Week 2. ABCD LEARNING/TEACHING PRINCIPLES.
               

Driskoll’s principles of learning totally apply to the second week  at the prestigious Oregon University Ecourse. Namely that learning happens in context, learning is active, learning is reflective and social.

The current week has been fuller than the preceding one, in what concerns the volume of recommended materials for study but due to an increased level of unifying tasks, concerns, issues, deadlines within the study group; the level of stress for me personally has decreased. So the social factor has a reassuring effect upon me. I am focusing on the assignments having in perspective the overall workload for the project. The project timeline has been activated.

My project deals with creating reflective learning blogs. I have formulated the ABCD learning objective, motivating my option of interactive web technology for improving both learning and communication. My sought goal is to empower students, encourage them for extra reading and writing practice to build a closer relationship among the students of the group and stimulate out-of-class focused discussion. I am not repeating myself. Although for the behaviourist style of learning, unlike cognitive and constructivist styles has the aim to produce a qualitative change in behavior, the acquisition of new competencies consists in repetition and revisiting the source of information.

Those are theoretical movements in education theory but I found even more important the VARK sensory modalities that are used for learning information. VARK stands for visual, auditory, read/write, kinesthetic perceptual preferences while learning for different people. I have experimented with myself for a start by doing the    VARK Questionnaire   :   I’m in the 85% of learners who have a visual preference (12 points), then come read and write preferences - 10 points;  I have also done the  Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire by Barbara Soloman and Richard Felder  : I am reflective, sensing, visual, sequential learner. The ensuing recommendations for learners in accordance with the perceptual and personality type are precious, for developing multiple intellingencies and improving the quality of learning. I have seen  Grasha-Riechmann’s Teaching Styles  which shaped a mix of formal authority, personal model and facilitator as a characterization of my teaching style. After having revisited the basic behaviourist taxonomy with the lead representatives Watson B and Skinner J. who devised the stimulant-response, operant conditioning theory of learning, we keep in mind that reinforcement is the cardinal motivator for this trend in a given environment.

When it comes to the cognitive orientation of learning Leonard Bloom comes to the forefront emphasizing the magic triangle of learning: the objectives, learning activities and evaluation and his six levels of objectives in accordance with the cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains. 

Bloom's Taxonomy Circle Interactive Diagram a chart, an activity analysis organigram and a video and Blooms Digital Taxonomy.

From the humanistic orientation of learning we have  Maslow's hierarchy of needs  with the need for achievement and self-actualization as being the fundamental not drive but engine for the personality progress.

I would possibly repeat myself but what I found of particular interest for me was the impressive collection of rubrics from the basic attendance/participation to creating rubrics for slides, Power Point presentations, templates even that I would apply as I have always found it difficult to evaluate students.

One of the rubrics classificator was curiously enough entitled “Scavenger’s hunt rubrics” which was evaluating a task of researching a topic. Our group has also engaged in a similar hunt this week, very fruitful in results, I mean the exercise of experimenting with the Noodle Tools search engines which proved to be a guiding training in reducing our immigrant’s accent in the digital medium in rapport with the bit natives.