. The principles employed in these strategies will be considered and applied to practical experiences of designing and delivering online instructions. Existing learning sites will be critically examined through constructivist theories of teaching and learning.
The course is aimed at offering opportunities for participants to:
This course provides opportunity for participants to examine teaching that aims to involve learners in the learning process. Strategies proffered in literature as canonically effective will be examined critically. The effect of learners' socio-cultural background on teaching and learning will also be critically examined through the view that what learners already know influences what they learn (Kelly, 1955, Ausubel, 1968, Bodner, 1986). Readings that are topically organized will form the basis of some, but not all, individual and group activities and tasks. Online seminars that will involve the experienced analysis of instructions will form a significant component of the course. Many of the course readings will be online. Learners will be required to purchase a package of related readings.
The course is divided into six (6) major units. The six ETEC 530 units are:
This unit is all about understanding who you are as a learner in this course, what assumptions and prior knowledge do you bring forward to this course and your personal epistemology about truth, knowledge and learning.
This unit will identify the main categories of constructivism and their main advocates and describe the characteristics of each category.
This unit discuss learning activities that are consistent with the conceptual change mode, provide learners with the opportunity to identify from their experience cases of collateral learning and help to evaluate instructions in terms of conceptual change model.
This unit provides learners with the opportunity to identify the principles, characteristics, and researchers behind each of the main constructivist strategies.Learners will also learn to recognize effective constructivist principles in online teaching and learning situations.
Thus unit is longer than other units. There are 7 “stations” and learners have to stop in at least 4 of those stations and doing the activities associated with that station. Some stations are group activities and some are individual explorations.
This unit provides learners with the opportunity to identify and apply the principles and characteristics of constructivism in the design of an instrument used to evaluate constructivist plans or activities/tasks. IT discusses the development and use of a set of criteria for evaluating constructivist online instructional. Learners will also evaluate and discuss the value, need, and appropriateness of each of the criteria elements.
This unit covers effective constructivist activities that engage learners in testing their pre-existing models of the world, challenging those models and engaging the learners in the search for more satisfactory models. It provides learners with the chance to use proposed constructivist instructional models to interpret instructions, to develop and implement instructions using CIM, POE and CCM and to discern the connections between CIM, POE and CCM.