This week we start the first of the content units, this one focused on Educational Theory. There are a number of readings that are linked in the content page to give you some background and overview. The link from the Berkeley GSI guide is particularly useful as a short overview.
There is a lot of content in the readings, so feel free to pick and choose as it interests you. I’ve put an asterisk (*) next to the readings I think are good places to start.
For our discussion this week we’ll tackle the big questions of learning theory:
- How do they apply to our teaching?
- What are connections with personal pedagogical beliefs/commitments?
- How do our beliefs about teaching combine with relevant learning theory to create meaningful learning for students?
The weekly assignment asks you to start to engage with the world of educational technology by developing habits of reading and analyzing news articles, white papers, blogs, etc. which report on educational technology issues. The deliverable is designed to get you thinking about how to take these trends, summarize their useful elements and then report out on that. If you wish to share your work with the class I encourage you to do so.
I will start the discussion in the Teams site with our first question… after reading more about learning theory, what theories do you think you subscribe to and how do they apply to your teaching?
A brief note about discussion… In online courses, discussion is often set up so each person responds individually to the prompt and then everyone assumes that we will all respond to each other. This very often does not work as a method, so I ask you to please think about our course discussions as truly a discussion. In a face to face class, we would not go around and individually report our own thoughts without connection to or context of others comments. So for our discussions perhaps the first person or two may explicitly respond to the post, but let’s see how this works if we strive more for response and a back-and-forth discussion!