Tag: Adaptive Learning

Trends in Adult Education – “Aha” Moment

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For the final portion of this assignment we have been asked to identify the point or topic that had the most effect on us and caused us to reflect and consider how we can use these new trends in our courses.

My biggest “Aha” moment actually came from a different article but one that follows the same trend as Making Multiple-Choice Exams Better. This other article is titled Optimizing Multiple-Choice Tests as Tools for Learning. I will place a link to a PDF version of it at the end of this paragraph. This article talks about how a well written, challenging exam question can be used as a lesson on its own. As students write an exam with quality distractor answers, they’re actually learning from those question throughout the exam. This gives them additional knowledge to help with questions later on in that test and even in later tests scheduled for the coming weeks. My “Aha” moment happened while I was auditing another instructors test review class. This instructor had a very well written exam that challenged the students to critically think on nearly every question. As he was going through each question in the review, he didn’t just state the answer and move on. He went through each available answer and described why that answer can not be the correct one. He even posed additional questions throughout the review to help students clarify why they got some questions wrong. The students weren’t happy with the test at first, they had become so used to memory recall type questions that they were caught off guard but by the end of the course they had all learned far more than they would have with just basic questions.  Seeing these students in the shop environment later confirmed my thoughts that the tests helped solidify the theory for them. They were able to fully diagnose the vehicle systems much more accurately than previous classes that couldn’t think at the “analysis” level. Optimizing Multiple-Choice Tests as Tools for Learning.

My “Aha” moment for Adaptive Learning came when the article mentioned pretests. I had always done group discussions at the start of each subject as a way to pre-assess the students but I found that generally only the most vocal students who obviously knew some of the subject matter would contribute. This left the other students to just sit back and wait for me to deliver the curriculum. I feel like if I make an open book take home pretest with questions based on information straight out of the students school books then they will read the chapters before I cover them in the next few classes. This will hopefully give them a base knowledge and give me more time to expand further upon the subject than I would be able to otherwise. After reading this article I talked with another instructor and he mentioned that he does this style of pretests already. For the subjects that he has written the tests for, he claims that the students final marks jumped up about 10% over previous years. While this still isn’t Adaptive Learning, I feel that at least taking a portion of the idea behind it will be beneficial to my students.

Trends in Adult Education – Trends

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For this assignment we were asked to find an article related to some trends within adult education. Once we’d found an article that interested us we were paired up with a learning partner to share the articles with each other and discuss our insights to these trends.  My learning partner is Dazy, an Instructor and Faller Blaster from beautiful Vancouver Island. I’ve placed a link to Dazy’s blog in the Links section. Both of the articles that we’ve chosen can be found in the Resources section or just by scrolling further down to see some older posts.

My article was titled Making Multiple-Choice Exams Better. This article talks about some pros and cons to multiple-choice tests, from the standpoints of the students saying that they prefer them, to the issues of the majority of exam questions being fairly low on Bloom’s Taxonomy. The article talks about how changing questions to be geared towards critical thinking can show the students progress more accurately. Most multiple-choice questions, especially ones from exam banks rely too heavily on memory recall. This is why students seem to prefer them. They’ve become accustomed to study strategies like flashcards and memorizing definitions without truly understanding them. If the exam questions where more analytical or diagnosis based then we would truly get a better understanding on whether or not the student grasps the material.  Another thing the author talks about is getting rid of answers that are obviously wrong. Tracking the data from tests over a period of time and throwing out any answers that less than 5% of students chose. This helps strengthen the exam. If say two out of the 4 answers are obviously wrong, then the question just became a 50/50 guess for the student. It makes it difficult to really see if the student has a good handle on the subject matter or if they are just getting by because of easy exams.

Dazy’s article is titled Adaptive Learning: An Innovative Method for Online Teaching and Learning. His article discusses a method of instruction called Adaptive Learning. Adaptive Learning doesn’t follow a traditional, linear path for the course. Using an algorithm, software determines individual learners needs based on their past knowledge and experience. This style of teaching can be an excellent way to personalize lessons and avoid “teaching to the middle” as well as identifying which students need more support or help. Students seem to enjoy the course structure too, only learning about new exciting materials and not going over old facts or knowledge that they’ve already logged into their long term memory.