Teaching Constructivism

How would I teach constructivism to my fellow instructos? Obviously, I would not be lecturing using the traditional didactic format on the topic, so I need to find other ways to help my audience to appreciate the concept practically. Here are some questions I came up with for the audience to discuss:

• Under what situations do students learn best, and why.


• What are the main problems with traditional didactic learning methods?


• What are some activities you have used in the classroom to engage students in the learning process?

The participants can then draw a one page poster, or use big post-it notes, or use a game to let other groups know about their discussion results. The MET program at UBC provides a solid foundation on the theoretical models for teaching, and tools like games and simulations from Nasaga and Thiagi can complement this program well in preparing teachers in the classroom.

Last Last Thoughts Part 3 / 3

Final Thoughts

I do believe technology is useful in helping students learn technical subjects, like math, science, and computer science. I don’t think we are anywhere close to the potential that technologies are capable of in providing the intelligence, the motivation, the scaffolding, for our students at this point in time. One of the recent advances in teaching has been the application of constructivist theory. Learning has fallen on the shoulders of the students to construct their new knowledge. But without the appropriate level of guidance or scaffolding, students can be lost in the process. The technologies that have been covered in the course seem to have produced some positive results in students’ learning, especially those that engage students with diverse background and with a common goal in their learning. Such social constructivist learning coupled with authentic learning have been demonstrated to engage students and increase their understanding much better than traditional learning. But the use of technology in these environments has been minimal. There is no significant use of new advances in computing or Artificial Intelligence built into these TELE’s. Granted that one should not simply use technologies for the sake of technology, this may be the case that educators do not have a good learning model for the advance use of computing yet. Perhaps educators have been too shy in exploring what digital technologies can be used in education for fear that they are used simply because they are available. However, I believe that given the capabilities of computer science and the availability of digital technologies, educators should look at what these technologies can do and at the same time explore how learning models can be developed in parallel to make the best use of them.

The TELE assignment has been a great experience in working through a number of mini assignments to come up with a design of a lesson plan. What has been disappointing, though not surprising, is the amount of time and effort required to put together a lesson plan for a simple topic. After a number of weeks of collaboration, our assignment is still only a skeleton of what the final lesson should look like. For a teacher with a regular load, it is almost impossible to devote such time and effort to prepare lessons like this for their teaching. There are so many educators around the world, and yet, the pool of resource seems to be very small. Indeed, there are significant amount of teaching material available on the internet, and for our TELE, we have found lots of games in the internet, even educational games, but none can be used easily in our lesson development. Frame games or game templates, which allow teachers to supply the content in a game, seem to be useful tools in developing TELE’s. But they are not readily available. SFU has been working on games and simulations for teaching (http://www.sageforlearning.ca/), but to use one of their game templates is not a trivial process.

In conclusion, much has been done in the development of digital technologies for teaching math and science. However, lot more research is needed. Our generation of students is changing fast. They have grown up with technologies and unless education keeps up with the use of modern technologies, students will be left behind. It seems that education has been just trying to catch up with the types of technologies that are available. Perhaps it is time to develop new education models which technologies need to be invented for rather than the other way around.

Final Thoughts Part 2 /3

Games and Learning

What other technologies can be used in teaching math, science, and computer science? I believe authentic learning is an excellent way to capture students’ interest and attention. Another area I believe that can be just as captivating is the use of games. Games allow players to be totally immersed in an environment such that their total attention is given to the game play. I am not sure how games can effectively be used in teaching and learning. Most of the games I have encountered “teaches” certain concepts much like traditional teaching methods except that there is a side component of game play in the process. For example, I came across a game where one has to solve a mathematical problem, and if successful, the player can try to kick a soccer ball at a goalie. The game does not help in the learning of the mathematical concept but used as a reward system so the learner gets to play if she understands the concept. Another use of games is to help student memorize mathematical concepts rather than to learn the concept. What I like to see is a more developed game play that helps in the learning of a concept rather than used as a reward or rote memorization system.

The latest issue of Communication of ACM (July 2007) contains a number of articles on the “Science of Games”. This area may be of interest to many who wants to use games in teaching and learning rather than just for entertainment value.

Female students and Technical subjects

Another area of interest to me is how to motivate more female participation in science and technical intensive courses. Research has shown that female students can excel just as well, if not better, than male students. However, I am not convinced that female students are just as interested in technical subjects and use of technology in their studies as male students. It is not clear from looking at the different TELE’s in this course such as Jasper, WISE, Geode, or new technologies such as visualization software, handheld devices, haptics systems would appeal to female students. Studies on why many teens, whether male or female, are so keen on using facebook, myspace, MSN, etc. and how these technologies can be used in teaching and learning will be an interesting topic.

Chaos in the Classroom – good or bad?

One comment that Dr. Susan Gerofsky made in one of the forums stuck with me during the course. The discussion was on the lack of order and structure that someone noticed in one of the videos we watched in the course. Susan asked whether order and structure was prerequisite or necessary in learning. I don’t usually insist on absolute silence in the classroom unless I am lecturing and especially I can’t think with all the noise around me. But for this generation of students who are used to watching TV, listening to iPods, and doing their homework all at the same time, may be the traditional order and structure in the classroom needs to be changed. How does technology help in the physical study space for students then? When are students under stimulated and when are they over stimulated? Is there a level of multi dimensional stimulation that is most effective for students to learn, and how are students differ from one another in terms of their threshold?

Scaffolding – when is it appropriate?

Designing appropriate scaffold to help students learn is also an interesting area that has been explored in this course. In many of the learning environments reviewed in this course, Jasper, WISE, etc. emphasizes appropriate scaffolding so that students will not be overwhelmed or confused by the learning process. Too much scaffolding will stymied the students’ creative exploration of the subject, and insufficient scaffolding will leave a student lost and confused.

Design of appropriate scaffolding takes a lot of time. The inquiry maps used in WISE are well received by the student because they were designed and prepared by many experts, and much thought was put into the “next steps” of the student’s learning. For an average teacher, whether in any level, there is just not enough time to prepare the appropriate learning material on top of the lesson subject material.

I believe technology can really help in this area, but much work needs to be done. For a computer to be able to guide a student in the learning process, there needs to be enough knowledge in the computer’s database to understand at what level is the student’s understanding. Such is not easy to create and I am not sure if this should left in the domain of teachers. At the moment, there is a shortage of good, qualified teachers to provide individual help for students. As the population shrinks, I am not sure if such technology is still necessary, or whether there will always be insufficient teachers.

Final Thoughts Part 1 / 3

One of the questions that I have been asking since the beginning of this course is: What is the role of technology in teaching science and math? My interest is mainly in teaching computer science and since computer science is already deeply immersed in digital technologies, I have been curious how else computers can be used in the process of learning computer science other than using computers to learn how to program. Are computers suitable to help computer science students to learning programming? The most effective tool I have used in teaching students how to program is not using computers. I have used Karel, an imaginary robot to teach programming with much success … all without the use of computers. Other tools are merely development environments which help students debug program faster, avoid typing mistakes, or to document the program better. Surely, there are design tools that can take graphic representation of a program, like UML, ER diagrams, and convert them into code, or program verification tool to “prove” that a program is supposed to behave according to its specification (which is so complicated to even write down that no practical programmer really takes this seriously!), but they don’t really help students learn or to design software better.

Technologies such as del.ciou.us, RSS, citeulike.org, google docs, etc. are great in organizing the knowledge base of any subject or discipline, but for technical topics, technologies seem to be best used in visualization of abstract concepts. In math, calculators, visual graphical programs like Maple, and other animation software allows students to have yet another view of mathematical formulas. In science, visual representations and experiments allow students to conduct virtual labs without expensive equipment and dangerous material. Digital technologies also allow students to learn by trial and error. Computers and calculators can hide the tedium of manual computations and afford the students to “test-and-see”. Although some may see that this is not really “learning” in the sense that the basic foundations have been understood, and new theories are built on top, a “test-and-see” learning model may be suitable for the new generation of students who are more at home with digital technologies than previous generations. One question that should be investigated is whether “test-and-see” leaning in a collaborative environment is as effective as other traditional learning environment.

Blogs and Computer Science

The use of blogs to capture our thoughts has been very useful. But I wonder if such technology can be used for a technical course. In the case of computer programming, what can a student write in a blog? In the WorldWatcher program, students use a Progress Portfolio to capture their thoughts and their investigations as part of the reflective inquiry. A similar use for designing software can be applied to computing students using blog. Here are some possibilities of its use:

- given a problem, what was the thought process like?
- what were the possible solutions that turned out to be not workable?
- Reflection on the design / solution, could it be better, what went well in the design / management / development of the program?
- Have students read each other’s blogs and ask each other or try to explain to each other the thought process that has transpired? This may allow each student to learn how they learn, and how they think. This may provide insights on the students as they attempt another programming exercise.

Here are further questions for consideration of using blogs in teaching computer programming?

- can blog be used as a design tool to guide programmers in the design and development (much like a saying that says an essay writes the writer rather than the writer writes the essay!)
- blog is different than traditional program documentation which the programmer usually writes after the entire program is developed and is usually put together just to satisfy some higher up management. Blog can be a day to day, or moment by moment design history and may be more useful in capturing the development of thoughts.
- What will be the best medium for recording in the blogs? English is often used in blogs but is it the best language to capture program design? Diagrams / pseudo code / etc. or a combination of these may be more appropriate.