EDF 6218: Pretest
There
are two foci to this course. One is for you to apply learning and instructional
theories to real world situations in which you find they are most applicable.
The second is for you to reflect upon yourself as a learner and to think about
how the theories we discuss apply to your own learning and motivation. My hope
is that you not only become a better instructional designer or builder of
learning environments through the application of psychological theories, but
that you also come to better understand yourself as a learner, how you can best
explain your learning needs, and how you can apply theory to enhance your own
learning as well as that of others. All of us, whether we have a background
knowledge of learning and instructional theories or not, have ideas about what
helps us learn course content, the types of assignments that are more or less
meaningful, the things that motivate us to learn, how we study best for an
exam, the types of instructors we like, etc. These ideas have developed through
many, many hours of direct experience as a student; and while we may not know
the theories that explain why we think the way we do I bet there is one for
just about everything you can think of. We probably won't be getting to all of
the theories you adhere to, but we will certainly be
covering enough to give you a taste of all that is out there to help us explain
and predict our own learning as well as others'.
Part
of the posttest for this course will consist of a series of reflective questions
related to this course and its delivery and yourself as a learner. A portion of
the questions will be focused on reflecting on yourself as a learner and what
learning theories best describe how you think about your own learning and how
this influences your ability to learn and motivation for learning in this
course and your present or future design of instruction (or solving other
learning problems/situations). Given that many of you do not have a heavy
background in learning theory it might be difficult to answer such a specific
question at this early date, but if I asked you simply how you think about how
you learn, what motivates you to learn, how you study and why you think it is
successful for you, etc. then you would be able to answer these in relatively
simple terms. Then, at the end of this course, as you look back on your
explanation from this posttest my hope is that you will be able to use and
apply theories that match with these early thoughts and hopefully add some new
ways of thinking about your own learning to apply in the future.
Given
this idea, I would like for you to answer each of the following questions in a
paragraph or two. Some of these questions are intended for me to gather
information about your prior knowledge of psychological theories to assist me
in preparing future lectures and activities. Other questions are aimed at
focusing you on thinking about your own learning and beginning a process of
reflective practice that will serve you well as you continue through this
course and then complete the final posttest. Your answers to the following
questions will be read but not graded. You will receive full credit for this
assessment as long as you provide complete and thoughtful answers to each of
the questions.
1.
What
previous courses have you had in educational psychology, child development, or
related topics as an undergraduate or graduate student? What do you remember
from these courses? Are there any specific theories or theorists you remember?
2.
What
is your current or future (planned) job setting? How do you think knowledge of
psychological theories will assist you in this setting?
3.
If
you had to explain to someone how people learn what would you say?
4.
How
do you think about your own learning? How do you learn best? What motivates you
to learn? What do you do to monitor your own progress in learning tasks?
5.
In
what type of learning environment do you feel most comfortable? (Some possible
things to think about are...Structured/Unstructured?
Individual/Cooperative/Competitive? Interactive - Lecture/Discussion?)
6.
When
the learning environment you are faced with does not fit well with your idea of
how you learn best what do you do?
7.
Although
you only have a glimpse of what this course is going to be like, what are your
impressions about how well this learning environment fits with your idea of a
learning environment in which you feel comfortable? What specific things fit
well with how you learn best? What things do not fit so well with how you
learn?
Please be sure to
include your name in the document, save the document in "rtf" format,
include your name in the file name of the document, and send it to me via email
as an attachment no later than September 5 @