STUDENT CENTRED LEARNING AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH
Dr.S.Sekar, Educational consultant & Academic Researcher
Dr.S.Sekar, Educational consultant & Academic Researcher
PART 2
EXPLORING LEARNING PROCESSES:
EXPLORING LEARNING PROCESSES:
One of the most important factors that predetermines students success in learning is confidence. We need to give our students every chance to develop this confidence, and one of the best ways of us helping them to do this is to assist them to gain greater ownership of, and control over, the process they apply during their learning:
1. Help students to want to learn.
They may need to be helped to increase their motivation by showing them the benefits they will gain from the achievement of their intended learning outcomes. When possible, enhance their motivation by making learning fun, interesting and rewarding. Dont mistake lack of confidence for lack of motivation.
2. Needing to learn something can be almost as productive as wanting to learn it. When students know why something will be useful to them, even if they find it difficult, they are more likely to maintain their effors till they have succeeded.
3. Provide students with learning by doing opportunities. Most learning happens when students practise things, have a go, and learn by making mistakes and finding out why. Care needs to be taken to ensure that learning by doing is focused on practising useful, important things, and not just anything to keep students bysy.
4. Look for ways of giving students as much feedback as is reasonably possible. Students need to find out how their learning is actually going . Feedback from teachers is very useful, but teachers can also facilitate students getting feedback from each other, and from various kinds of learning resource materials. It follows too that feedback must be timely for it to be of optimum use to students.
5. Help students to set out to make sense of what they are learning. It is of little value learning things by rote, or becoming able to do things without knowing why or how. Getting students to think about how their learning is happening is one step towards helping them to develop a sense of ownership of their progress. Learning is not just a matter of storing up further knowledge: it is about being able to apply what has been learned, not just to familiar situations but also to new contexts.
6. Provide students with cues about how they are expected to learn from the ways in which we teach them. If we simply concentrate on supplying them with information, they are likely simply to try to store this. If we structure our teaching so that they are practising, applying, extending, comparing, contrasting, evaluating, and engaging in other higher-level processes, they are likely to see these processes as central to the ways they should be using for their learning.
7. Use assessment to drive learning productively. Students are often quite strategic in structuring their learning to be able to do the best they can in the contexts in which their learning is to be assessed. Assessment formats and instruments can be used to help students to structure their learning effectively, as well as to give them appropriate timescales within which to organize their learning.
8. Encourage students to learn from each other. While much can be learned by students working on their own, with handouts, books and learning resource materials, they can also learn a great deal by talking to each other , and attempting tasks and activities jointly.
1. Help students to want to learn.
They may need to be helped to increase their motivation by showing them the benefits they will gain from the achievement of their intended learning outcomes. When possible, enhance their motivation by making learning fun, interesting and rewarding. Dont mistake lack of confidence for lack of motivation.
2. Needing to learn something can be almost as productive as wanting to learn it. When students know why something will be useful to them, even if they find it difficult, they are more likely to maintain their effors till they have succeeded.
3. Provide students with learning by doing opportunities. Most learning happens when students practise things, have a go, and learn by making mistakes and finding out why. Care needs to be taken to ensure that learning by doing is focused on practising useful, important things, and not just anything to keep students bysy.
4. Look for ways of giving students as much feedback as is reasonably possible. Students need to find out how their learning is actually going . Feedback from teachers is very useful, but teachers can also facilitate students getting feedback from each other, and from various kinds of learning resource materials. It follows too that feedback must be timely for it to be of optimum use to students.
5. Help students to set out to make sense of what they are learning. It is of little value learning things by rote, or becoming able to do things without knowing why or how. Getting students to think about how their learning is happening is one step towards helping them to develop a sense of ownership of their progress. Learning is not just a matter of storing up further knowledge: it is about being able to apply what has been learned, not just to familiar situations but also to new contexts.
6. Provide students with cues about how they are expected to learn from the ways in which we teach them. If we simply concentrate on supplying them with information, they are likely simply to try to store this. If we structure our teaching so that they are practising, applying, extending, comparing, contrasting, evaluating, and engaging in other higher-level processes, they are likely to see these processes as central to the ways they should be using for their learning.
7. Use assessment to drive learning productively. Students are often quite strategic in structuring their learning to be able to do the best they can in the contexts in which their learning is to be assessed. Assessment formats and instruments can be used to help students to structure their learning effectively, as well as to give them appropriate timescales within which to organize their learning.
8. Encourage students to learn from each other. While much can be learned by students working on their own, with handouts, books and learning resource materials, they can also learn a great deal by talking to each other , and attempting tasks and activities jointly.
No comments:
Post a Comment