Month: May 2020

Cooperative learning is a process that allows people to work together as a group to achieve the same goal. Commonly, some group members feel undervalued and inequality when their groupmates have strong abilities. They will lose confidence and passion in the end.

Five key elements distinguish cooperative learning from traditional putting students in a group. Firstly, positive interdependence means you success then your groupmate success and vice versa. They achieve the same result as “sink or swim together”. Secondly, individual accountability gives accountability to each member’s contributions, which solves slacking issues. Based on individual competence, more experienced group members help with other members on a group project to realize promotive interaction. The fourth element is the interpersonal skill. Group members should exert their social abilities to solve problems in the teamwork. For instance, group-trusting, conflict management, and decision making. A group project will move constantly and smoothly after developing these skills. The last one is group processing. All group members should be given time to realize how they process this project and what skills they gained, which is useful for the next group project.

Photo by ROSS WICKENS

Our group topic is helping students to learn French effectively. Initially, language learning is boring. This process decreases students’ interests and passion for learning a new language. Teachers should provide a complete schedule to evoke students’ interests. Cooperative learning is a way that requires students to divide into small groups and work together. Through group chatting, each student exerts their learning abilities to help others. Teachers are welcomed to give tasks as a group presentation to deepen members’ relationships and promote better learning goals. Cooperation in language learning is essential. It benefits students who are shy or fear to talk on the class and provides opportunities to communicate in a small group. For those who are good at academic learning, they can act as teachers to teach others, which also strengthens their knowledge. While cooperative learning may not be useful to students who prefer to study alone, they used to practice by themselves. Teachers should combine with other strategies to enhance students’ learning activities.

Reference:

“What Is Cooperative Learning?” Cooperative Learning, 7 May 2018, serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/cooperative/whatis.html.

Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism

Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism are parts of learning theories. Each level of learning varies among these theories.

Behaviorism is an approach to focus on scientific and objective methods of investigation. It emphasizes environmental factors, which helps individuals to learn. Learning is achieved during the specific environmental stimulus. Responses and stimuli work together to lead to new behavior or change in behavior. Last term, I took a biology course. The professor gave us opportunities to gain bonus marks, which was different from the other professors. We need to read extra-scientific articles and summarize them in a paragraph each week. This method increased our interest in learning biology and also increased our marks. Although it was difficult for us to summarize articles that were scientific and professional, this method was a good practice to advise students to learn positively.

Cognitivism, based on the mental process, needs learners to completely understand the information in their brain. Learning occurs in the mental structure and builds a schema. The known information will be organized and re-sharped to create a cognitive view. I prefer to draw tree diagrams during learning. It helps to create a clear structure of each chapter and the connections between each topic. I used this way to deepen the knowledge learned from the lecture. Each time I draw the diagram, I will re-construct my knowledge structure. It is a process to input, organize, store, and retrieve information. Yiwei also explained and gave examples of this theory.

Constructivism is a process that needs learners to express their own thoughts to others. These thoughts are based on their experience and knowledge. Learners are encouraged to communicate with others and re-form concepts and knowledge. Field trip study is a good example of constructivism. I took a geography field trip last year. My group went to Mount Tolmie to discover the track of ancient glaciers. It is a good chance for us to improve our geographic concepts. During the field trip, we communicated with each member and discuss the related topics. Therefore, constructivism is an approach to correct and enhance our knowledge.

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