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.
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Good point about making sure technology is available to everyone! This is crucial for not only online courses, but face-to-face sessions. We, as teachers, have to make sure that no one in our class feels abandoned because of their family economic situation when asking them to use technology to finish an assignment.
ReplyDeleteBesides, I think that teacher-made instructional videos can be good resources for class as well. Teacher can take high quality and step-by-step procedures of a skill to show the whole class online.
from Jennifer Knott: I'm glad you brought up the fact that there does exist the digital divide. Not everyone has equal access to computers nor does everyone share the same reliable internet access. It's good to stay aware of this as our society moves toward delivering courseware online.
ReplyDeleteHi Carma,
ReplyDeleteYou are so right, there is definitely a big difference between seeing the teacher explain or perform a task and actually performing it yourself. I can see situated learning being beneficial in every subject. It would be great if every class incorporated situated learning in some way, like a capstone at the end, or even in small pieces throughout. It is definitely a great way to prepare for the "real-world scenario".
Mary Ellen
Carma,
ReplyDeleteI thought your point about student teaching was interesting. I also appreciated your point about online enviroments. It lead me to think about teaching online. If you teach online how do you student teach in this enviroment???
My mother was an online educator for five years, before retiring. She taught in the classroom for 20 years prior to that. She said that if she hadn't had an online mentor she would have had trouble. She also shared that teaching online is quite different.
It would be fun to create an online student teaching enviroment on online educators?? I think?
Thanks for the mention! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for mentioning the vast amount of resources that are available "out there" online. There are just so, so many. That not many people are reaching out for and using (I think).
And Rachel - what an interesting idea… doing student teaching online… at least part of it. What an interesting experiment… Hm
I also thought of my undergrad days when I was reading the Situated Learning texts, and the math example in this week's lecture was dead-on. The great part of science-related majors are that you have labs. So you have to apply the theory learning in class to actual practice, but this was not the case for some other classes. For example, an Anthropology course that I took on Caribbean culture was great, but it was not immersing me in the true environment.
ReplyDeleteSituated learning is very important to learning, and I think it's one of the best ways to put theory to practice early on in the learning process.
Great points!
ReplyDeleteThere's a fantastic online art site called Art Snacks found at http://www.essdackartsnacks.org/ The site was set up by Kevin Honeycutt and I learned about it at the MACUL conference a couple of years ago. He has little art lessons, some drawing, some painting, a little of everything. They generally take about 5-7 minutes but the students can do the lesson right along with the artist. I think this is one of the best examples of situated learning I have seen online. Check it out!
ReplyDeleteGlad you mentioned student teaching. That was the best example of apprenticeship in a College of Education that I could come up with as well.
ReplyDelete