session 3 reflections...

during the 3rd session, we were introduced to the different pedagogical approaches. i believe that balancing theory and practice in this area happens over time & comes with experience. well, it was interesting that the jigsaw method was used to conduct the lesson and on further discussion with another fellow coursemate, i realized that my math tutor used a similar approach to conduct one of his tutorial sessions! this is a refreshing change and i would consider bringing this into future classroom lessons with my students.

with the exception of game-based learning, i have been exposed to the rest of the pedagogical approaches. project-based learning was pretty common in college & varsity days with the introduction of interdisciplinary project work which required me to work in a group. personally it was beneficial to my learning experience as it allowed me to exchange ideas with fellow groupmates and gain more knowledge from them. in addition, doing term papers & weekly laboratory reports required individual research on the theories underlying the reactions & phenomena behind the issues addressed. personally i was enriched from the experience of looking up resources on my own and trying to make sense of the experiments/issues with whatever i had found. resource-based learning was pretty common back in secondary school and consolidating all the information gathered from various resources from the library into a graphic organizer/dichotomous map helped in summarizing the topic researched on. case-based learning was also common on those occasions where case studies were used by lecturers/tutors to bring across a learning point, and i thought having those real-life examples helped in bringing the topic closer to home.

the experience from the session hit home the fact that pedagogical approaches aren't mutually exclusive from each other. in fact, resource-based learning kind of encompasses the rest of the approaches since games CAN be a resource, same thing for projects (as in archived or ongoing ones) & real life cases. besides, since inquiry-based learning would also require students to seek information for themselves, this aspect is covered as well. in some ways the pedagogical approaches are interrelated with one another, in the sense that one approach contains elements of another.

in these approaches, ICT can double up as a resource/tool (e.g. youtube videos, search engines) for students to gather information from, on top of acting as a channel of communication with another party. at the same time, it can also be used in consolidating data that has been gathered, with mindmeister as a very helpful example. building on the aspect of communication, ICT can thus be used for exchanging information, opinions & collective discussions. this would be especially useful in collaborative learning since it involves more than 1 person. not to belittle these pedagogical approaches in self-directed learning; but as mentioned in my previous entry, one would benefit more from collective input from others than just researching alone.