Situated Learning

I totally have to agree with Matthew in the aspect that I love Situated Learning.  I see it as a win/win situation for everyone involved because the student learns during apprenticeship, the real world scenario.  In the article by Herrington and Oliver, it mentions that a critical characteristic (for ID) is to "provide authentic context that reflect the way the knowledge will be used in real-life", as well as, "provide authentic activities" that will help the student see the whole picture, not just what a professor told you would happen in a lecture during an in class session.

During my undergrad days, many years ago, I felt that I learned more from my student teaching experience vs material that I had studied in class, because it was what I would actually encounter on a daily basis, as I ventured out to become a "real teacher." 

At the beginning of this week, I wondered how situated learning could be transferred into an online experience.  But as I am finding out from being an online student, there are a vast number of resources available to me, whether they are purchased and used by the school or free online tools that I learned about at work or from fellow classmates.  Not only that, I think that a tool such as Skype would really help in the situated learning module so that you could actually see the person at work, whatever the work may be.  Now they have it where you can have a virtual classroom anywhere, why not do the same with situated learning?

The key I think to doing this online would be that making sure the technology is available to everyone, without a huge amount of money being spent to do it.  Another key would be communication between the learner and their mentor.

I would love to see differnet online examples of situated learning, to see how the facilitator went about setting it up and see what type of tools they used.

Problem Based Learning

To me, it seemed at first that Problem Based Learning would be extremely hard to do as an online process.  I had to really dig into the resources that Kevin provided to start to understand how it might actually work online.

Once I was able to comprehend the process, I started to see how it could work online, making sure that you give precise directions to the groups to make sure they understand what is being asked of them.  Also I think another thing would be to make sure there are easy ways for the group to communicate online, whether it would be through programs such as Elluminate, Second Life, Groove, Google Docs, etc...  When we discussed this in my group it became apparent to me that it would be easy because of the vast amounts of online tools that people now have available to them. 

When I thought of online tools to use for PBL, I thought it would be tough for schools or students that might not be able to afford programs such as Elluminate.  Even now, that is no longer a barrier due to the fact that there are wonderful, free, online tools.

I also agree with one of my classmates in that communication is a key with PBL, to make sure that students are clear on what is being asked of them to do, since they will have to work together as a group, research the problem at hand and come up with solutions.

I believe that this is an excellent way for students to work on critical thinking skills as well as learn how problem solving is achieved in the "real world" versus someone telling them how to do it.

Cooperative Learning

I really love cooperative learning.  I dont know what it is exactly about it that I love so much.  It could be the fact that everyone has to pull together so that everyone gets a good grade.  It could be that different backgrounds come together instead of being in their own little groups.  It could be that it teaches social skills that are extremely handy to use as an adult.  Maybe it's all of these and more.

As I was reading I could think of different things to do in the Health environment that would be great projects for face to face Cooperative Learning.  However, I have had a hard time trying to visualize ways to do Cooperative Learning online.  As I read, it occurred to me that most of what we do in our class this semester is based on Cooperative Learning.  I have found that it is harder to facilitate Cooperative Learning from the online student perspective, but it can be done if everyone puts forth an effort and works together, just like Cooperative Learning was intended to do.

The good thing about Cooperative Learning online is that it makes the facilitator as well as the student think "outside the box."  I believe that a facilitator would have to be creative in order to find ways to master the objectives that can be obtained like face to face Cooperative Learning does.  But isn't that one of the fun things about that?  We get to use our creativity.

Guided Design

I don't know about anyone else, but I found it fascinating that the article, "Teaching Professionalism, Design, & Communications to Engineering Freshman" by Casada & DeShazer mentioned the use of Steven Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" because a lot of companies that I have worked for in the past have used this as required reading for their employees.  I think that it is impressive that you have students read it before going into the workforce or in this case, use it to guide the student's thought processes.

On thing that was mentioned that really stood out for me was that "...you have to be trusted to be part of a design team.  You have to be honest with yourself and voice your thoughts to be a significant part of the group."  I truly believe that this needs to be used with every subject, class, etc...  When working in groups not only do you need to trust the person(s) within your group, but you also need to be aware that you are a integral part of the team as well.  If you do not voice your opinion, how will anyone know what you are feeling or what type of ideas you have that could actually be great.

I know that when I was in grammar school I did not do very well in this area because I was scared that everyone would laugh at my ideas.  I have also taught middle school and can see where this concept might not go over as well as high school or college classes.  I currently try to use some form of guided practices in my training classes and can see how they are great to help new employees to learn new skills.

This is just a thought but...From what I have read so far, Guided Practice sounds like it is a wonderful tool to help students to adjust to life outside of the studies realm, i.e. "The Real World."