The general subject of this Project 1 class for 3rd year students is knowledge and learning. Our goal is to focus on what it means to learn and the different ways people (and animals) learn things. Students will research about the history of learning theories over time. Once they understand the theories behind how people learn, students will critically evaluate assorted learning materials to examine how effective those materials are for achieving the stated learning goal. In the final stage, students will design their own learning materials/activities and explain how those materials reflect the appropriate learning theory for the stated goal.
Over the semester, I want students to expand their thinking on the topics below:
- What is knowledge?
- Are there different kinds of knowledge?
- What does it mean to know something?
- What is learning?
- What does different kinds of learning are there?
- What are different ways we learn?
- What is the difference between understanding and remembering?
- How can we facilitate learning?
To get the ball rolling, we started with a series of discussion questions:
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The purpose of these questions was to activate students’ schema on this overall topic and have them vocalize their thoughts on things we often have an intuitive understanding of, but rarely enunciate vocally.
In Week 1, I showed them how a Skinner Box works, and then we had a contest on who could perform the best in a “virtual skinner box”. The point of this exercise was to show students how they can learn without being taught. While most students scored between 7 and 9 in 60 seconds of play, the winner had 11!
In the second week of class, we spent the entire period talking about Knowledge and Knowing and how, because “you don’t know what you don’t know,” it can be difficult to be aware of possibilities and learning opportunities.
We talked about the philosophical description of knowledge as a justified true belief:
- Justification: there must be evidence or something that supports the belief.
- Truth: the belief must be true.
- Belief: the individual must actually believe it is true.
This is important because people can display knowledge/have the correct answer for the wrong reasons. While the philosophical nature of these topics can be difficult to grasp, concrete examples were used to illustrate what we were talking about.
For example, here is a True or False statement:
Water boils at 90 degrees C.
What do you think? Is the above true or false? What is your surety level? Are you 100% sure of your answer? Click here if you want to check if you are right or not.
At the end of class, students were assigned to look into one of two topics: people who believe the earth is flat or people who believe the moon landings of Apollo are a hoax. They reported on the beliefs of these people and the stated justifications for those beliefs.
I look forward to more exploration as the semester continues.