Massive Choices and Learning Theory.

One of the most interesting courses I’ve ever taken in my higher education career was an Educational Psychology course at Indiana University. Professor Michael E J Orme structured the course in a way that individual students had the opportunity to design a personal learning experience within the broad parameters of the course. The Syllabus was massive with many, many options and activities selected. The course also had a series of MicroTeaching sessions with highly structured feedback.  Students could select activities and experiences from a wide range of optional pathways in the course: relevant literature readings, individual papers, group projects and group papers, and activities self designed by a student. Students could also receive points to be camera operators in the MicroTeaching sessions.There were a variety of strategies for navigating through the course. A points system allowed a student to compile a specific score and actually determine a final grade based upon the points accumulated. 

Many students were very energized by this opportunity to basically custom design and personalize their own course. However, some students were actually very intimidated by the process. Often in conventionally taught courses, there is a body of information to acquire within fairly narrow parameters: a student attends the lecture internalizes material demonstrates learning via quizzes, tests, and papers. In Mike Orme’s personalized class, you had to make choices from a wide variety of potential activities, exercises, and experiences and gather points to demonstrate your learning. This personalized approach presented you with multiple pathways and a tremendous amount of content from which to build your course. 

My experience with E-Learning and Digital Culture is very similar, in that, I am  having to pick from a wide variety of content and select things that are most interesting were more relevant to me. 42,000 students in the course and 4,820 students in the FaceBook social network are creating massive amounts of content.

Incredible challenge, a tremendous opportunity to learn, a global experience,  and incredible fun…….