I went to my first face to face with Terry on Thursday, and that clarified a lot of questions i had about this course, thanks Terry, so here i go.
Leigh also came and talked to us and showed us briefly how to add content onto the Wiki that Rachel had set up, as every time i tried to put something on it, it wouldnt show up. So hopefully i will now be able to give it a go and be away racing.
Willie was great as per usual and challenged us on quite a few ideas, and it brought me back to remembering what Heather Day and Willie had taught me while doing some units in Level 5 Adult Education, and also my Moderators cause, so thank you for recharging my memory.
Thats the great thing about learning and how valueable this course has been for me, as I thought i had forgotten some of that stuff until you start to put it into practice again and the mind is jump started into using that learning.
I have finally decided to construct my course on Excel 2007.
As earlier in my blog in my design course, I was looking at all 2007 but as this was going to be such a big project, I have decide to condense it to just new features that are available in Microsoft Office 2007 Excel. The reason behind this is we have students who have purchased new computers and they have Microsoft Office 2007 Excel on these and as the features have changed from the 2003 version, they are asking us how to use these new features, thus bringing me to constructing a course to help them.
My other course i learnt how to develop my plan, but now i am taking it a bit further and want to reflect on who my learners are, and how they are going to learn, and what kind of learners are they. (this will go on the wiki as well)
There are many theories of learning, and so i have decided to read up on a few, and here is how I have perceived some of these readings.
People learn from many varieties, and i feel that it comes down to the way the course is designed and contructed, and how you teach in educational programs, and to recognise that every person has a different way of digesting information and learn in different ways. such as thinking, emotions, attitudes, motivation.
www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsd/2_learntch/theories.html
Above is a link to a website to go to, to give you some ideas on where i got my referencing from.
Burns mentions that behavioural learning as a relevant permanent change including both observational activity and internal processes, such as thinking, and attitudes examples being.
- Experimental learning
- Cognitive approach
- Action learning
- plus many more.
Expermential learning is thought by Kolb that there are four stages of learning and that this learning can begin at any one stage and that it is continuous (there is no limit to the number of cycles you can make in a learning situation.) People learn in four ways they are:
- concrete experience
- through observation
- through abstract conceptuation
- through active experimentation
Kolb who has been exploring over the last few decades educational research and found that indivuals begin with their own style of experimental learning cycle.
Honey and Mumford http://www.ruby3.dircon.co.uk/Training%20Files/Theory%20Pages/learning%20styles.htm also identify four learning styles:
They are:
- Activist (enjoys the experience)
- Reflector (reflects a great deal)
- Theorist (connects and abstract ideas from experience)
- Pragmatist (enjoys the planning stage)
Action Learning is another approach which can be linked with the world of action through a reflective process of learning groups or Action Learning Groups (McGill & Beaty 1995) http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=author:%22McGill%22+intitle:%22Action+Learning:+a+guide+for+professional,+management+%26+…%22+&hl=en&rlz=1T4ADBF_enNZ226NZ227&um=1&oi=scholarr is the aim from learning with and from each other, and said that there can be no learning without action and no action without learning.
Jacquie Flexible Learning 