Rethinking Teaching and Learning

It's been almost two months since I began my learning journey at HGSE and in these two month's I've done a lot of reflection and learning. In this first post, I am going to attempt to make sense of those learnings and draw connections between the ideas that stood out to me the most.

Over the past few week, there are three main questions I kept asking myself -

• What does it mean to learn?

• How do people learn best?

• What is the role of design in helping people learn?

As a student right from K through 12, I was always perceived as an "excellent learner" by the people around me. With time, I myself adopted this idea of me being a"good student", both because of people's perception of me and because my scorecard seemed to tell me the same story. However, in my head this seemed to be a conflicting idea, because neither did I find it easy to learn, not was it enjoyable. I often found the process of learning to be difficult and scary and I was constantly trying to keep up those good grades.

Now, I'm going to try and decode my learning experience, to understand what was really happening and then try to answer the three questions above with respect to this example.

The approach to learning -

Looking back, I realised that my understanding of what it meant to be a good learner was was quite distorted. Did I ace my exams? Yes. But was I really learning? No. I was constantly memorising concepts and storing information into the long-term memory through retrieval, interleaving and other memorising techniques, to be able to replicate them when I needed to. But I was not making meaning of this information or connecting them to my context and what I already knew.

The approach to teaching -

Most of my classes followed a behaviorist approach to teaching and learning and I was tested for my knowledge of concepts and sometimes understanding, but not any of the higher order thinking skills. Learning involved us sitting in a classroom, listening to a lecture and taking notes, without the opportunity to interact with or learn from each other. If I did not understand a concept, I just assumed that it was because I wasn't working hard enough.

I had misunderstood the whole idea of learning!

So, what is learning?

Learning is a prolonged complex phenomena that take place when we take in information through our senses, build on top of our existing knowledge, and manipulate the new information to make connection to existing ideas or to develop new ideas.

In this case, how do people learn best?

People learn best in a variety of way - by actively engaging with new information, having meaningful discussions, constructing things, reflecting on their own understanding, tinkering with tools, conducting experiments, etc.

Having said this, I don't think that there is a fool-proof one-size fits all method to learning. Each of us is quite unique in the way we learn - be it the preferred mode of learning, ideal physical learning environment, time of learning, etc - and this could even change according to the subject/concept that they are trying to learn! The key to effective learning is to build a solid understanding of these factors and trying to figure out what works best for you as a learner.

Finally, how can we design effective learning experiences?

Like I mentioned - each learner is unique and so is every learning experience. While designing for learning , we should be critical in thinking about what the learner's needs are, how best to engage ALL our learners and how best to simplify information to help them make meaning of the learning experience and build expertise.

istockphoto.com

In the process of learning design, 'context' is key and the learners are at the centre of everything that we design.