Instructor-centered versus student centered learning
Firstly, I have heard the term sage on stage before, I have experienced it both in the classroom and during a massive open online course. I was deterred to attend class lectures, and extremely frustrated with my experience with the online course that was very instructor centered. There is a stark difference between the instructor that prioritizes their own agenda, and the professor that prioritizes the students learning. More specifically, acknowledges the various ways in which students learn. A benefit of student-centered learning is that the culture of the classroom, where the student may feel more comfortable asking the professor for help, knowing that the dynamic of teach and learning is adjusted dependant on the style of learning that the student requires.
Asynchronous versus Synchronous learning
Learning synchronously has always been my preferred way of academia because of the social collaboration needed to succeed. Even though the structure of asynchronous, promotes a level of independent learning that compliments the flexibility needed for those who require the space and time to have a self-paced learning environment. What’s interesting about both of these ways of learning, was seeing that they are not completely different. There are courses that have elements of each. Which I believe is extremely useful for a student’s learning, because of how diverse the engagement is. As well as the independent aspect of a blended course. They do allow for collaboration, but each student is running their own race.
Connectivism
This term is the epitome of how I learn as a student. I depend on others, peers and professors to visually and auditory help me learn. Historically speaking, human beings have required a level of interdependence to survive, build, and govern. What is interesting present day, is that we are becoming more independent as tools are becoming automated. We don’t rely on others as much as we used to. What is new to me, are the variations in types of constructivism:
- Pedagogy
- Andragogy
- Heutagogy
It is clear that the type of connectivism is reliant on the structure of the class. Most of the time MOOC’s are heavily focused on the instructor’s guidance in order to succeed. Whereas andragogy is loosely guided by the instructor, but requires casual, group collaboration to work on specific projects. Heutagogy is structured as a group centered style of learning from the beginning. This is most often common in my experience during upper level social psychology classes. Admittedly, although I do require some sort of collaboration and feel dependent on interconnected learning, the pressure that comes with Heutagogy is not desirable. The informal nature of Andragogy in learning removes the pressure of having to fully depend on others to learn.