Applied research in the field of learning and educational technology

We had three visiting lecturers for our last theory lesson of INTRO course. First Ernesto Panadero told us more about self-regulated learning. He showed us a cycle of self regulated learning which contains 3 phases. Forethought phase,  performance phase and self-reflection phase. He defined collaborative learning as a joint effort to reach a joint understanding. After that we talked about self-regulated learning and collaborative learning together. Do groups regulate? Ernesto told us about socially shared regulation of learning, or in other words, SSRL. This was very interesting for me. He also emphasized the fact that even though you provide the groups opportunities to collaborate, it doesn’t automatically work. To help SSRL, teacher should help the group plan, monitor and evaluate. Teacher should also try to present opportunities for group collaboration and communication. SSRL also doesn’t happen automatically.

This is the cycle of self-regulated learning

Kristiina kurki told us about different emotion regulation strategies. She has studied the emotion regulation of children. We pondered, do teachers help children to understand emotions? One of my classmate told us an example how her kids are in preschool and their teacher helps them to understand their emotions by giving words to those emotions. Like if child seems to be tired, gives a word to that emotion and ask a child: do you feel tired? That is one way to help children to learn emotion regulating. She defined emotion regulation as ”an ability to adapt to emotionally challenging situation”. She showed us an example of little boy Kalle, and during that example we pondered all the different emotion regulation strategies that he used in a emotionally challenging situation.  Different emotion regulation strategies varies, depending on the child’s skill level. For example different strategies are: to seek help, express an opinion, inhibiting, alternative activity and expressing emotions. I notice that I use alternative activity a lot when I am tired or can’t concentrate for some reason. But that usually helps, if I can’t concentrate, I focus on alternative activity for about five minutes. After that I can concentrate again. I can’t remember anything if I force myself to listen or do schoolwork. My alternative activity is usually drawing. But don’t understand me wrong, usually I can concentrate just fine 😉

One product of my alternative activity, if I remember right, it was a math class in high school.

Piia Näykki was the last lecturer. She showed us the cyclical model of self-regulated learning too. Piia told us some aspects that group should monitor during collaborative work, such as task understanding, goals and processes. She said that teachers should educate students about collaboration and teach students essential collaboration skills, because they are more and more important skills nowadays. All of our lecturers told us about different studies made in this field and with these topics. It was very fun to hear about different results and studies, and the way these studies are being, and could be executed.

For the last jigsaw class we had to read Vuopala’s own article which has been published in scientific magazine called Kasvatus. This was the article: ”Vuopala, E. (2012). Yhteisöllistä oppimista edistävät ja vaikeuttavat tekijät verkkokurssilla. Kasvatus.” But sadly I couldn’t find the article anywhere and me and Vuopala had this misunderstanding when I tried to ask where I could find it. But during the jigsaw I got to read it and we made a video about it! This video shows the main points of that article. Here is a link to our video!

After this last lesson I started reflecting my learning during this course. For example concepts like collaborative learning, self-regulated learning, learning of expertise, socially shared regulation of learning were totally new to me before this class. But now, I can tell quite much about each of these subjects. I feel that I have learned the basics of these subject for sure, and I am looking foward to deepen my knowledge on these topics. Second major thing that I have learned is how to do collaborative group work. My group work skills have developed a lot during this class! But ofcourse we have trained collaborative skills during this course every friday when we have a jigsaw class or other kind of group work. like a study circle. These skills I know I will need in the future, for my schoolwork and when I get a job.