This is the summary of my third week in learning “Didaktics of Media”.
Quick review
In the last week I learned about concrete Didaktics theories. The goal of my last analysis was to create a more fluid e-learning diary. I think I’m currently improving my writing skills. This really helps me to write down my personal reflection on my learning – which is kind of difficult if you have never done this before.
Summary
This week, I learned about “learning goals”. A learning goal is the formulation of the skills that students should have achieved after they absorbed a learning unit. But they improve the teaching process in general because they offer a “fundament” for the teaching process. Learners know about the “learning direction” so that they get a better orientation. On the other side, teachers can focus on the key aspects when they teach and remove irrelevant topics for example. Last but not least, learning goals are an important part of the educational planning systems, e.g., at universities. There, the definition of learning goals help in the planning discussions – and they show external people which abilities they can expect by the graduates.
I also learned one central taxonomy – “Blooms taxonomy”. Bloom introduced a hierarchical order of aspects in the learning process:
- Knowledge
- Comprehension
- Application
- Analysis
- Evaluation
- Synthesis
Knowledge is mostly about facts being understood by the students. To check if “knowledge” is gained, a learning goal could be formulated using one of the verbs “define, describe, reproduce,…”. An example: “The student is able to describe the main aspects of Bloom’s taxonomy.”
Comprehension goes one step further. It is not only about reproducement of facts, but especially about a deeper understanding of the gained knowledge. Learning goals are defined usign verbs like “classify, summarize,…”. An example here could be: “The student is able to give an example for each of Bloom’s aspects”.
Application is about the gained knowledge beeing used to solve certain problems. This is the main idea of an university of applied sciences, isn’t it? A learning goal could be formulated using one of the verbs “construct, produces, develops,…”. An example could be: “The student is able to implement a computer program which runs Euclid’s algorithm to calculate the Greatest Common Divisor of two numbers.”
Analysis is a bit more scientific. Analysis is about a deeper look into the gained information – and to analyze it by certain aspects. Verbs to formulate learning goals here could be “draw, differentiate,..”. An example: “The student is able to differentiate the computing time of different solutions to calculate the Greates Common Divisor of two numbers”.
Synthesis is the key skill of academic institutions – the generation of “new” knowledge. The term “new” is not really correct here. Synthesis is mostly about combining existing knowledge and applying it on special problems – this generates new knowledge. Verbs which describe learning goals could be: “combine, create, modify,…”. An example could be: “The student is able to adapt more performant solutions to calculate the Greates Common Divisor of two numbers”.
I saw two aspects of Bloom’s taxonomy in the German educational system. The so called “Anforderungsbereich 1″ is mostly matched by the Knowledge aspect, “Anforderungsbereich 2″ by the Comprehension and “Anforderungsbereich 3″ was mostly about the evaluation.
Goal for next week
In the next week, I want to use learning goals more frequently. I will formulate my personal learning goals for each learning unit. In a second step, I will try to formulate them more universal.