CMS and learning approaches in 5 steps...

The *BIG* reason for me to come to the University of Twente and study Educational Science, is because my previous psychology study in Maastricht.
Not because it was an interesting cognitive psychology study (it really was),
but because of the Problem Based Learning (PBL) with the sevenstep (zevensprong) of H. Schmidt.
How did this system motivates me to study EST?
Well, in my first year, I got really excited because of this *new* (especially for me that time) way of learning.
That was just the first step (no, not from the seven-jump).

In my second year, I decided to join the student-council of the faculty, which I've joined for more than 2 years.
Within those 2 years, I got involved in the faculty-board and all the problems they dealt with.
The ones who really interested me, were the problems about the education and the seven-jump.
This interested me so much, that I decided to focus my study on it.
In my last year, I even wrote my bachelorthese on the motivation in the PBL,
regarding the student-motivation to collaborate/participate in problemsolving.

So, I'm really eager when I may write anything about PBL (or student collaboration groups),and today is such a day!
For the course, we have to write about 5 several pedagogical approach of learning, and relate these to how they can make use of a Content Management System (CMS). And because PBL is also a pedagogical approach, I'm able to write something about it! But first, I'll start with the other approaches, and I'll see whether there is enough space to continue on PBL...

Traditional learning
I think we all now this version of learning, wherin an individual student has to acquire the prescripted knowledge from their teachers and textbooks.
In order to make sure that this 'prescripted' knowledge has entered the mind of the student, he have to pass an exam.
The assumption is that if the student will pass this exam, he eventually have learned the required knowledge.

In this learning approach, the CMS can be used as a kind of schedule, wherein the student may find the deadlines of certain assignments, and eventually post this through the CMS to his teacher. The teacher may use a CMS also for distributing new papers or copies, which the students are obliged to read.
In a more sophisticated CMS, it may contain an exam of the course, which the student is able to fill in electronically.

Collaborative learning
In a really short summary, collaboration learning is about students who are learning in a group.
In order to do so, they need a common goal (for example: passing the exam in traditional learning). When the students have this goal, and may see the benifit of working together in order to reach their goal. (for example: they will be graded as a group, or just works on totally voluntary base)

For those students, it would be a nice thing to include 'collaboration-tools' in the CMS, such as a forum, a chatbox or even a 'shared workspace'. In this 'shared workspace', the students are able to collect all their files, which they want to share with eachother. In a more sophisticated 'shared workspace', they are able to work within the same documents at the same time through internet, discussing about changes in real-time (through a chatbox or a webcam-conversation). If this collaboration learning is ented on the traditional learning-framework, the usability of the CMS in this approach (as described in the previous section) may also apply in collaboration learning.

Discovery learning:
In Discovery learning, students are presented with a 'real-world' problem or case, which they are able to investigate.
It is assumed that students will have the most benifits of learning when they learned it from their own experiences.
In that way, the students may perform any acts they want, regarding to solve the problem, while learning occured from 'trail and error'.
This method is also compared as 'throwing an infant in the swimmingpool so he is able to learn to swim', although the students are able to perform collaborately.

Besides the same functions as by collaboration learning, the teacher may offer the students all the datasources or applications that are available who are -in a way- related to the topic in the CMS. (Or providing acces to this datasources)
The student is than able to search through the huge amount of information (e.g. articles/sources/pictures) in order to find information he thinks he need in order to solve the problem. They may also hand in their assignment (as given by the teacher) through this system.

Inquiry Learning:
Just as in discovery learning, students collaboretely works together on a problem or case in inquiry learning.
But in inquiry learning, the teacher is providing more feedback and guidance to the students while they are discovering the new knowledge.
Hey helps them to organize the uge amount of information by posing the right questions. He may guide the students in order to formulate (the right) subquestions and hypothesis (for example by posing questions). With this guidance, the students are able to search more specific for certain information, in order to check his hypothesis and answer his questions. After this, the teacher may guide the students in their report and reflection (also by posing questions in which the student is challenged to solve a similar problem, wherein he needs the same kind of knowledge or skills). In this way, the student is more guided for the integration of new knowledge.

In the CMS, also the same tools as in collaboration learning may be used. Besides this, the teacher may include some 'interesting reading' which may help the students find required information, or inspires students to find additional literature. This 'interesting reading' may also include newspapers or stories wherein a similar problem (or an example of it). Also other helpfull tools, which guides the students posing (and testing) new hypothesis, may be usefull in a CMS.
An other notifyable point, is that is would be a nice if the teacher is able to follow all the student activities on the CMS, including the use of the discussionboard. In doing so, the teacher is able to monitor the student even outside the classroom, and may provide some extra guidance when the students needs this.

Problem-Based learning:
Now we're arriving at my favorite part of this message: problem-based learning (PBL)
PBL is also -like discovery and inquiry learning- centred around a real-world 'problem' or 'case' which the students have to solve.
The main difference between PBL and inquiry learning is that in PBL the strategy of problem solving is rather fixed, and gives the students a framework without the extinsive support and guidance of the teacher.
Students work together according to this strategy, trying to solve a problem.
At Maastricht University, this stategy is called the 'sevenjump', which involve 7 steps to solve the problem.
Although the many variations of strategies in PBL, they all shared 5 phases:

1. Clearify the problem.
2. Investigate the shared prior knowledge of the group.
3. Make hypotheses on the new knowledge.
4. Do research in verifying the hypotheses.
5. Report the knowledge and integrate this with the prior knowledge.

These steps are declared well, and the students are first trained in using this steps. (In the sevenjump, the steps are:

1. Clearify the case (did everyone understand it?),
2. Determine the problem-statement (what is the main problem to be solved?),
3. Brainstorm on the problem-statement (What do you already know about it?),
4. Cluster the concepts of the brainstorm (how is our knowledge related?),
5. Formulate research questions (what should we need to know in order to solve the problem?),
6. Do research (Find the answers to the questions),
7. Rapport the new knowledge [and elaborate on it] (Can we now answer the problem-statement?)

This strategy of problem-solving is cyclic, as in that the students may find a new problem during the rapportage-phase, which they are able to solve (again). Although I'm able to elaborate for hours on this topic (and especially the problems which the faculty of psychology in Maastricht is facing regarding the use of PBL in their curriculum), I think this is a clear and brief description of the PBL.

Last remarks: Because of the same nature as inquiry learning, I think the CMS for the PBL may not differ very much of that of inquiry learning.
The only additional thing I come up, is a digital (rehearsel/guidance) course in the strategy used in PBL. Especially new students, who just started in PBL may want to use this course in order to improve their 'PBL-skills'.

As you may have noticed, this notion shifted from traditional learning to problem-based learning, while changing just several elements. This change in elements have also influence the use and usability of the CMS.
I ended this notion on PBL, because it's an approach I really like, although I think it is not the 'end-station': To be more exactly, I think that it is possible to adjust even more -continiuing on PBL (or other approaches)- in order to create a more fashionable and suitable way of learning.