Session 4 - Guided Design / Casada, Wilson

What are your initial reactions to this theory/model?

• When I read these articles on guided design / team learning, it sounded a lot like my learning style. I am a blend of both intrapersonal and interpersonal learning style. I can work well by myself, but I also like working in groups. I like the idea of gathering relevant information / knowledge, problem-solving activities performed by a group, periodic guiding feedback from a teacher, and relevant real world problems to solve. We used these traits in the software design field I worked in before.

What are barriers to its use?

• One barrier that I can think of is students with an intrapersonal learning style. These students are strong willed and work best alone. The ones I have seen seem to pride themselves on being independent and original, and they tend to stand out from the class without even trying. They seem to do best in self paced instruction, individualized projects, and working alone.
• The research articles also talks about how this guided design theory does not work well with “non-contextual critical-thinking skills” like those used in learning a foreign language.
• Another issue that has to be considered is the dynamics that each team member brings. A team with too many strong personalities may cause the team to flounder, due to personal achievement goals, group disagreements, and infighting. That sure sounds like our government in Washington, DC.

Would you attempt to use this theory/model with the students you are currently teaching or hope to teach in the future? Why or why not? Could elements of the theory/model be modified so that it would work with your current/future students?

• I have used this style with my classroom already. It works well with social studies and science content areas. I am still looking at how to implement it into Math. It does not seem to work well with language arts, due to its limited problem solving needs. I found its success depends on how the teams/groups are organized. If you place too many strong willed students on the same team, they just end up arguing about who’s idea should be use.

Since we are taking learning theories/models that were not necessarily created with the Web in mind and turning them into Web modules, what Web-based tools or resources could be leveraged to carry out this learning theory/model online?

• I believe the idea of guided design / team learning can be implemented in web modules, but there are some issues to overcome. As (Wilson, 2004) stated in their research article,  “learning in teams in and outside the academic classroom is fraught with “monster” implications … Free Riding, uneven preparation, sporadic attendance, plagiarism, …” This brings up the issue of outside classroom group learning. I have wondered if outside classroom group learning is really group learning, or just individual learning, with a group-learning label put on it. I feel group learning does create a challenge, as to assessing how much each team member has contributed and learned. With out individual post-group learning assessments, how does the teacher truly know that each team member really learned and understood the materials. A sink or swim group/team grading system is a poor grading approach. It seems to be more of a motivational method, than a good grading system.