Week 10

This lecture touches on our final project, the Webquest.

After hearing the aspects of a webquest, it gives us a clearer idea of how it should look like and what should be included.

Our group decided to teach secondary school kids the importance of recycling and also make them remember the three main types of recyclable materials, namely Paper, Metals and Plastics.

This is getting quite exciting and i look forward to our completed webquest!

Week 9

For this week, we were exposed to the learning strategies for Problem-solving and Affective learning.

I guess everyday we are faced with problem-based situations. And all these situation involves some aspects of Problem-solving skills.

The only difference is that the Problem-solving strategies present us a more systematic approach of how to think of solutions to counter/solve the problems at hand.

I think by providing learners a "problem situation" and throw them in the hot soup, it will create a necessary level of pressure for the learners to feel the need to think critically and come up with solutions.

This, in my opinion, creates a deeper impression in the minds of the learners as they really get down and do the task.

I think one example of problem-based learning was shown in another NM module, NM3219, a PR writing module. Students were put into a Crisis Week, where they will take the role of a PR person handling a "crisis" of a fictitious company. Each day of the week, the instructors will release a "problem" and the crisis will sink further. Students have to prepare things like press releases and internal memos and submit to the instructors real time.

This i feel is quite an effective example of Problem based learning.

Week 8

This lecture, we learnt abt Procedure and Principle learning.

Both learning strategies are in fact, in my opinion, a level higher than simply learning.

However, i'm quite interested in Procedural learning, as it could possibly be related to my military experience.

The idea of Procedural learning is to teach learners to such a point that the "thing" which is taught to them becomes "automated", or in other words, a second nature to them.

In the army, we learnt soldiering skills right from the first day we enlisted. Things ranging from basic discipline to advanced tactics and maneuvers out in the field. During this process, we were made to do, re-do, practice and practice these exercises over and over and over again, so much so that sometimes it becomes mundane and boring.

However, all these is aimed at getting soldiers used to these soldiering skills, such that it becomes second nature to us. In times of needs, we can then display these skills in an exemplary manner.

Not sure if i'm relating to a right example.. do hope to hear some comments! =)

Week 7

Fact and Concepts, are they the same?

Apparently not.

Facts, according to this week's lesson, requires a more straightforward teaching approach as compared to Concepts.

For facts, methods like Linking and Associations can be use. For example, using acronyms, organising information into chunks and elaboration.

For concepts, it requires a more detailed method with involves defining the concept, telling learners what it is, providing examples to make sense out of it and eventually asking the learners to explain wat the concept is.

I think we as students can actually captitalise on this particular topic.

Many times, in our course of study, we come across many bewildering concepts. In order for us to understand the concepts, we can actually make use of the methods taught in this particular topic and exercise it in our studies. This goes similarly for facts that need to be memorized.

Could be something quite useful to us.. =)

Week 6

I believe that every time something is taught to somebody, there is always an objective that the teacher/instructor wants to achieve.

This week, we are taught the three domains of learning and writing specific objectives for each domain of learning.

Having the initial idea that one simple objective can apply to all kinds of learning, i was quite surprised that actually, there are specific words to use for each domain of learning, namely, Affective - attitudinal changes, Cognitive - to know and think abt something, and Psychomotor - the doing of something physically.

It all seems to fall into place when i recall the difference between the kind of objectives we had for my history lessons back in secondary school, and the objectives for my driving lessons.

History lessons, for example, we had to memorize at least 3 facts of Stalin's 5-year plans and regurgitate them onto the paper. However, for driving lessons, we had to engage the correct gear when going up a slope or making a turn.

U can see the vast difference in the types of objectives for these 2 types of learning, which are namely Cognitive and Psychomotor domains respectively.

There is no way u can memorise the exact steps to engage a gear unless you physically do it and experience how it works. Likewise, it impossible to physically know what are Stalin's 5 year plans and the only thing you can do is to read and memorize.

Therefore, we can see that in order for learning to effectively take place, we have to set objectives appropriately and accurately.

Redesigning our Learning Design.

For tutorial this week, we were supposed to pick an LD from lecture and enhance it a little..

this was wat we picked:


The topic on hand was to teach our learners what is being laid out by our finance minister in his Budget Speech. Essentially, we want our learners to know what is in it for Singaporeans this coming financial year and how can we get information about these.

This is our redesigned LD:


After much discussion, we realised that we did not specify any clear tasks or step-by-step assignments for our learners to fulfil their learning objectives. Thus we came up with several new tasks along the way, coupled with the respective resources and support available.

A learning design is particularly useful in mapping out logically the path in which we want our learners to take. I also realised that many times in our educational experiences, our teachers and instructors actually used similar tools to map out our learning process. In my opinion, a similar example would be the lesson plans. It provides us the main topics to cover per week and also provides us resources in terms of readings or websites to supplement our learning.

It is something worthwhile to ponder on shud i become an instructor someday.. =)

Week 5

I guess this week's lecture is the most impt of all since the lecturer placed much emphasis on this particular topic.

We learnt abt Needs Assessment, the idea of seeing what is wrong with a current learning system, identifying problems (if any) and providing recommendations/solutions to improve the system.

The following are the broad steps which i have summarized when conducting a needs assessment using the 3-faced Model:

Problem-Model:
Firstly, determine if there is any problem with the system by looking at results, sales, customer feedback etc.

Next, see if these problems are related to performances/achievements on learners' training/learning environments.

Next, see if we can use "learning" to tackle the problem.

And then, see if there are currently any instructions in place within the systems to achieve these learning goals. If there is, something could be wrong with the system and we shud proceed to check for discrepancy - Proceed to Discrepancy Model. If no, we need to implement new things to the system - Proceed to the Innovations Model.

For Discrepancy, we have to to think of look at what went wrong with the current instructions, is it properly and effectively in place? We may have to tweak it or improvise it before we can see results.

For Innovations Model, we simply need to think of new ways of teaching and instruction and input into the system.

This 3 face model will than go into a cyclical mode, looking and identifying problems as and when needed.