Autumn MOOC: cognitive theory and education

2018 October 8 Monday 22:10

It has been interesting to start another MOOC, this time about cognition to learn, courtesy of Futurelearn). After using their review questions, the number one question: where is the time? Tried to read a research paper about cognitive load theory, but just too tired to really read it. Oh well, that's what holidays seem to be for, to read periodicals and articles that have sometimes remained unopened for months! :)

Clarity and noise

2018 October 25 Thursday 14:17

It is a bit of a self-flagellation job, always thinking about what happened, what could be better, how to improve. Recent mooc course and blog post about cognitive load theory are interesting to read. How to apply when personally inexperienced and struggling in a specific school environment?

A really important personal target to achieve is improved clarity of instruction; sometimes in explaining conceptual topics (moles, equilibrium, etc.), it's often forgotten that students need a specific learning task to do; write something, draw something. In a nearly constantly noisy environment, this has proven to be easily forgotten, the result of which is more noise and less work. Having said that, recent summative tests indicate that something is learnt, so something effective must be achieved.

Separate snippets...

University chemistry study

Despite stable A-level enrolment, some are concerned about the decline in degree level study of chemistry. Maybe students are looking at chemistry careers, seeing fewer prospects and concluding that chemistry is a useful gateway A-level subject for other careers with a better future.

Cheating the MOOC monetisers

So a certain mooc provider wants people to pay, "upgrade" in order to gain access to courses of interest. Some of us are poor and (shock!) do not have internet access at home, so a "work around": download video/audio resources found within each web page of the course; use a webkit web browser such as midori to save the source code of each web page (doesn't seem to work in mozilla firefox). Then these resources can be viewed at later convenience. :)