H807 Week 15: My approach to teaching and learning

My most recent learning programme contains several elements that are typical of my approach.

From what I have read so far, I think I incorporate a bit of all three associationist, cognitive and situative elements in my work.

Maybe it's because my business clients have a clear objective in what they want their people to learn, but I always need clear objectives/outcomes for an event. Having set these out, I then plot out a very clear route through the material that people need to learn. I think these are both associationist characteristics.

A firm bias of mine is to ask delegates to carry out pre work, which gets them thinking about the subject before they attend the event proper. This pre-work begins the process of how the learning is going to apply to the real world. This connects with another bias, which is to bring real examples/situations from the workplace into the classroom; customer feedback, well known work issues, well known objections are all examples of this.

When it comes to how I get the message across, I like to create a variety of activities; some will be informative, for example a video case study, a model or organising framework, an input with stories and examples, a worksheet with relevant information; others will be activities/mini projects/problem solving etc. I like to be able to vary the learning styles that are called on for these activities - eg. music, drawing, discussions, fun, physical activities.

Where possible, I like to get delegates to teach each other, and draw on each others' experience. In my most recent programme, mixed groups put together a description of the highlights of the company's growth and development to date drawing on each others' experience, and some background information provided by us.

I also favour groups discussing topics and coming up with their own version of the truth. This lets organisers assess the extent to which the message is being picked up.

Finally, I have a belief that for people truly to take on board a new message, they have to put themselves (physically, if possible) into the subject, and get a feel for its real meaning. I usually set this up with a collaborative activity in small groups, which most often has a light hearted dimension to it - performance is usually an important element.

The balance between the three theories of learning in my approach varies from project to project, and client to client, but I definitely don't prefer the lecturing/input approach. Some of my colleagues (especially the American ones!) are much more comfortable with being the subject matter expert, but I am less so.

Ref:
Mayes, T. and de Freitas, S. (2004) ‘Review of e-learning theories, frameworks and models’ [online], Bristol, The Joint Information Systems Committee, http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/Stage%202%20Learning%20Models%20%28Version%201%29.pdf (Accessed 24^th May 2011).