Kyle’s E-Learning Blog

After taking the VARK test, here are my results:

Your scores were:

• Visual: 4
• Aural: 5
• Read/Write: 6
• Kinesthetic: 6

You have a multimodal (VARK) learning preference.

For the most part, I strongly agree with my results. With each activity, I may have a completely different learning preference. For me, each learning style serves its own purpose. I see no reason to be constrained to only 1 or 2 learning styles. I think that if I were to do this, I would just be limiting yourself. At the same time, I noticed that for most of the questions on the questionaire, I only had a single preference. The Multimodal Study Strategies on VARK’s website states:

We are noticing some differences among those who are multimodal especially those who have chosen fewer than 20 options and those who have chosen more. If you have chosen fewer than 20 of the options in the questionnaire you may prefer to see your highest score as your main preference - almost like a single preference. You are probably more decisive than those who have chosen 20+ options.

While I chose exactly 21 options, I think I still fit under this description. I believe that I am a very decisive person. For most of the questions on the questionaire, I selected a single option. On one or two questions, I selected all 4 options, which is probably why my score is greater than 20.

With that all being said, I don’t believe that I am as strong at read/write learning as VARK said I am. I would have thought that this would be my lowest score. While I do often learn from reading and writing, I believe (at least most of the time) that I learn better with the other learning styles. I find that reading (especially something lengthy) can turn something that I find interesting into tedious, tiresome, and even boring chore. I tend to lose interest over time, even if it’s a subject that I find interesting. When I get bored and tired, I tend to lose my comprehension abilities. For this reason, I don’t particularly like to read lengthy texts or novels. Even if I like the storyline, I just get to a point where I feel like I am wasting away too much time, and the enjoyment of reading suddenly turns into an overwhelming feeling of nausea. Reading to me can just can feel so lonely, aggravating, and isolating sometimes, and those are the type of feelings that can drive me crazy. I’ve been trying for years to explain my feelings about reading, but I rarely get someone to agree with me, or let alone respect my opinion. Watching TV for a long period of time, or even watching a 3 hour movie gives me the same feelings. I feel that I constantly need to interact with people, whether it is online, or in real life. Reading is just too one-dimensional for me.

After taking the multiple intelligences test checklist, here are my results.

Rank - Score - Intelligence

1st - 16 - Music
2nd - 14 - Self
3rd - 14 - Nature
4th - 13 - Group
5th - 13 - Math
6th - 12 - Word
7th - 12 - Body
8th - 10 - Picture

I wasn’t too surprised about how my intelligences scores turned out. It reflects me pretty well for the most part. I don’t really have to much to say here.

If I were developing xhtml/css website for a college course, the number one thing that I would focus on is the interaction between the students and the teacher. The text Embracing e-Learning (pdf) states:

Whereas print is one way, online is two way. Users can take information out, but they can also put it in. This makes online much more like conversation where many can contribute.

As I mentioned earlier, I crave a social environment. I believe a social environment is the basis of learning and obtaining knew knowledge. When everyone is able to share what they know, every obtains a greater understanding of the subject.

To accomplish this social environment, I would have a live (flash or ajax) chat system where students and teachers can have public discussions, private chat systems, where users and teachers can have personal discussion, and a personal message area and public forum where users can ask questions and give feedback, even if the nobody is physically available. If I had the time and resources, I would also include a live webcam video system, and a live audio chat system. Video and live audio chat can get information across faster than typing. If these social features are not well implemented, it can really hurt the e-Learning experience. These features have to be implemented in a way that is convenient and easy to use, or students simply won’t use them. I believe the poor implementation of these social features is why a lot of e-Learning courses fail. Students need to interact.

On this online course, I would also provide course materials that are “VARK” compatible. Benefits of Online Learning (pdf) by Blackboard Inc. states that an advantage to online learning is is the ability to accomodate to different learning styles.

An instructor can also present these materials in many formats to accommodate different types of learning styles. For example, if an instructor puts both lecture notes and slides online, both visual and auditory learners benefit. Students who prefer to focus on “listening” and “watching” during lecture do not have to worry that they are missing important concepts while scrambling to take copious notes. They can focus on understanding the material and concepts as they are presented. Students with attention difficulties or those who get overwhelmed by organizational tasks also benefit, because materials provided show how the instructor has grouped and prepared materials in the handouts, and indicate what items are most important. (Benefits of Online Learning)

The more options the learner has, the better. As I found out from the VARK test, most people have strong and weak learning styles that reflect their multiple intelligences. Also, many people (including myself) may prefer a different learning style depending on the situation and subject matter.

To conform to VARK, I would provide lecture notes online, powerpoint slides, visuals (such as charts and graphs) that represent the subject matter, online quizzes and flash cards, practical examples, activities, and even a recorded video of a professor giving the lecture.

I believe I have always been in touch with the way I learn. I tend to analyze myself from a psychological perspective, so I already knew what learning styles are best for me. I have realized that I prefer to learn differently depending on the subject. Most of my intelligences are nearly at the same level, and the learning style I choose just comes down to which one would suit me better for the particular situation.

P.S.
Sorry this is a couple hours late, but I guess I had a lot to say this time. I have been working on this on and off the past couple days, and I had no idea how much I was going to write! I guess sometimes you feel the need to ramble on and on. :)

After watching the videos of various Second Life campuses, I was initially excited to try it out. I haven’t had any online courses in the past, but from what I understand about them, a Second Life environment does seem like a better way to learn. The 3D virtual world with the ability to learn is something that makes a lot of sense to me. It really seems like a different, fun way to learn. The creators of these campuses really seem to have put a lot of effort and creativity into them.

While I thought the concepts were excellent, I had problems finding and exploring school campuses. The campuses I was able to visit didn’t really have anything going on. There were a few other people exploring, but I didn’t really see any learning going on. I noticed some classes start at specific times, and I have not been able to attend any of them. I plan to go back to some of these campuses while so classes are going on. Hopefully I will be able to see what this is all about.

Also, even though this doesn’t really have to do anything with learning, I have been a bit disappointed on the slow, and somewhat glitchy graphics performance of this game. While these problems shouldn’t effect my ability to interact and learn within second life, it does take away from the Second Life experience. The poor graphic performance does give me a somewhat negative opinion about the game itself. I have a high end gaming card (NVidia Geforce 7900 GT), and there is no reason for this sub-par experience. Is this graphic performance normal? Is everyone else experiencing the same thing that I am?

I misread section 2 for this week. I did a whole post on my site idea. Oops.

Anyways, moving on, here is my idea for my Cognitivism Multimedia Exercise:

I could create a website that illustrates how people do better if you are given multiple forms of the same information (i.e. video and text). The user would first read the given text, and take a quiz about what they just read. After the user takes the quiz, they will watch a video that demonstrates everything they just read. After reading the text and watching the video, the user will take another quiz. The new quiz will have different questions, but have the same degree of difficulty as the previous quiz. A database would store the results for each user that takes the quizzes. On the website, there will be graphs that show how much the students’ score improved after watching both the video and text. There can be separate and/or combined graphs also that illustrates any statistical differences depending on the user age and gender.

The purpose of this project would be to back up the cognitivism theory. As I stated previously:

“variability in encoding (learning material in different ways, e.g. video and text) produces more durable long-term retention, even though it is a more effortful (and generally less enjoyable) way to learn” (source).

I hope what I just said makes sense to everyone. It makes sense to me. Speaking of cognitivism, maybe I should have described my idea in pictures too :)

Sources used for a better understanding of cognitivism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitivism_(psychology)
http://www.formatex.org/micte2005/312.pdf

Well, I have been messing around in second life the last couple weeks, and the experience has been quite interesting to say the least. I initially referred a friend, and started out with $500 linden dollars. The first thing I did was customize and pimp up my avatar at “The Freebie Warehouse”.

After I finished pimping up my avatar, I noticed an abundance of casinos. Guess what I did next?  Yes, that’s right, I gambled my $500 linden dollars (somewhere around $2 USD).  I started off playing some slots,  and wasn’t doing to well.  In fear of losing all my money on the slot machines, I then moved to the roulette table. In roulette, I was doing even worse, so I want back to slot machines. I then bet most of my money on 1 spin, and got lucky. I now had about $5000 linden dollars. I then decided to go to sleep since it was about 4 AM.

The next day, I returned to the casinos. How did it turn out? Yes, you guessed it. I lost everything.

Well that is pretty much my how my “Second Life” is at the moment.  Hopefully I will figure out how to get that money back.  More to come…..

For an e-learning site idea, I was thinking about taking a social learning approach that fits within the definition of cogntivism. My idea is to provide cognitive flexibility by having a mix between video or screencast lectures from a real professor (live or prerecorded), text based information pertaining to the lecture, quizzes, and the possibility of incorporating other videos that relate to the subject matter. In A Cognitive Perspective for Designing Multimedia Learning Environments, John Eklund and Raymond Woo states that “examining a concept from more than one perspective increases comprehension of the concept itself and also the ability to transfer that understanding to other domains”. If the instructor is providing a live video feed via the web, the students will be able to interact with a simple chat system (i.e. AJAX or Flash). If the class wanted to be able to all communicate via voice or webcam, the class could also communicate with something like Skype (Incorporating a VOIP system of my own would be trivial to say the least). If anyone knows of a free (preferably open source) web based voice conferencing client/server software, please let me know, as this would be a better, more integrated solution.

For the students that prefer learning with flash cards, notes, and quizzes, I was thinking about incorporating a class editable flash card system, class editable notes, and class editable practice quizzes using a combination of AJAX and CSS for presentation. The system would be similar to Quizlet (I happened to stumble across this excellent site when searching Google for something similar to my idea). Again, giving the students multiple ways to learn will greatly increase their retention of information. I also believe that the ability to share notes and practice quizzes among peers will help a lot of students. Some students have trouble taking good notes and creating useful study materials, and others just don’t have the time or don’t want to go through the trouble of creating flashcards to study. The ability of sharing notes and quizzes will only be to the students’ benefit.

The last feature of this site I was looking to include is a simple personal and community messaging system. The users will be able to exchange private messages and files to one or more peers, and also have the ability to post a message on the community forum.

While this idea may sound complicated to some, I believe it may be less complicated than you may think. I am planning to utilize as many free DHTML and AJAX scripts as possible, as creating everything from scratch would be way too much for me to handle. For the chat system, I would probably use something like YShout. For the class editable notes, I would probably use something like Easy AJAX inline text edit 2.0. For the login system, I will probably reuse a php script that I have already created. And finally, unless I find a useful existing script, I will probably create the messaging, flashcards, and quizzing system myself.

Also, if you are interested in creating an e-learning site based on the cognitivism theory, don’t forget to check out A Cognitive Perspective for Designing Multimedia Learning Environments (pdf). While this article’s primary subject matter seems to relate to hypermedia, it still provides scholarly explanations of several cognitive theories and their relation to the Multimedia field.

I have studied several of the mentioned learning theories last quarter in my psychology class, and I found the subject rather interesting. Hopefully having a bit of knowledge about the subject will help me with my response.

If you would base your classroom activities along the behaviorism philosophy, you could reward the student strictly based on their behavior alone. You would not analyze the mental state of the student. For an example, if you had a kindergarden class, you can offer the students a reward when the desired behavior is reached. This can be something like giving the student a star every time they participate and answer a question correctly. If you wanted to apply the concept of behaviorism to older students, you could reward the student with something such ‘bonus points’ to their grade if they are able to answer a given question.

I found the cognitivism definition a little bit hard to understand, but I will do my best to provide my thoughts. I used this article from the Encyclopedia of Education in attempt to better understand the subject.

For cognitive style learning environment, it is important to assess and understand how a person thinks, and how they learn. Everyone has a different background and learning experience, so it is important to take account for people’s differences. For a successful cognitive learning environment, you may have to adjust your teaching style (such as teaching a lesson multiple ways) to benefit the students who may learn differently. The Encyclopedia of education states, “variability in encoding (learning material in different ways, e.g. video and text) produces more durable long-term retention, even though it is a more effortful (and generally less enjoyable) way to learn” (source).

The constructivism learning theory states that “individuals construct new knowledge through their experiences” (source). I tend to agree with this theory more than the behaviorism and cognitivism theory. I tend to like it when an instructor lets me know the basics/where to start, and let me discover things myself from there. This learning theory is commonly used between teachers and students in my field. A constructivist learning environment relies on the collaboration between students and teachers. When it comes to design, xhtml, javascript, or anything else, I often find myself looking back to teachers and other students to get feedback and receive help to solve problems and make sure I am heading in the right direction.

Situated learning seems much like constructivism to me. Again, it seems that the theory is based around learning socially from and along with your peers. If a instructor wanted to create a class with a situated learning model, they may let students talk freely, collaborate, share notes, and ask each other questions after a lesson. From what I understand, it seems like situated learning is one of those things that just happens by itself. Online forums and social networks seem to be sources where situated learning occurs (someone correct me if I am wrong).

Connectivism is defined as “A Learning Theory for the Digital Age” (source). Connectivism is a learning theory that has only come about in the past few years. It states that much of our knowledge becomes outdated and diminishes in much quicker than before; sometimes within a month or a years time. Connectivism is the learning theory used in conjunction with elearning. Providing classroom knowledge through a collaborative wiki and blogs, or sharing a collection of valuable resources pertaining to the subject of the class.