Learning Theory - 11/15/07

Professor was late - he called Ross to tell him to keep us here, Joanna made a comment about Pablo & Ross being BF F's (Best Friends Forever - a lot of the non-teacher people didn't get it. ) Ross was not amused.

Pablo's here, we're ready to go -

Learning theories a lot like the three blind men and the elephant

(one grabs the trunk and thinks it's a snake like animal, another grabs the leg and thinks it's a tree type thing and the last the head and thinks it's a hairy boulder.)

Chapter is divided into 3 parts :

• Motivation
• Self regulation
• How to apply these two

We're thinking about something that we are motivated to do and what, who or why are we motivated to do it.

I thought about a couple of things - cars and computers. I've been motivated by cars since before I can remember so I have no idea who, how or why. As for computers, I like learning about programs because of the things that can be produced - the product is the motivator.

Self Efficacy : Belief about ones own abilities - be it good or bad. "I can't do that, I'm too stupid." or "I'm good at that, it's going to be easy."

ARCS - attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction.

- how about social motivation - when it's cool to fail, or to exceed. either way, the peer pressure or cultural expectations effect motivation.

Now we're thinking about teachers that motivated us.

My teacher is a comparison thing. I took the required history class up here at the U twice, once from a guy who read out of the book, had us do readings and the tests were all what happened on what day, etc. I flunked it famously. The next time I took it was from a professor who taught it like a story - he would just stand in front of the class and tell the story of history. His tests were all essay - why did things happen, which events caused what other events to happen. Chronological order was necessary, but knowing that X happened on a specific day was irrelevant.

Objective #1 : Given a learning outcome, target audience and learning theory describe an instructional module using principles of the learning theory to appropriately address the learning outcome.

The Final? How can we do an assessment of Objective #1

Last day - the 13th of December.

On Dec 6th we each get instructional objective, target audience and 2 learning theories to develop one lesson to address the objective using the 2 theories.

On the 13th we have to present it in front of Pablo and 2 peers.