Week 7

This week we learn how to go about teaching and inculcating verbal information/declarative knowledge into the learning design.

Learning always require basic knowledge of information and these information are what we call verbal information. They are necessary for higher order learning. They are facts, constantly absorbed by learners and also constantly updated and added upon. They would also change the learner's overall view of something with the required basic information.

3 types of verbal information:
Labels and names - no direct link just pairing of information
Facts and lists - relationship between information
Organized discourse - reading from a text

After this week's lecture, I realised that it is easy to criticise the learning design of a module/course but constructing one that is highly effective and motivating for students is difficult. We must not only provide reliable information for them to learn, design and organise information to them to improve learning and also to motivate them to learn and remember information.

Putting what I learnt on to our WebQuest project. We wish to teach learners how to use StarHub HubStation's SmartTV to record shows. It is a relatively Behavioristic process and verbal information is transferred to them visually in many ways other than text to increase motivation to learn. We organised and elaborated the information for them on the WebQuest to help them better understand the linkages between different information that might otherwise not make sense to them.

For example this module, 3204, we are introduced to a series of mnemonics to better aid memorising of information such as ADDIE and ABCD. We were introduced to the basic knowledge of terms and symbols and after that we were introduced to the linkages between them and the connection are further elaborated to improve our understanding. An example of organised discourse would be us reading from the readings.

Another thing taught is the teaching of concepts. We need to first name the concept, define it and show examples and non examples of it as well as state the attributes of the concept. Not forgetting to have the learners practice and also give them feedback.

So if there is a definition then it is a concept and if not then it is a fact.