Month: May 2022

Cooperative learning is one of the more common learning styles nowadays, and we often encounter it in our university courses, such as some group assessments or group projects. In cooperative learning, groups of multiple students or learners are usually formed and share resources and their ideas, ultimately relying on each other to complete the work. Cooperative learning can also help develop learning experiences, as mentioned by KYLE, a student from another learning pod, and I agree with him about cooperative learning.

For our pod’s assessment topic– critical thinking, cooperative learning is a more appropriate learning style, because cooperative learning better facilitates learners to share their ideas. Learners can now discuss their ideas in a group and refine them over time. The ideas of everyone in the group are then brought together and collided with the ideas of other groups. This allows everyone’s ideas to be presented without the confusion of too many different ideas.

However, other learning styles are not entirely inappropriate for our topic. It fits equally well with experiential learning, for example, which is studied by my Learning Pod partner Lucas. Experiential learning connects learned theory and knowledge to real-world situations by engaging students in practice. This approach helps students understand, remember and use what they have learned. The direct instruction approach to learning studied by another of my partners Delbert is also good. It helps students to understand directly what they are trying to teach by having clearly defined and defined teaching tasks. But they both do not promote the exchange of ideas among students very well, so cooperative learning is more appropriate for our topic.

After reading Uncohead’s article, I agree with him that ‘different talents also determine to a large extent the speed of receiving new knowledge. ‘ People have different talents for learning different things, and there are gaps in each person’s talent. This example is also very common in our lives. For example, some international students whose first language is not English can speak English to a high standard in a short time, while others may need years and years of speaking practice to do so. It may be that working harder can yield better results, but there is no denying that talent can often determine how much time people need to spend learning new things.

After reading Lucas’s article, I agree with your view on research and study. I do agree with your definition of research as changing perceptions about something, which in my opinion is one of the most important implications of conducting research.

  However, I find that we have some differences in our views on learning difficulties. I think some courses in college are difficult because they often present theories that we have never been exposed to before, and even these theories can conflict with some of the ideas we had growing up. We usually need to change our way of thinking in order to get a better grasp of these theories. For example, the theories we are exposed to in college economics classes are very different from how we used to think about economics.

I also noticed that you mentioned that you cannot relate the cognitive process to your own experience because what is learned is new. I also have a different opinion about this statement. I think the author may be trying to contrast what is learned with his own experience. Maybe link the article to your posting.

  Finally, I really like your posting. Also, I am also an economics student and the story you shared in your posting made me feel the same way. I hope to see more great posts from you.

After reading Backwards Bicycle, I came across a very interesting statement. The author compares the skill of riding a bicycle to an algorithm and compares learning to ride a bicycle to solving an equation as if it were an equation. This also explains very well his belief that learning knowledge is not the same as understanding it.

  This reminded me of my learning experience in economics class. There are quite a few calculations and various equations involved in many economics classes. However, whenever I memorized all the formulas and algorithms, I would still come across questions on the test that I didn’t know how I should calculate. These questions often use examples from life or integrate multiple formulas. We need to fully understand the meaning of the formulas we learned to solve the problems. I agree with the author that just because I learned a formula doesn’t mean I understand it or can use it well.

 However, in this video, I don’t agree with the author’s attribution of his difficulty learning to ride a bike all to the complexity of the bike’s algorithm and conflict with his other algorithms. Perhaps this is one of the reasons or even a large part of the reason, but I don’t think it is the whole reason. It seems to me that the author’s delay in mastering the skill of riding a bicycle may also be because learning to ride a bicycle does not give the author a sufficient sense of accomplishment.

  For example, in the ‘Motivation Theories and Instructional Design‘ section of the material, it is also mentioned that students’ expectations of success and task value beliefs can have an impact on their achievement. So in the video ‘Backwards Bicycle’, the authors and others who learn to ride bicycles have difficulty mastering the skill quickly, possibly because learning to ride a bicycle is not necessary for them, and learning the skill gives them little sense of accomplishment and helps them in life.

  This also explains the author’s point that ‘children are more malleable than adults. Because the sense of accomplishment of a child learning to ride a bike is relatively large, often greater than that of an adult learning to ride a bike. That’s why his child could do what he could only do in eight months in two weeks.

Reference:

Park, S. (2018). Motivation Theories and Instructional Design. In R. E. West, Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology: The Past, Present, and Future of Learning and Instructional Design Technology. EdTech Books. Retrieved from https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations/motivation_theories_and_instructional_design

Hello everyone,

My name is Yunjun Huang, I am from China, you can also call me Dennis. I am a student in the Department of Economics in Victoria. I am very excited to participate in EDCI 335 this semester. I hope to learn more interesting new things in this class and look forward to completing the challenges with my classmates.