Experientialism

Experiential learning is a way of learning where students develop skills and knowledge directly from their experiences than the traditional academic setting.

Experiential learning examples are internship, study abroad programs, apprenticeship etc.
Since it is non traditional learning, and students learn from their own experience and also by reflecting on it.

Kolb's experiential learning cycle explains how learning happens by acquisition of abstract concepts and then by applying it in wide range of situation. there are four stages of  Kolb's experiential learning cycle. Concrete experience, reflective observation of  new experience, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation.

Communities of Practice

This week I am learning about a new idea- Community of practice. As an educator, I really like this idea as I always try to get my class work together and learn from each other. All communities may not qualify as a CoP. The members in the community must share a common interest or passion to be a community of practice. When my son was young, we used to attend a chess club, where members are committed to come there, play and watch others play, engage in problem solving in chess, discuss other tournament play etc interacting with each other and learning from each other. They met regularly once a week. I can see that as a community of practice.

Most organizations and work place would like to turn their community in to CoP where knowledge created and shared for the benefit of all. when members engages in shared activities and interest they learn from each other and grow.

At work, We have build strong CoP. Teachers have variety of opportunities to engage in activities with peers and share their knowledge. Grade level meetings, department level meetings and professional development times are all avenues for shared activities. Teachers do peer observation and that helps them grow as well.

Constructivims

Constructivism I think so far is the most applicable of all or most useful of all theories so far. When an instructor design a learning event, it is important to look at what kind of theories can be used to get the best result. Constructivism is a theory based on the idea that the learning occurs when people learn by connecting to their experiences and by making sense of their learning by constructing ideas about what they are learning to what they know from the past. The role of a teacher then is to facilitate the learning. Teacher acts as a guide, providing opportunities for the learners to thrive. I think this approach is way up in the blooms taxonomy as compared to behaviorism where the learning objectives are to recognize, remember etc. as opposed to in constructivsm, the objectives are to construct, to create, to apply etc. So the type of learning is different, it is more in depth, and more useful.

I am still at a place where I am still confused, but I think, The best way to explain learning is, the first stage is remembering facts, recollecting the concepts etc. which is behaviorists theory. Then, learners need to understand what they are learning, they use some cognitive skills to understand. Once they understand, they try to construct their own meaning and start creating new things, applying it in new situations etc. This is where the constructive theory comes in. I think all theories work together in learning.

This week, my biggest learning point is Zone of proximal development- which is what a student is capable of doing with help and what he or she can not do. We can use scaffolding and few other techniques to help students understand materials. For example, ELL students learn content but they are language challenged, so we pre teach vocabulary etc to help them access the content. 

Cognitivism

Cognitive approach to learning is to have the information presented to the learner by scaffolding, in chunks, so that learner can make sense of and process the information in the mind. Learning takes place in the mind of a learner and us driven by the learner.  The learner takes in the information and uses it to process with the previous knowledge and make sense of it. An example of a cognitive approach to learning is to have a series of activities leading to learn a concept. For example, teaching a group of adult learners in a beginning algebra class in a community college. To teach the rules of exponents, we can use the method of inductive reasoning by giving them a series of examples and activities and the teacher can help the learner deduce the rules by themselves and have them do more examples to reinforce it.

It is quite different from behaviorists approach as the behaviorist method focuses on the external environment. Less importance or focus is given to the learner. If the lesson on exponents were taught by a behaviorist approach, the rule will be explained first and showed an example, and the students will follow the same routines and process to practice similar type of problems, I this the end result may be both same in many of the learners. but the way it is being taught is what is different. I think some people will get a better understanding of the rules of exponents even under the behaviorist approach , but the chances of retaining the information and applying it will be much better in the cognitive approach than the behaviorists.