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UNIT
3: The Role of Relevancy in an Online Course
Unit Overview
This unit addresses the issue
of relevancy, which is central to online curriculum design and
course content selection.
Unit Objectives
At the end of this unit, the student will be able to
· Develop a set of questions for use in deciding how a course
can be relevant to a student's career, personal, or academic goals;
· Develop a set of guidelines for use in helping the student make
connections between course content and the ultimate career, personal,
and academic goals he or she may have.
Establishing
Relevancy
Students who do not immediately perceive how and why the course
content is relevant to their career, academic, or personal lives
will become disinterested, bored, even angry. But, what
masks itself as a quite justifiable and self-righteous anger ("I
paid for this! It's not getting me anywhere!" or "What does this
have to do with anything? This is wasting my time!") is,
upon deeper analysis, a consequence of the deliberate disorganization
of an individual's cognitive processes. When something seems
"irrelevant" or "meaningless" it is precisely so because the learner
has no way to integrate the activity or the cognitive content
into his or her existing mental scheme. The confusion that
ensues is unpleasant, particularly to an adult learner, because
he or she is likely to attach negative narratives to the experience
of being "lost."
The role of the instructor (as facilitator and mentor) must be
to be able to contextualize the course content and required activities,
and to relate them to already mastered work or tasks. Needless
to say, this may require patience. More to the point, it
requires the instructor to be able to ask appropriate questions
in order to find a way to guide the student to making the connections
needed to perform well and to demonstrate mastery of the learning
objectives.
These pedagogical approaches are supported by philosophers and
cognitive specialists who point to a "connectionist" model of
cognition, which suggests that cognitive awareness, and thus meaning,
are formed when connections are forged from one region of the
brain to another. Symbolic logic has meaning only insofar
as there are sets of seemingly unrelated meaning associated with
it. In other words, the connectionist model posits that
symbols in and of themselves are not enough to explain cognition.
There must be other associations, which lead to the ability to
posit more complex and real-life applications, such as cause-effect
relations, historical sequences, identities, etc. These ideas
are used in developing the mathematical models used in artificial
intelligence computer programs, as well as in decision trees and
probabilities (as applied to human behavior).
Making connections
* to additional material and related readings
The student may understand the material, but the comprehension
may be incomplete, or there may be an inability to apply it or
demonstrate a working knowledge. If the facilitator can
guide the student to additional readings or material (even if
it is anecdotal, or in the form of an example from the instructor's
own experience), the student will have a more comprehensive knowledge.
* to current events
Applying concepts to current
events and/or recent discoveries, writings, or activities helps
establish the applicability of the course content to the larger,
outside world. On a fundamental level, the student is being
guided in the practice of "making sense" of the world, and is
being presented alternative strategies for ordering, or making
meaning out of one's existence.
* to life experiences
If the facilitator is able to help students make connections so
that the student can link life experiences to either the course
content or the core
concepts under discussion,
then learning will take place through what B. F. Skinner termed
"operant conditioning." In this case, the student will experience
a reinforcement of both previously held knowledge (which includes
beliefs and values), and of the knowledge being presented in the
course. Once reinforced, the knowledge can be built upon,
and the facilitator can help the student in next-level cognitive
skills such as differentiation and discrimination. Assessment
exercises should replicate operant conditioning so that the taking
of practice tests, the writing of essays and journals, and the
preparation of final exams or research papers will further reinforce
concepts and reasoning skills.
Theoretical Underpinnings:
Green, Christopher D.
(1998) Are Connectionist Models Theories of Cognition?. http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/documents/disk0/00/00/02/01/
accessed August 1, 2001
Skinner, B. F. (1976) About
Behaviorism. NY: Random House.
Skinner, B. F. and C. B. Ferster (1957) Schedules
of Reinforcement. Acton,
MA: Copley.
Skinner, B. F. (1953) Science
and Human Behavior. NY: Free
Press.
Thomas, L. and Harri-Augstein, S. (1985). Self-organised
learning. London: Routledge.
Wilson, Elizabeth A. (1998) Neural
Geographies. London: Routledge.
Applied to online instruction
--
http://hagar.up.ac.za/catts/learner/1999/kgarimetsa_rj/eel880/exaprjct/pedagog.htm
http://portfolios.valdosta.edu/tcdowdy/std7.htm
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