Classroom Observation

I think we are supposed to send the date, time and location of the classroom observation to Blog, right? I saw this info from the guidance sheet in Blackboard. Here is mine:

Course: AAE 251—Construct an HoQ for the design of a Massively Multi-player Online Game for Learning Introduction to Aerospace Engineering Design.

Equipment: one laptop, an extra keyboard, one project, seven laser pens.

Participants: five students. This is a small group project. This group was assigned to a room to do group activity. They could communicate with others and access course resources in an online game environment. They also had a TA to help out in the room.

Location: ARMS B197

Time: 1:30pm-2:20pm on Oct. 23, 2009

I wrote two pages observation notes on how they used House of Quality to design the online game. It is very interested to see how the team operated and how they made decision as a team. I was there 20 minutes early, and I had some informal conversation with students, which was pretty helpful for my reflection.

Questions from this week's reading

1. Women's Ways of Knowing Bloom's Taxonomy provides a new perspective to reexamine the pyramid. I never question Bloom's Taxonomy before because it is like the benchmark to guide the instructional design. I agree with the author that Bloom group put less emphasis on students' actual internalization of knowledge, but I think the new module that presented by the women's group not only fit the adult women, but fit a larger population. We do have shy boys in the classrooms, right? I am wondering why the authors only choose women as the target audience, is it because women are more representative? I would suggest this group could conduct the research in a larger and diverse population to see how this module works. What do you guys think?

2. In Perry's model, how did the author determine the nine positions? or do the nine positions just work as scales? I am also curious how the students identified what positions they are in.

A question about mixed methods

In Chapter 7, the author talked about the quantitative and qualitative research methods. But now, many researchers are moving to mixed methods as an approach. She didn't mention mixed methods in this chapter as an alternative. Why? Is it because mixed methods too new? or is it because Noddings would agree with some qualitative researchers, and argue that this does not fit with the epistemological tradition and goals of qualitative approaches?

What do you think about mixed method approaches?

Hey Gentlemen, it's our third date!!

As a student majoring in Education, it is quite often to come across these old great guys: Socrates, Platos, Dewey, etc. They always sat in the first few chapters of a dusty old book, such as Driscoll's Psychology of Learning for Instruction, the one I used in my Master's learning theories class. What attitude do people hold when they examine their thoughts? Personally speaking, I didn't like these philosophers and their tricky perspectives when I first studied them in my undergraduate study. In order to pass a close-book exam related to them, I had to adopt rote learning to repeatedly memorize all their stories. My only acquisition from my first learning experience is to know how efficient Behaviorism is since I got a great grade as the reinforcement in the end. The learning theories class was my second time to systematically and formally date these gentlemen. When I first opened Driscoll's book, I thought it could be a piece of cake to learn them again since I got such a beautiful grade last time. However, things did not go as what I thought. I almost forgot everything. Everything seemed familiar to me, but I could not clearly remember which is which. Therefore, I began to suspect Behaviorism and would want to find the "best" theory which is trustworthy and reliable. I was looking for it all that semester. We had a heavy course load on that course. One of the assignments is to design a case study with ill-structured learning problems every week, and allow other students to solve the problems with the consideration of a specific learning theory. I began to give up the idea of looking for the "best" theory when I worked on this assignment. I realized there are no absolute reliable theories without the considerations of the context, learners, and other conditions. I began to carefully think about why we learn theories and how to apply them. If I want to create a great case, I have to go in-depth into the theories, and talk with these gentlemen sincerely.

OK, now it is my third date! I am more like prudent to learn, to think and to reflect this time. I want to construct my own world view and theories of learning under the careful examination and reflection. Noddings is a great storyteller. She mixed her own emotions and ideas in the plot, and made the story vivid. I decide to keep an open mind when considering each theory. Certainly, theories grow popular or fall out favor, but all of the theories have at the least concepts which can positively impact my approach to learn. I don't know if my attitude towards learning philosophies could change in the future, but this time, I just wanted to get something, something that is from me, and only belongs to me.

First Week's Reflection

Now I will reflect on "what I reflected in" last week :) Palmer suggested people should think in the way of "both...and", instead of "either...or". He also proposed the concept of "profound truth", which led us to think of "paradoxes". The paradoxical way of thinking suggests that people should comprehend the world in a thorough way. It is not only abstract mode of knowing, but also it can help us to examine how good learning happens and what hard and/or soft scaffoldings we can provide to facilitate students' learning. The six paradoxical tensions mentioned by the author were meaningful when building a effective learning environment. An interesting thing that draws my attention is, my first history & philosophy class potentially followed the six statements by encouraging both "small group" discussion and "the big group" discussion to allow us sharing both the "small stories" and the "big thoughts". Furthermore, I totally enjoyed the free and kind atmosphere in class. I felt relaxed and would want to talk more with my friends. Another interesting topic in our small group discussion was about the different understanding about "silence" by culture. Emily, Pretti and me were all from Asia, and we believed, to some extent, silence indicated more positive facets, such as showing respect or introspectiveness. On the other hand, the western culture may hold more negative perspectives towards silence.

What I got most from Schon's reading is the difference on "reflect on" v.s "reflect in". Reflecting on emphasizes standing with a distance to re-examine what you have done, and trying to figure out the ways to refine and to improve. It was like "If I could have a second chance, I would do it in this way to make it even better". Reflecting in means when you are in the process, you are tying to find the flaws and correct them immediately before it is done. One example that came into my mind in the group discussion was making cookies. When I stirred the milk, eggs, suger and flour together, I realized I might put too much milk, so I decided to put some chocolate power to make the dough dry. That is what is called "reflecting in". After my cookies coming out of the oven, I tried one, and I found maybe I should add some cinnamon to make it more tasty. That is what is called "reflecting on". It also made me to relate what I have learned in instructioanl design. Reflecting in and reflecting on are like the formative evaluation and the summative evaluation. A famous saying from Robert Stakes about this two evaluations is, "When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative; when the guests taste the soup, that’s summative."

Finally I want to share my two cents about the group behaviors. People are unconsciously playing different roles in a team. Personally I excel in providing information and clarifying the thoughts. I am not a good starter since too much information fill into my brain and sometimes I am too sensitive on details. I am afraid I may mislead people away from the main structure. But no matter what roles we play, we should think together. I appreciate what Beth and Julie did to keep everyone on the same page. Secondly, Everyone will gradually grow up and become comfortable with teamwork. As a foreign student, we don't need to "hate" or "blame" our English or slower reaction towards a topic. What we can do is to practice more, and let time shape. The more we practice and participate, the faster we can grow up and get used to the style.