All About The Andragogy: May 2016

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Preparing for Instruction 5: Experiential Learning

School is something that you learn- reading and writing.

Education is what you learn from the family,

from the environment, from the community.

-Bunker Roy

      Merriam and Bierema (2014) state, "At the heart of adult learning is engaging in, reflecting upon, and making meaning of our experiences...an adult's life experiences generate learning as well as act as resources for learning (p.104). I found this TED talk on building a college in India around experiential learning incredibly fascinating and innovative. I major component of teaching Health Care Aides is to tap into their prior life experiences and to connect it to the curriculum. I find some of the most compassionate and skilled students are those who have had children, traveled the world and had an opportunity to learn outside of an educational institution. These are the students who are easiest to teach, as when you talk about signs and symptoms of infection, for example, they have seen their children with a fever or they have had an infection themselves.


      This TED talk is another motivator for me to always remember to acknowledge the adult learner's prior experience and to continue to include connections of clinical practice to possible life experiences. Bunker Roy, also inspires me to utilize the mature students in my classes as leaders and “Elder” figures to the younger students, as life experience and generation is usually different among my Health Care Aide cohort. I would like to motivate my students to continue to pass on their knowledge to others upon graduation, just as some of the African grandmothers in the Barefoot College are passing on their knowledge in their communities.

References

Merriam, S. B. & Bierema, L. L. (2014). Adult learning. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.

Roy, B. (Writer). (2011, July). Learning From a Barefoot Movement [Video file]. Retrieved May, 2016, from https://www.ted.com/talks/bunker_roy?language=en

Please note that this blog in its entirety is licensed under creative commons,
please see details below:

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
CC BY-NC-SA
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
View License Deed | View Legal Code

Preparing for Instruction 4- Cognitive Science for Learning-Working Memory

“What we process, we learn.

If we aren’t processing life,

we aren’t living it…

live life”

-Dr. Doolittle

Working memory is found in the neocortex of the brain and is where information is processed. “Working memory can move between sensory memory for more information and long-term memory where information can be retrieved to help form a new memory” (Merriam & Bierema, 2014). “Working memory is limited in capacity, limited in duration and limited in focus. It allows us to remember about four things at a time for about 10-20 seconds unless we do something with it. Unless we process it, apply it to something, talk about it or someone asks about it” (Doolittle, 2013). I really like the examples Dr.Doolittle uses in his TED talk on working memory. He uses the examples of “walking into a room and forgetting what you went in there for and having to walk back out to remember” (Doolittle, 2013). Doolittle provides a few strategies in his TED talk, on how to help process working memory into long-term memory. He recommends, “ repeating it, thinking about it, writing it down, practicing it, reviewing notes, making connections, Imagery, organizing it, and getting support”(Doolittle,2013). Similarly, Foos & Clark (as cited in Merriam & Bierema, 2014) suggest, “Rehearsing information or trying to form a mental image or associating information with prior information…” (p.174).

I really believe in the use of imagery in teaching. I find that students are more engaged when I use storytelling, pictures, cartoons and mapping in my PowerPoint and lecture presentations. I feel this TED talk will improve my instruction as it has peaked my interest in looking up ways to help my students transfer working memory into long-term memory. I hope in my next class to use different association techniques, such as acronyms and mnemonics to assist my students in learning. I would like to also use podcasts, humor, and TED talks to get my students more engaged and interested. If there is time at the end of a class, I could pair students up with each other to go over key points that were taught that day.

References

Doolittle, P. (Writer). (2013). How your "working memory" makes sense of the world [Motion picture on TEDlive]. USA: TEDGlobal.