- K: What I already KNOW about this week’s topic.
This week’s topic was something that was completely new to me – while I vaguely understood that teachers also had to practice ‘customer service’ and focus on giving their customers (i.e. their students) what they wanted, I never knew about the practice of Engaged Learning, and that it was a formalised set of rules/procedures on how to provide that form of ‘customer service’ to students, in terms of “student-centred learning”. I’m glad for this week’s lesson, as it definitely gave me something new to think about and reflect on.
- W: What I WANT TO LEARN.
I want to learn about – you guessed it – Engaged Learning, as it’s a topic that I sorely need to gain a greater sense of awareness about. Specifically, I want to know how to better translate the methodologies of engaged learning into lessons that are relevant, entertaining and educational for students.
- L: What I LEARNED this week.
I learnt that Engaged Learning, together with the use of ICT, possess opportunities for providing: - Collaboration, where users are able to interact with one another,
- Authentic contexts/environment, where users are situated within real-life examples in their learning journey,
- Scaffolding, where users are given adequate support structures to make meaning of what they are learning
- Evaluation (real, meaningful, formative), where users have a chance to reflect upon what they have learnt in order to internalise their newfound knowledge.
- Q: What QUESTIONS I still have.
There is much theory behind ‘Engaged Learning’, and it seems very workable. I do not doubt its effectiveness, but one question I have is: will ‘Engaged Learning’ be able to meet the needs of all students in all schools? What if, for example, we have a segment of the student population that is still IT-illiterate? What happens then? I pose this question to my fellow classmates in order to also stimulate some discussion on the topic.
In order for these four factors to work, we must also recognise the roles of: the student, the teacher and ICT in this process.
