At the start of week 5, we look at the concept of abundance vs. scarcity of resources – how does that link to teaching? While Weller doesn’t dwell on it, it’s clear that we have moved from a situation of a relatively limited set of resources that students could have access to (a few books in the library, a few more if you can track them down), to today, when students have access to a vast range of materials; some of which are more useful than others. In order to make use of them, we have to look at newer approaches to teaching. He covers a range of approaches, not all explicitly requiring technology to support them, but rather they’re approaches that can enable staff / students to make good use of that wealth of information.
He covers:
- constructivism
- connectivism
- problem based learning
- resource based learning
- Communities of practice.
- MOOCs
Do you feel that you have used any of these approaches in your teaching?
Do you have any other comments about this week’s activities?
I’m not sure if everyone gets the same questions in the quiz – but there was one this week about MOOCs, that I was sure I was right about, luckily, as it was multiple choice, when it removed the “wrong” answers, I could then get them “right” – but I’m not convinced! Has anyone else tried that quiz yet?
I also found the concept of resources people are wiling to pay for interesting – as in the example given, I’ve paid for the Pro version of Flickr, even though I could now access similar storage elsewhere for free. it’s just the same as The Guardian, I decided to pay for the ad free version of the paper, as it’s something that I feel is important. I don’t think I’d do that for other news outlets!