Reduce, Reuse, Recycle...in Learning

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According to the text, there are five components one should consider when deciding if instruction is reusable: content, context, pedagogy, structure and presentation.

Thinking of a one specific class, these are some ideas for “restructuring” so the class would possess reusability.

Content

Our text states “.......information contained in a resource that is intended to affect a change in cognitive state.” I can honestly say that the content presented in the class in question did not cause a change in my “cognitive state”. Perhaps chunking the information instead of throwing it out a one whack would have been more effective. You wouldn’t throw a young child a steak to eat, you’d cut it up from them, right? Same thing for presenting new content to learners. Bite sized pieces of information are easier to digest and easier to tie to prior learning.

Context

As state in our text, one way to more content more reusable is to provide alternative sections for needed background knowledge, thus keeping the “meat” of the lesson general enough for reusability. I wish the instructor in my class had provided needed background knowledge that would have aided with general understanding about the class. Simply providing a website IS NOT appropriate! Websites can be vast, especially ones such as LOC. When one references a website, maybe it would be a good idea to create a Jing or QuickTime video and show the student the specific part of the site that corresponds to concept in question.

Pedagogy

As with context, it seems that “chunking” information is the key to reusability. “Chunking” different activities into separate “packets” of instruction is a strategy mentioned within our reading. In my opinion, chunking is easier for everyone. Short bursts of learning are easily created by the instructor and more easily understood by the learner. It’s been my experience when too many concepts are mixed within a single learning vehicle, the vehicle becomes like a toxic learning soup---doesn’t look good, doesn’t go down easily and it isn’t very filling.

Structure

I liked the example given in the book---makes perfect sense to me with the dread forward and backward buttons. Ugh! A solution? Podcasts, which can be broken into chapters. Teachers could specify which chapters within a podcast need to be viewed for particular concepts. Adding chapters to a podcast, which is easy enough to do, would give such a resource high reusability.

Presentation

From the reading, it seems that being able to use resources in a variety of formats makes said resource more reusable. Knowing that, it would make sense to use programs that allow for versatility when sharing materials. A possible source which could help to make learning documents more reusable would be the use of Google docs. With so many platforms around, using a web-based (and FREE!) source for creating and sharing documents would provide not only continuity and reusability.