Month: May 2020

Cooperative learning is also regarded as a small-group learning which is a teaching approach that divides a class of students into small groups working together on a task in the meantime helping each other developing potentials. The essence of cooperative learning is to showcase the positive effects of interdependence so that students feel responsible for the effort they made for the team. In addition to the positive interdependence, according to David Johnson and Roger Johnson (1999), there are four key factors to support the cooperative learning including face-to-face interaction, individual and group accountability, group behaviors and group processing. With help of cooperative learning, teacher is no longer taking the sole responsibility of educating. Instead, the group of students shared the roles of both learner and teacher. In each group, everyone’s role in the team is discussed and determined by the group. Besides, they make assessment of their learning by examining each other according to the learning goals set by all. Johnson & Johnson (1999) claims that cooperative learning contributes to not only a higher group achievement but a huge individual improvement in addition to a healthier relationship with peers and mental statement. They also argue that cooperative learning helps to foster a healthier self-esteem (Johnson & Johnson, 1999).

From my perspective, Cooperative learning should be based on a reasonable combination of gender ratio, interest tendency, learning level, and communication skills. In essence, each group of 4-6 people sits in a rectangular shape to facilitate group discussion after face-to-face guidance. Cooperative learning also facilitates resource sharing and facilitates mutual help. First of all, the instructor can set some competition between the groups so they can make progress together. The problems that arise between the groups must first be solved by members of the group. If they fail to solve them, they can ask other groups for help. Through everyone ’s efforts, the problems are solved together.

The blueprint learning process that our group chose is language learning. The cooperative learning approach is suitable for language learning because language learning includes listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The group learning can facilitate practicing listening and speaking ability. We know that the purpose of learning English is to communicate, so language has become a tool for communication. The purpose of our teaching is that students can not only understand that the teacher teaches in English in class, communicate with classmates in English and express their own ideas, but also use English outside the class to communicate with native English speakers.

Reference

Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1999). Making cooperative learning work. Theory into Practice: Building Community through Cooperative Learning, 38(2), 67-73. doi:10.1080/00405849909543834

Share a story about how you overcame a learning challenge. Why was it a challenge? What strategies did you use?  Use the language you learned in this unit.

I’m going to share with you a learning challenge occurred last year. It was the first time that I attended the online course in Uvic. In the beginning, I have no idea what I am going to do in each session without the actual class so I lost in the ocean of information and materials. The instructor offers tons of reading materials each week and forum discussion requirements. Since I don’t have the experience of self-learning, it is difficult for me to arrange my own study plan which leads to the delay of learning missions and objectives unaccomplished. The main obstacle is that I could not focus on reading materials and extract the main ideas, so the writing assignments have been procrastinated. I was warned to fail this course in the mid-term, which gives me a heavy strike. I realize that I have to alter my learning habits. The first step is to place an emphasis on understanding the content of materials. I cognitively convince myself to read. According to the Theoretical Perspectives,  in the way of behavioralists, learners are given reinforcement and feedback to develop their own learning habits, which requires the ability to identify the weakness and strengths in studying. I think this kind of learning design suit the senior students because the learning process is based on prior experience.

Learning is a unique function of the human brain that distinguishes human beings and other animals. I agree that motivation accelerates learning.  As I mentioned before, I barely persis to continue the first online course if there is no pressure of gaining the credits to obtain the degree. The fact is that once I’m prepared cognitively, I will seek help to overcome the obstacles.

Hello, everyone

My name is Sijia Liu. I’m very excited to attend this course for a brand new method of learning, and of course, the complete different demonstration of class offers great opportunities to learn various online learning methods.  I’m not good at technologies, I’m very happy to learn practical skills apart from the theories.

Speaking of myself, I’m a Chinese boy and living in Canada for more than three years. I major in Econ in Uvic. I attended several online courses before, I think the best part of the online course is testing time management ability and self-learning ability. I am an introverted person preferring staying alone. I like movies and sci-fi animations. I rarely hang out with friends except for tasting the delicious food. I also like taking pictures of beautiful scenery, I went to Europe myself and had a really good time.

This is my favorite film called Paprika by Satoshi Kon, a Japanese master director. It is a fantasy movie with perfect cinematography, highly recommended.