Introduction - Activation Task

Activation tasks are intended to activate your existing knowledge. The core idea is that you are taking this class after having a variety of personal/professional experiences that can serve as a foundation for understanding new content we will be exploring. The "Cognitive" approach assumes that all meaningful learning occurs within some kind of existing context (some unique to each individual, but some shared because we tend to have somewhat similar experiences or at least can bring commonality to experience through interaction).

We need to take advantage of this existing context for two reasons:

1. what we know provides a starting point for understanding new ideas (we interpret based on existing knowledge), and
2. what we know provides the opportunity to apply (transfer) what we learn (we can use personal experiences to see applications).

Some of the following material assumes you have an academic background either in psychology or in education. I do realize that for some of you, neither of these assumptions is really true - you may have little background related to instruction and you may have taken few courses in relevant areas of psychology or applied research. This is a challenge for me as instructor and in a way for you as graduate students. What we do have going for us is that we all have many years of experience as learners and many years of experience functioning within educational institutions. It could be worse - this could be a graduate course in biochemistry and some of you would have few experiences of any type to build on.

The idea here is that you respond to the "Activitation task" before doing the assigned reading. The response will be a contribution to a Discussion board strand (in Blackboard) that I will create to collect your input. If you do not see a strand specific to this assignment when you connect to Blackboard, it is likely I have yet to create one. Contact me via email and remind me.

For some of the activation questions, you may feel you have little existing knowledge and feel you have little to contribute. Perhaps the task does not relate to your personal experiences. If this is the case, do your best to offer a comment even if the comment requires that you pretty much say you have no related experiences.

Memories of Educational Psychology - A Personal Recollection

The purpose of this activity is to get you to think about your previous experiences with Educational Psychology (or similar foundation courses intended to prepare you for some form of practice). This activity has two unrelated tasks. I will explain each task and then I want you to use the link to move to the discussion area to share your personal response. 

Task 1
I want you to try to remember your undergraduate training:

• Did you take an undergraduate educational psychology course?
• What was the department/college responsible for the course?
• Did the course have an identifiable orientation? What were the theories/topics you remember being covered? Do you remember much specific information from the courses?

Link to Discussion Tool

Task 2
Many colleges of education do follow-up surveys with teachers graduating from their programs. It would be fairly common to include an item which asks practicing teachers to rate the value of specific courses in preparing them for their present positions. Assume the courses involved in this task include Student Teaching, Methods, Educational Psychology, Philosophical Foundation.

• How practicing teachers rank educational psychology?
• How would you have ranked educational psychology when you first graduated?
• How would you rank the value of what you learned in educational psychology now?
• Explain why you think the "average" teacher and you think about the value of Educational Psychology in this way?

Since many you have not prepared to be teachers, recognize that these questions deal with the relevance of "foundation" courses to practice and the reaction that practicing teachers have to the "relevance" of a foundation class in educational psychology to their actual work as teachers. There is likely a foundation course to actual work experience issue in many professions (e.g., biochemistry for physicians, microeconomics for accountants).

Link to Discussion Tool