E-Learning Individual Work - Beng Yu

The paradigms of cognitivism and constructivism can be seen enacted clearly in this lesson plan.

Cognitivism

Cognitivist theories view learners as “information processers” and “rational beings that require active participation in order to learn, and whose actions are a consequence of thinking” (Learning Theories Knowledgebase, 2011).

Right from the very beginning of the lesson, when students are shown the video clip from Friends and asked the pre-activity questions, the teacher is already highlighting the amount of importance she accords to the mental processes of thinking and recalling. Students are viewed as ‘information processers ‘, where the video clip acts as the ‘information’ and students are required to ‘process’ it.

As the teacher moves on to Main Activity 1, her explicit teaching of rules pertaining to the variation of pitch and tone and her (inferred) expectation that they would somehow be able to ‘process’ the rules, understand them and apply them to their reading further goes to show the paradigm of cognitivism she is undertaking.

Later, when students are asked to ‘listen to their partner reading the script and to give feedback using the checklist provided’, the teacher is in fact expecting the students to process information from two sources – firstly audio information from their partner, and secondly visual information from the checklist. The feedback eventually given by the student (i.e. the action) is viewed as “a consequence of thinking” by the student after processing information from the two sources (Learning Theories Knowledgebase, 2011).

As the lesson progresses to Main Activity 2 where students are required to ‘explain why they chose that answer’, and after that to the Post-Activity where students are asked to ‘give a reason for justification of the grade’, it becomes even more evident that the teacher views the mental processes of thinking, knowing and problem-solving as a main part of her learners’ learning, since getting students to explain and give reasons for their answers requires the use of students’ higher-order thinking skills.

Constructivism

Constructivist theories view learners as information constructors who “actively construct their own subjective representations of objective reality” as knowledge by “linking new information to prior knowledge” and “testing hypotheses through social negotiation” (Learning Theories Knowledgebase, 2011).

Constructivism can most clearly be seen in the Post-Activity of this lesson plan. As students “listen carefully to 3 audio recordings of 3 different pupils reading the same oral passage”, and “work in pairs” to “discuss and give an overall grade for the reader based on the checklist”, they engage in social negotiation with their partners. Whatever prior hypotheses they held with regard to the notion of ‘good’ reading is now subject to testing and negotiation, and when both students in the pair have settled on a common notion of what is ‘good’ reading, new knowledge is constructed.

General Strengths & Weaknesses:

Generally speaking, the wide variety of ICT tools used in the lesson seems to promise that students will be engaged. But Towndrow (2007) warns us to “avoid a product-oriented, technologized traditional classroom, where only the physical appearance of the learning environment is changed by the presence of technologies”. Therefore, I’ll attempt to use the 5 scales of the “language learning task designer’s ‘mixing desk’ suggested by him as a basis to draw out the general strengths and weaknesses of the ICT employed in this lesson plan.

The first scale is the choice of task. Broadly speaking, for this lesson plan, there seems to be no choice for the students. The materials are chosen by the teacher and instructions are issued by the teacher. There seems to be little freedom for the students “to negotiate topics and act on their novel ideas and curiosity” (Towndrow, 2007). The lack of choice of task is thus one of the weaknesses of this lesson.

The second scale is the media and tool use. At first glance, the wide variety of ICT tools used in the lesson – recordings, e-portal forum, Instant Feedback System (IFS ) and videos etc – seems to be a strength because they add variety, interaction and flexibility to the lesson. However, if we look deeper, it seems clear as well that the ICT tools are very much teacher-selected rather than student-selected. As Towndrow (2007) pointed out, student-centred learning could perhaps occur in much more beneficial ways when learners no longer need to wait to be empowered by their teachers in the use of technology and are enabled to bring their own media and ICT skills into learning contexts. Perhaps, the lesson could be made better if the slider for media and tool use could move a little more towards the right (i.e. student-selected).

The third and fourth scale points to the outcomes of learning tasks and strategies. For this lesson plan, there is a mix of learning tasks; some result in a single outcome that is known in advance, while others accept more than one outcome. For instance, Main Activity 2 requires students to answer questions using an IFS. This task had only a single outcome, since the questions had pre-determined answers that were either right or wrong. On the other hand, the Post-Activity was one with multiple possible outcomes because it was less-structured and predictable-- students were given the liberty to justify themselves by giving reasons for the grades they had given to other pairs. In return, other pairs could reply to indicate if they agreed with the justification. Because of this mix of outcomes and strategies, I would regard these areas as strengths of the lesson plan.

The final scale takes into account learning support. In this lesson plan, the nature of support provided by the teacher is more “fixed, predetermined and procedural in nature” than “flexible and contextual” (Towndrow, 2007). This can be seen in the way instructions and feedback are planned to be given to students throughout the lesson. For instance, feedback by the teacher seems to be missing in Main Activity 1, while the main form of feedback planned to be given by the teacher for Main Activity 2 is that the teacher would reinforce at the end of the activity ‘that the tones of speech must match the given description of how the speech is meant to be expressed’. Such feedback seems to be lacking in specificity and individualization and provide little support to learners – a weakness of this lesson plan. Although there is an attempt later in the Follow-up Activity (homework) for learning support to be flexible and contextual (by having the teacher give specific and individualized holistic feedback on each pupil’s recording after the deadline), such learning support seems to come a little late though; perhaps students could benefit more if more is given throughout the learning process in the classroom. Some might argue that the ‘support’ should already come from the mutual feedback provided by students themselves since the activities revolve largely around peer learning, but taking into consideration that this is supposed to be the first lesson aimed to “…correct their weaknesses before we proceed on to other speaking outcomes…”, I would think that it is important for students to receive more accurate feedback during the lesson itself.