I’ve heard the term “Student-centered Learning” being mentioned a few times during the three-day symposium. I’ve a better appreciation what the phrase means, now that I read articles like these:

• Student-centred learning: What does it mean for students and lecturers? (n.d.). . Retrieved June 23, 2009, from www.aishe.org/readings/2005-1/oneill-mcmahon-Tues_19th_Oct_SCL.html
• Student-centred learning – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). . Retrieved June 23, 2009, from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student-centered_learning

Some thoughts about the idea of “Student-centered learning”, from my brief encounter with PBL.

WHAT ABOUT ‘SLOWER’ STUDENTS?
What if an individual student was slower at absorbing the concepts? I asked if there were remedial sessions (for slower students).

Answer was no.

Almost immediately, I realised why: Inherent in PBL is that the onus is on student to buck up. Which also means PBL requires students to have a certain level of maturity and motivation.

STUDENTS CANNOT AFFORD TO DISENGAGE THEMSELVES
In PBL, you’re made to work harder as a student. Each student would get to present at some point.

I realised if I didn’t force myself to stay engaged (no matter how disinterested I was in the engineering problem) I would not be able to explain when asked to.

In a real class, facilitators would observe students who seem to lag and disengage from the discussion. They can tell who might have problems following the class, from their presentations and responses (or lack of).

STUDENT-LED LEARNING
I think I understand better what is meant by “student-led” learning.

In a sense, the students lead in terms of responses, not necessarily answers. Each team would share their interpretation and rationale. Peers would question/ challenge their peers.

The facilitator said they found student discussions more forthcoming with this approach. I’m not surprised. I think students generally don’t want to challenge the teacher whereas the PBL approach creates a more level playing field, so to speak.

The presentation format made the student get used to ideas being challenged. So they are forced to think through before proposing further answers.

I think effective students are honest about what they don’t know.

And who would take it upon themselves to reduce that knowledge gap (as opposed to asking teachers to give them the required information).

ONUS IS ON STUDENT TO LEARN
I admitted to the facilitator that I was perhaps hindered by my mental model of what “education” should be. I was expecting to be told what the objective was (e.g. “Linear Programming”) and would be happy to be told what it was and how to apply it.

At one point, I wanted to be told what to do.

I wanted to be told how to work on the problem, get on with it, and arrive at a “correct answer”. That was how I was schooled for the most part of my student life.

But I realised while that approach was efficient from the “transfer of information” view point, the retention of information was definitely not as long-lasting as the PBL approach.

SUPPORT STRUCTURES
Of course, that does not mean students are left to their own devices. There are facilitators, and there are facilitators who go the extra mile.

One RP academic staff told me his approach was to identify the weaker students (from the tests and various assessments). He would speak to them and he would know if they were really lost. Then he would offer to give more pointers to the students on what to look up and/ or explain the concepts in greater detail.

But again, he admitted the final responsibility was on the student to want to learn.

***

I concluded that for PBL to show results, you really need students who have a certain level of maturity and motivation.

PBL will not motivate the un-motivated.

However, if my experience with the mock PBL lession is anything to go by, PBL is a very effective for students whose process of deriving understanding is best served through an internalisation, ‘experiential’ and iterative process.

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Enuff said.

[For a larger view of the video, click here]

The creator of the video was inspired by this one.

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A few weeks ago, Aaron emailed me an invite. I took it up but only after he followed up by speaking to me face to face (I’ve a point to make about this, at the end of the post).

WHAT THE VARK?
Aardvark works like this: You send a question and it finds someone who can answer. Or it will send you questions that you’ve told Aardvark you’d like to try answering.

The service isn’t an Expert System. It doesn’t answer your question but would try to find another member in its network who might be able to.

Signing up was a breeze. The set-up was systematic and intuitive.

A 20-second demo was enough to get one started (to the librarians out there, this is not to say 20 seconds was enough to educate potential librarians on the art of questioning and the Reference Interview… I wish it were that easy too!)

Basically, I specify the type of questions/ topics I’m most comfortable answering.

Then I tell Aardvark whether I’d like to talk to Aardvark via email or chat, or both (by “talk”, it means how I wish Aardvark to send questions for me to answer, and how I’d like to send my own questions to Aardvark).

At the Aardvark dashboard, I can access the questions I’ve asked and also those I’ve answered. So far, my questions have not been answered. I’ve a choice whether to resubmit

It’s unclear to me how continuous and proactive is Aardvark in attempting to match my questions with people who might be able to answer. Or how questions are queued and given priority.

Seems that there’s a certain time frame that Aardvark will attempt the match, after which my question would be put on my History page. I have the option of resubmitting. In that sense, I guess my question is considered “closed”. Aardvark might want to provide a “Remove my question” option there.

AARDVARK IN ACTION
When I log in to my Gmail account, I can see Aardvark as one of my contact.

To interact with Aardvark, I send a text command, like IRC (do people still do IRC now?)

This is one example of how questions are sent my way (in this case, I’d “pass”):

Here’s what happens when I send a question to Aardvark. I asked, “Why is the sky blue?”

I was impressed that Aardvark prompted me for more details to my question. I can see how that would help the person who might potentially answer my question.

In this case, I didn’t elaborate. Aardvark acknowledges my input and assigns it a subject (it must have drawn from its thesaurus or something).

A few minutes later, I received a response from someone whose profile indicated that he was in Sweden. His reply was, “Because it looks a lot better than yellow”. Heh.

And very shortly after that, I received a better reply (this time I chose to look at the reply via the Vark dashboard):

From my dashboard, I can also rate the quality/ appropriateness of the reply. Or flag inappropriate responses. Aardvark also allows me to look at the profile (as much details as they choose to reveal) of those who’ve answered my question.

MY QUICK ASSESSMENT OF AARDVARK
Many aspects of Aardvark impresses me.

It’s intuitive and simple to use. Usability and system functionality are excellent — the ease of setup, how quickly I was able to familiarise myself with the dashboard, how I’m able to track the questions I’ve asked and also the answers I’ve received, the level of interactivity between the system and myself (and indirectly with other users).

It’s clearly very accessible (the service is just an email and chat away).

Aardvark’s developers have clearly considered the user experience. I’ve no doubt I’m interacting with a machine. Vark doesn’t pretend to be more than what it’s not. Still, I’m feel I’m treated as an individual and that my question is important. There’s an approriate amount of feedback and responses are timely.

What is less certain is the quality of answers. Case in point: the responses to my “why is the sky blue” question.

The first response was clearly a joke. The second response was much better but what it lacked was the citation (this is my librarian training kicking in — we’re taught to always provide the source, so that users can also verify the information themselves).

IMPLICATIONS FOR LIBRARY REFERENCE SERVICE CONCEPT
It’s easy to adopt the system feature of Aardvark, but I’d suggest what is impressive about aardvark isn’t its system features but its idea of utilising social network to fulfil an information need.

More important, Aardvark respresents a paradigm shift in where we librarians see ourselves in the user’s information search process.

Librarians often treat a question as “completed” when we have sent off the reply. We see ourselves as the final stop in the user’s information search. But looking at Aardvark, it is clear that one individual’s reply is but one facet of the many responses the information seeker could potentially receive.

Which means, librarians have to see ourselves as merely participants in the users’ information search and NOT a “one-stop” or “only-stop”.

To put it bluntly, it’s time to step down from the professional pedestal.

Aardvark forces us librarians to see that the user ultimately assesses the answer based on its relevance and not primarly WHO provides the answer.

I’ve heard fellow colleagues tout that the information services provided by librarians are superior because of our training and expertise. I’d humbly suggest those aren’t selling points that users can relate to. To put it bluntly, users don’t care about your credentials as much as the answers they can get immediately and whether they find the information relevant.

WILL AARDVARK SPELL THE DOOM FOR REFERENCE SERVICES IN LIBRARIES?
My snappy answer is ‘No’.

At one level, this is an excellent wake-up call for librarians. An impetus to reassess the way we deliver reference and reader-advisory services. We librarians can see Aardvark as a competitor and we’d better react to it.

When I say “competitor”, I mean a friendly one. There’s no need to treat Aardvark as an adversary. I’d take it as a benchmark and a model to re-think our service.

Two, I see a service like Aardvark as something that would raise the overall awareness of Information and Reference Services among the library potential customers. For example, a person might not have used the library or any information service before Aardvark. If librarians time it right and leverage on heightened awareness, it serves as a way to promote our service.

Three, librarians should see Aardvark as a space where we become community members and participants. If we establish our credentials, as those who consistently provide answers which other community member rate highly, then I’m confident people might turn to us directly.

Aardvark might be a chance for librarians to reinforce our Brand. E.g. we’d never give a frivilous answer to “why the sky is blue”.

Four, librarians (who have the competencies and passion) would automatically have an advantage over most users in terms of professional standards. I don’t mean librarians neccessarily “provide better information”. What I mean is the way librarians (in general) are trained to provide citations, verify and triangulate sources etc.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
In Aaron’s post, he wrote: “Like it or not, librarians are not the first people [others] think about whenever [they] need to know something”.

I feel we have to accept that as a permanent reality.

To any librarian who does not believe and accept that reality, I’ll ask them this: When you have a question on what to eat for lunch or where to visit during your vacation, do you ask a friend or a stranger?

I’ll go back to my earlier point, about how I tried out Aardvark only after Aaron spoke to me face to face. I’d left his email invite sitting in my email in-box for days. It was only after he explained how it works and said “You have to try it” that I decided to do so.

I’m not suggesting librarians try to be friends with everyone. We can’t.

What I’m saying is that the way to go is for librarians to be part of people’s social networks. Granted, critics will say this isn’t scalable but I’d argue we’re not giving up the in-library service.

It’s about extending our reach.

Having one finger out there — being a friend to one person in the community — is better than none at all.

[Update 16 May 09: If you wish to try out Aardvark, leave a comment with your email or email me, indicating three topics you see yourself answering. I'll send you an invite. As of this post, Aardvark is 'by invite' only].

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The annual reading initiative was launched by the NLB on Friday morning, 22 May 09, at the Conrad Hotel (the hotel is one of the main sponsors):

From the NLB press release, 22 May 09

Exciting New Initiatives To Reach Out To Families And Youths Through READ! Singapore 2009
Release Date : 22 May 2009

• The iconic event returns with a series of new activities and book discussions to enhance the reading experience of Singaporeans
• Highlights include the inaugural “Youth Writers Awards Asia 2010” and 144-hour Reading Marathon

SINGAPORE, 22 May 2009 – The National Library Board (NLB) today officially launched READ! Singapore 2009, the iconic nationwide reading initiative that aims to promote a culture of reading fiction among Singaporeans. In its fifth year, READ! Singapore is aptly themed “Dreams and Choices” to encourage Singaporeans to stay focused on their goals during these challenging times.

In line with the theme, the READ! Singapore Steering Committee has selected eight novels and eight short stories in the four official languages, written by well-known local and international authors. The selected novels and short stories explore the choices made by the characters in their journey to fulfil their dreams. Each of the short stories is translated into the other three languages and compiled into four anthologies to encourage Singaporeans to read across cultures and communities.

From 22 May to 31 August this year, Singaporeans can look forward to a host of exciting reading activities at various locations islandwide. For the first time, READ! Singapore will hold a Singapore record-setting event with a 144-hour Reading Marathon. Participants will form teams of not more than 12 members to read the selected READ! Singapore literary works or other stories of their choice for a continuous period of six hours per team. After completing six hours, each team will pass the baton to the next team to continue the reading marathon. The event will run from 3 to 9 July at The Plaza, National Library Building.

Additionally, READ! Singapore is reaching out to youths in the region with the inaugural “Youth Writers Awards Asia 2010”. Organised in partnership with Reader’s Digest, this short story writing competition is held in celebration of Singapore hosting the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games. Youths aged 13 to 17 years can participate by submitting short stories on the theme, “Dare to Dream: Stories of Imagination, Passion and Sporting Excellence”. Winning entries will be selected and published in a book to be distributed to athletes during the Youth Olympic Games in Singapore next year as part of the national effort to promote sporting excellence.

“Through READ! Singapore, we hope to reach out to not only Singaporeans, and also youths in the region to build bonds through a shared love for reading. READ! Singapore can be a platform to inspire all Singaporeans to reflect on their priorities in life, explore new horizons and work towards their dreams,” said Ms Ngian Lek Choh, Deputy Chief Executive, NLB.

The selected short stories have also been produced into audio books for Singaporeans who are not able to experience the joy of reading a book due to age, illiteracy or handicap, to participate in the READ! Singapore book discussions. The audio books feature forewords by RAdm (NS) Lui Tuck Yew, Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, in English; Mr Gan Kim Yong, Minister for Manpower, in Chinese; Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, in Malay; and Mr S Iswaran, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry, and Education, in Tamil. The short stories are narrated by popular media personalities from local radio stations including 938LIVE, Capital 95.8FM, Warna 94.2FM and Oli 96.8FM.

3,000 copies of audio books in the four languages will be distributed to voluntary welfare organisations such as the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped and Sunshine Welfare Action Mission Home.

For more information on READ! Singapore 2009, please visit: http://readsingapore.nlb.gov.sg/

Sharedcopy

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It led me to the Google Wave developer preview presentation at the Day 2 Keynote of Google I/O (it’s 1 hr 20mins long).

LINK

“What might email be like if it was invented today?” (5min 30sec).
Google Wave is Google’s response to that question.

At first I didn’t get what Google Wave was about. How would it be different from email? Or current wikis, photo and video sharing platforms?

What’s the difference between this model of communication…

[screenshot at 6min 10sec]

… and this one?

[screenshot at 6min 30sec]

About 15 mins into the video, I began to glimpse of possibilities. From an end-user view point. Particularly as a librarian/ information professional.

As a librarian, the Google Wave demo shows how it could transform the way we provide Enquiry and Advisory services. Or how we research, collaborate and publish documents.

I began to understand how email conversations could be expanded into a collaborative documents (this much was mentioned by the presenter). Because Google is making this open-source and encouraging developers to build apps, future collaboration could take place across different platforms.

POSSIBILITIES & IMPLICATIONS
Based on my watching the video, the implications seem to be that:

• Libraries don’t have to force users to learn how to use our systems just to collaborate with them.
• It was clear from the demo that the Google Wave technology will speed up communications.
• There are also hints that we may need to learn new ways of collaboration. And also to be able to shift our mental models.

COLLABORATION
The collaborative feature was immediately apparent. From this initial message…

[8min 30sec]

… more users can be included by dragging their profiles/ avatars to the conversation:

There can be discussions within the larger email. Visually, it’s much clearer what the side-discussions are about:

[10min 12sec]

EFFICIENCY
Things began to look really interesting when they showed the character-by-character “live” transmission of instant messages!

[10min 45sec]

Although I’m not a developer, I could appreciate the complexities that had to be overcome for instantaneous character-by-character transmission.

Current IM systems tell you the other party is typing a message. You don’t see the full message until the user hits “send”. The Google Wave developers felt that half of the time in IM is wasted just waiting for messages to be completed. Hence, the character-by-character transmission. Which can be disabled.

PLAYBACK/ CONTEXT
Google Wave allows more participants to be added to the conversation. The Playback feature allows new participants to play, from the very start, how the conversation has developed up to that point.

[13min 10sec]
It’s like an automated “See History” of edits and conversations. One could view the original and subsequent messages as if you were already clued into the conversation in the first place. Much more efficient than searching for text archives (which may not be available to new participants in an email setting.

INTEGRATION
21 min 24sec: Integration of Google Wave conversations to blogs:

[29min 20sec]

“LIVE” CONCURRENT EDITING
At the 35min mark, the demo on “Live” concurrent editing (up to five people during the demo). What’s impressive is that the edits could be seen instantaneously, character-by-character.

ORGANISING CONVERSATIONS/ DOCUMENTS
One can create links to other Wave conversations. I’s a really clean and visual way to organise/ archive conversations and provide context:

[40min 50sec]

COOL GADGETRY POSSIBILITIES
45min – a spell-checker that takes the context into consideration when recommending words (aka “bean soup demo”).

Impressive spell checker functionality. It was able to recommend words based on context (e.g. Bean Soup Vs Been so long). Would be a boon for people with disabilities trying to articulate thoughts on email.

47min: adding images and URL links. Would be a boon to formulating responses to enquiries.

48min – demo of the APIs etc.

Another extension/ gadget was something that allowed collaboration on maps:

[53min 45sec]

55min: an extension that creates forms. e.g. surveys, polls

57min: integration with platforms like Twitter; “Twave” = a wave of tweets:

1hr mark: Demo of a code bug filing extension. The extension allowed a more flexible and efficient way for tracking code issues. You can file parts of the documents and/ or assign to collaborators (imagine if this was how enquiries are fulfilled):

1hr 06mins: Presenter Lars said any organisation can build their own Wave system, even in competition with Google, and the protocol will allow Waves to be shared.

Accounts on different wave systems can work together (one possibility is that librarians can invite, or be invitees, to collaborative enquiries/ projects).

1hr 05min: Presenter Stephanie explains how private messages remains on private servers; Google won’t have access to it.

1hr 12min: Translation robot.

Collaboration with people who don’t necessarily speak the first language. Yet another possibility for information services.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN FOR LIBRARIANS?
Speed and efficiency: that’s what I gather from this Google Wave model of conversation and collaboration. It’s a recurrent theme throughout the demo.

On the downside, speed and efficiency may also mean more noise and possibly more wastage. Just because you can do a lot of things doesn’t mean you’re efficient.

For some people, they will find that time will even be more compressed time. Not everyone might be able to adopt the same speed of processing information and collaboration.

NEW LIBRARY SERVICE PROTOCOLS
Before the Google Wave hits, I think librarians have to anticipate and develop new service protocols.

For example, we will need to shift from the current default of one-librarian per enquiry to a model involving many librarians per enquiry. A true team effort when responding to enquiries. Librarians can handle enquiries like how a team of surgeons/ medical staff operate on a patient.

Someone to input a response, someone to verify information, one to edit, one to phrase, one to check for grammar. one to look for images, another for videos, or electronic databases.

Not all enquiries need to be handled that way. It’s just like how some patients can be handled by one doctor while some cases require many specialists.

UNLEARN
“Using modern tools… changes your thinking” (39min) – Lars

Google Wave and a proliferation of 3rd party gadgets may mean a lot more discovery and experimentation. We’d have to be able to unlearn and adapt quickly.

49 min: Presenter said it took a while for them to discover how to use the tool and work in different ways. Like how they first replied to a RSVP list with sequential messages. Then someone suggested editing the initial message like a Wiki to indicate who’s going and who’s not.

[50min]

Later, one team member developed a code to make indicating RSVP list more efficient:

SLOW DOWN!
Efficiency is well and fine, but speed can be a distraction. Users need to take a breather, look at what’s been edited before sending.

43min – Lars said they found that the speed was also a distraction. It drew people to unfinished work. So they are trying to find a balance.

OVER-RELIANCE
I’ve also a nagging feeling that the more powerful and efficient the feature, the more reliant we become on them. Which may not be a good thing.

Take for instance the automated dictionaries and spelling checks. Chances are we won’t make ourselves learn how to spell properly (why should we, when the automated feature is more dependable?).

Would we find our ability diminished when these tools aren’t available?

THE COMING WAVE
I consider myself a non-digital native. Perhaps it’s not an exaggeration to say the Google Wave demo is a sign of a coming digital tsunami.

We can surf the wave or go under.

Seems to me if librarians want to be ready for the coming wave, we need to develop new skills for processing information and conversations at a faster rate. Because that seems to be the trend.

The other implication is that digital preservation will be even more critical. Imagine all the collaborative efforts gone when the server crashes. Or power fails.

WHAT’S GOOGLE WAVE AGAIN?
From the Google Wave About page:

Google Wave is a new model for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year.

What is a wave?
A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Email. Instant messaging. Share photos and links. Integrate blogging sites, discussion groups. Incorporate wikis. Being open-sourced, developers can build their own apps.

Now I understand better the difference between these two models shown in the demo:

Perhaps a simple way to understand Google Wave is this: it’s built upon the privacy of current email systems and allows it to become more inclusive and collaborative, and more efficient.

Pretty exciting stuff.

Aside: When I viewed the Youtube video this morning, it had about 340 views. When I caught the rest of the video in the evening about 10 hours later, it had jumped to more than 65,000 views.

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Which is why I signed up for this conference:

Just ended Day-1 of the three-day symposium, held at Republic Polytechnic. I didn’t have any specific expectations of the symposium. My main aim was to get some insights on Problem Based Learning (PBL). To get a feel of the trends and what educators are thinking/ doing.

When I attended RICE 2008, I’d heard PBL (or its equivalent) mentioned a few times. That got me wondering how public libraries can be part of the equation.

PBL isn’t directly related to public libraries. But seems to me there’s potential. Not necessarily in the form employed in schools today.

One of the speakers today, Dr. Mark A. Serva, cited this Wikipedia entry when he mentioned PBL. Incidentally, the Wikipedia entry cites a few of the references and citations I’d heard from Day-1.

Here are my Tweets from Day-1, in sequential chronological order (Twitter hashtag #pbl09w):

MOE perm sec says: Polytechnics in SG takes in 40% of student cohort.

key PBL components: Problem, Facilitation, Collaboration, Reflection

keynote speaker: despite wide use, PBL has limited evidence base. Mixed results.

I’m thinking: if measures of PBL are not 100% conclusive, what then to devise new ways to measure impact of libraries & reading?

from my layman understanding of PBL, the key may be the facilitator rather than method (PBL).

now attending workshop on “assessing student learning”. Am interested in applying to library context.

“assessment (i.e. feedback), rather than teaching, has a major influence on students’ learning”

suggestion that educators prefer to teach than assess. Conversely students want to know how they fare rather than learn

“assess” is from latin “assidere”, i.e “to sit with”.

trainer: “learning objectives were only introduced in 2001 in my uni. Yours?”. Participant:”we’ve had them but no one verifies”

my take from this workshop: even educators are asking if their assessment methods are valid or the best.

seems there’s no one best assessment method. Depends on what’s practical, logical, acceptable (by parents/ students/ mgt)

it occurred to me my conference Tweets are a way to assess speaker & also my learning. So… Give students Twitter?

“a good assessment protects privacy and dignity of those being assessed”

hawk & hill (2001) if you are giving grades, students don’t care for comments. hmm.

strategy of “union of insufficiencies” of assessment methods. a variety of assessment methods help give better picture.

Now listening to Mark A. Serva “holistic view of student learning: moving beyond pedagogy

dr. mark Serva “the goal is Learning, not Teaching… MacDonalds’ goal isn’t to make hamburgers; it’s to make ppl happy”

dr. Serva: “integration of writing is critical for learning”. He hopes to get students to write their textbook.

Formative Assessment aims to give feedback to student for chance to improve. Not just Summative Assessment

ooh, I’m at this workshop where there’s a quietly hostile participant! Challenging the speaker.

Recurrent theme: each assessment method has strength & weakness. Strategy is to use various methods to assess diff aspects.

suggestion that educators should ultimately make professional judgement on student, & not just rely on assessment tools only

idea that educators can subjectively judge student performance but justify w evidence from various assessments (sounds like real world staff appraisals!)

[Next: Part 2]

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10 Jun 09 – Keynote speaker A/P Cindy Hmelo-Silver from Rutgers University: What do we know about Problem-based Learning (PBL)? Current & future prospects


Quick notes (italics are mine):
Key PBL components: Problem, Facilitation, Collaboration, Reflection.

Problems should be something learners can identify with (I think “stranded in school” is better than “stranded on Mars”).

Good ‘Problems’, in the context of educators setting Problem scenarios, are “complex, ill-structured, open-ended”.

Some strategies for facilitators e.g wandering facilitator; assign roles to students (hmm… like De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats?)

Current status: Despite wide use, there’s limited evidence-base. Research mostly in areas of medicine.

Research suggests not all students respond to collaborations well. Quality of collaboration improves over time.

(Implication for librarians who work with teens: Don’t expect initial success when working with groups of teams. Of course, the question is how librarians can manage expectations when grouping teens from different backgrounds to work together. And how should Youth Librarians plan ahead if knowing that initial outcomes of group work may not be necessarily positive?)

Gaps in PBL:

• incomplete descriptions of PBL models;
• need to look outside medical education (because medical students already highly motivated);
• assessment;
• need a common language.

Cindy mentioned the Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning (see ijpbl.org)

(Twitter hashtag #pbl09w)

[Next: Part 3]

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Day-2, 11 Jun 09.

Prof Ronald Barnett, Institute of Education, University of London, UK: ‘Learning about Learning’ – a Conundrum and a Possible Resolution.

“It’s not clear what Learning is leading to (in today’s world)”.

Brief notes (italics are mine):

Suggests learning has gone through four stages:

• Metaphysical (meta-reality/ describe the real world?)
• Empirical (move away from subjectivity to organised scientific knowledge)
• Learning from Experience (learn to keep up with the world; search for ‘transferable skills’; new terms: workplace learning, action learning, learning on the job)
• Learning-amid-contestation (a world of supercomplexity; competing frameworks; learning seems to be a case of unlearning).

Common across all stages is the question “what counts as effective learning?”

Looking ahead, he suggests: a will to learn, a will to encounter strangeness, a will to engage, preparedness to change.

Suggests learning may lead to inaction.

Forms of learning should inspire students with new energies to keep going, come what may.

As “active and radical doubt”, Learning has to doubt itself but should find within itself yet new resources for continuing forward.

My Tweets:

Q&A: participant queries Barnett why he’d suggested learning may lead to paralysis

Barnett qualifies his point was metaphorical; that educators should inspire and give students the confidence to go fwd

Barnett: the role of Higher Education is to equip students with personal skills to effect positive changes to problems

question to Barnett: what do u mean “the more we learn the less we know”. Barnett clarifies he’s differentiating Learning Vs Knowing

(Twitter hashtag #pbl09w)

[Next: Part 4]

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Day-2, 11 Jun 09.

i) Presenter Dr. P’ng Tean Hwa (co-author Irene Tan Ai Lian). UCSI University, Malaysia. “Assessing Learning through Reflective Essays in Music Education“

Quick notes (italics are mine):
P’ng says using “teacher-centered” approach was limited. Traditional teaching approach couldn’t convey all he wanted to cover and students not prepared to grasp some concepts. When PBL implemented, curriculum had to change including assessment methods.

Students asked to write reflective essays as part of Summative assessment. Sets three problems for semester. Majority are Piano-majors.

Found that with PBL his intro course students progressed beyond level 3 of Bloom’s Taxonomy, i.e. L3 =Application, to Analysis and even Synthesis.

Students were initially apprehensive with PBL approach (they were more familiar with lectures and performance). Definitely unfamiliar with student-led approach.

P’ng acknowledged there were problems with PBL approach. E.g. Student skepticism and prior baggage re poor team work and peer conflict. But says he decided to pre-empt the students concerns by explaining the PBL approach.

(Seems to me success of PBL depends largely on intelligent application by educator. Attitude of educator more than tool)

My Tweets:

P’ng: found with PBL, his intro course students could progress beyond L3 of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Assessed via reflective essays.

with PBL, P’ng found he’s also posing deeper questions to students. Students (piano majors) forced to be more precise in thinking

prob w PBL: student skepticism & previous bad experience re teamwork and peer conflict. P’ng preempts by explaining PBL approach

BTW, I discovered this site by a hearing-impaired music student of Dr. P’ng.

ii) Loretta Ho Man Wah. The University of Hong Kong. “Maximize the Effects of Problem-based Learning through Aligning the Curriculum with On-going and Multidimensional Assessment”

[Various types of assessment tools HKU used in their PBL approach. Which is still an on-going research as of the presentation]

iii) Dr. Chan Kam Chi, Purdue University North Central, USA. “Learning about Teaching: A Student Teacher’s Emotions in The Journey of Growth”.

A fascinating account by Dr. Chan of her trainee-teacher’s emotional words expressed as reflections, submitted as part of a PBL assessment.

The gist of it: The 40+ trainee-teacher described how she fell into a depressed state from having to deal with a very challenging class. After much urging, she finally decided to hold a class meeting and confront the situation. The trainee-teacher got to a point in her script where she broke down and cried. Apparently by showing her emotions, the class responded to her and paid attention for the first time.

Dr. Chan asked if emotion could — and should — be assessed as part of PBL. Whether there was a need to look at another dimension of PBL assessment.

Dr. Chan’s research question came from that particular case of her trainee-teacher. Initially, Dr. Chan required her trainee-teachers to submit a Reflection-journal that was quite standard in format.

But soon it became apparent that particular trainee-teacher became withdrawn. Yet the reflective journal merely recorded what was done but obviously not reflecting the trainee-teacher’s emotive state. Dr. Chan asked her trainee-teacher to abandon the required format and simply express how she truly felt.

BTW the trainee teacher won an outstanding future teacher award in the end, for turning the class around.

Dr. Chan argues that assessing student-learning may require assessment of student emotions.

(Twitter hashtag #pbl09w)

[Next: Part 5]

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Day-2.

A guided-walkabout of the campus just before we broke for lunch.

Impressive place.

I’d have loved to study there.

We didn’t get to tour the library though. Though I learned that the RP library is open to public as well (I saw kids in the library!)

An academic library that is accessible like a public library. That’s innovation.

Pictures from the walkabout:

(Twitter hashtag #pbl09w)

[Next: Part 6]

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