Being a second year student of the International Master’s Programme of Learning, Education and Technology in the University of Oulu (Finland) I have started to summarize the knowledge and skills I managed to get during the last years of studying. Previously I have spent a lot of time on learning a subject without any connection with the working area where this knowledge can be applied. Even if I had an opportunity to consolidate my knowledge in practice, I have never summed up my expertise to define my learning degree. Now I understand that mastering learning assumes not only life-long learning and applying a lot of effort but the ability to reflect what you have learned and make connections between the learning areas and concepts, and define how this knowledge can be used in one’s future life.
Being interested in becoming an expert of learning, I decided to make the list of my expertise and define the main ones that are:
- Theory and methodology of teaching foreign languages and cultures
I have already had a linguistic and pedagogical background as I have graduated from Moscow State Regional University as a specialist of linguistics and theory and methodology of teaching foreign languages and cultures where I was taught all aspects of pedagogy and methodology: solving of didactic problems, planning and the construction of the lesson, ability to evaluate, teaching of reading, writing, speaking, grammar and listening, project-based and distant learning. The main purpose in our University was to develop communication skills in language and cultural competence. Moreover I had a lot of experience in the area of education by means of teaching the English language to children, making a lesson plan, developing training programs and using interactive games.
- Intercultural communication
Intercultural communication was one of the major subjects in Moscow University, where we were taught the cultural differences and cultural competence. I also have international experience, as the International Center sent me to Germany several times, where I studied the German language and the culture of Germany. As the LET group consists of students from different countries and cultures, I have got more international experience and consolidated my cultural and communicational competences.
- Learning and Education
The Master’s Degree Programme in Learning, Education and Technology (LET) educates experts in learning. The core of the education consists of three theoretical issues: self-regulated learning, collaborative learning, and the learning of expertise.
- Educational use of ICT
As the LET Programme deals with a lot of educational technologies after completed Technology enhanced learning and ICT Workshop courses I have a good technological background on how to use technological tools in learning and education.
- Student tutoring
I have participated in the tutor training offered by University of Oulu and tutored new International Master’s Degree students in the Masters’ Degree Programme Learning, Education and Technology during autumn term 2013. The purpose of tutoring is to provide information and support for new students about study environments and student life.
- Academic writing
The University of Oulu aims to develop students’ academic writing skills, so that I possess a lot of theory on how to write academic texts. Moreover I have a good experience in writing academic articles working both individually and collaboratively and writing Master’s thesis.
From my experience of studying at the University of Oulu I have gained a lot of theoretical and practical knowledge, consolidating my expertise and mastering new ones that helps me to deeper understand and practice the following issues:
- Learning of expertise, particularly adaptive expertise
High-level learning processes can take place only if the person possesses self-regulation and metacognitive skills. The learner should be able to adopt the complex theory and apply this knowledge in practice to become the master of his or her expertise. An expert is a person with extensive knowledge or ability based on research, experience, or occupation and in a particular area of study. Expert has intense experience through practice and education in a particular field. Experts of learning continually attempt to refine their skills and attitudes toward learning: skills and attitudes that include practicing, self-monitoring, and finding ways to avoid mistakes and move to the next level. Effective learners use existing resources, seek help from others, experiment with their environments, and apply new ideas to see if they help them to achieve progress in this field.
- Knowledge construction; both domain-specific and expert knowledge
I understand knowledge construction as an active process of structuring separate knowledge into complete clusters. It reminds me a theory of the planet Earth’s genesis that assumes that the Earth appears by means of stardust that was attracted by a strong gravitation. In our case, the separate knowledge is stardust and if a person can manage to combine the separate knowledge together or construct it, he or she is going to possess expert knowledge that forms knowledge construction. The gravitation is associated with such factors as possessing strong motivation, metacognitive and self-regulation skills. Knowledge construction is the core element of constructivism theory that emphasizes the importance of the knowledge, beliefs, and skills an individual brings to learning experience. It represents the construction of new understanding as a combination of prior learning, new information and ability to learn.
A good chance to check how I managed to develop knowledge construction skills is to ponder the process of writing my Master’s Thesis. Have been read a huge amount of theoretical framework I started to make connections between the theoretical issues, assimilate new ideas with the prior knowledge, organize and reorganize ideas until I got a structure of my thesis work. Master’s thesis writing is a good opportunity to learn how knowledge can be constructed.
Being a tool for reflecting and monitoring learning path in the LET studies, writing expert profile taught me to evaluate my abilities in terms of the real world, as well as support the understanding of my expertise and looking for the ways of its improvement.
- Problem-solving
Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered pedagogy in which students learn about a subject through the experience of problem solving. Working in groups, students identify what they have already known, what kind of knowledge they need to know, and how and where to access new information that may lead to solving of the problem. Problem solving is a core element in learning and education as in learning students meet a wide range of challenges and choices needed to be made. The most brilliant example where I have experienced problem was CSCL (Computer-Supported Collaborative learning). The course involves two phases:
- Solo phase
Working individually we had to master a huge amount of learning materials on CSCL covering such topics as motivation and emotions in CSCL, scripting CSCL and metacognition and problem solving in CSCL. The assignment given to us was to write manuscripts on these topics and chose one of the topics for the collaboration phase.
- Collaborative phase
Being interested in “Metacognition and problem-solving skills”, I managed to learn a lot of theoretical framework on this topic. Working in a group of three students we had to write an academic article, the purpose of which was to learn to collaborate and to learn academic writing. Both skills were challenging that is why I not only applied my knowledge of problem-solving but consolidated it in practice.
- Collaboration
I possess the basic knowledge of collaborative learning and know the main aspects how to achieve good collaboration. The research proves collaborative learning is more effective in achieving high learning results than individuals working alone (Järvelä, Hurme & Järvenoja, 2011). In spite of the fact that collaborative learning has become an important instructional intervention that is expected to lead to positive results, to achieve successful collaboration is still a big challenge. In order to be successful, learners must participate in the construction of joint cognitive products that require shared understanding. Collaboration is seen as a challenging process that requires not only responsibility and creativity but cognitive, metacognitive, motivational and socio-emotional skills. As the core element of collaboration is getting shared understanding that could be reached by means of active and focused social interactions, it requires socially shared cognition and metacognition. As we see, collaboration itself cannot be neither efficient or inefficient. According to Dillenbourg and Baker (1995) collaboration works under some conditions: the composition of group, the features of the task, the context of collaboration and the medium available for communication. Besides the essential requirements to the task the role of the difficulty level should be underlined. Collaboration never takes place when all of the group members know how to solve a problem themselves. To provoke active interactions task should make students not only use their own knowledge and skills but identify a problem and chose a right strategy how to solve it working together with the whole group. Research provides the evidence that collaborative learning is more effective in more complex learning environments (Dillenbourg, Järvelä & Fisher, 2009). Speaking about collaborative learning it is necessary to mention the role of teachers. A successful collaboration is not complete without certain planning or education. Teachers have to do more than establishing groups and telling them to study together. To provide collaborative learning and expecting students to achieve socially shared metacognition in problem-solving teachers need to take the following roles: educational, social, administrative and technical roles. In other words the main role of the teacher is to provide appropriate scaffolding paying attention to the students who face difficulties while working in a group.
- Self-regulation
Self-regulation is an essential process of learning that assists students in managing their thoughts, behaviors and emotions in order to successfully regulate their learning. In self-regulation students are assumed to master such learning skills as goal setting, planning and motivating strategies, regulating emotion and attention, flexibly using learning strategies, being able to self-monitor, seeking help appropriately and being able to self-evaluate (Zumbrunn & Roberts, 2011). Self-regulated students are more engaged in their learning. These learners commonly seat themselves toward the classroom, voluntarily offer answers to questions and seek out additional resources in order to deepen their knowledge. Providing students with knowledge and skills about how to self-regulate their learning helps them to self-initiate motivational, behavioral and metacognitive activities in order to control their learning (Dignath & Langfeldt, 2008). It is considered as a complex process that requires students to regulate their cognitive and metacognitive learning processes. As metacognition refers to higher order thinking which involves active control over the cognitive processes engaged in learning, therefore activities such as planning how to approach a given learning task, monitoring comprehension, and evaluating progress toward the completion of a task are metacognitive in nature (Livingston, 1997). By teaching students these skills, their learning can be improved.
2. The Programme of learning, Education and Technologies give students a good chance to practice the new knowledge and skills. By means of successful completion of the following courses I get a good experience on how the theoretical knowledge can be applied in practice:
TEL (Technology-Enhanced Learning)
Having the opportunity to design a real course we were taught the whole processes of idea development, writing pedagogical and technological scripts and developing of the whole learning formal and informal environment.
Educational projects
I was introduced to the new working area that is running educational projects. I have learnt the best ways of complying with the client’s requirements and ability to lead the project from its beginning to the very end with a little use of scaffolding given from experts. As the project topic was distance learning, I managed to fulfill my expertise in this particular field.
Student tutoring
I managed to benefit the following experience from working as a student tutor at the University of Oulu:
- Professional development
I have already had a linguistic and pedagogical background but I have never been working to students that is why I gained a new working experience.
- International communication
As the group consisted of students from different countries and cultures, I got international experience and consolidated my cultural and communicational competences
- Perfect collaboration
Active group is the main task of each experienced student tutor. It can be reached by means of student-tutor, tutor-tutor and tutor-teacher collaboration. Being a student tutor I have applied a lot of effort to show a perfect example of collaboration and cooperation.
- Mentoring
I have experienced myself as a mentor to the new LET students, finding the main goal to foster students’ adaptation in the International Master’s Programme of Learning, Education and Technology and to provide students with an appropriate scaffolding on how to take maximum advantage from learning by means of fostering students’ own individual style of learning, showing students how the theoretical knowledge can be adopted into practice, activating students’ thinking and providing them with a deeper understanding of mentoring process and enhancing motivation.
Now I would like to reflect what the Programme of Learning, Education and Technology has helped to change in myself. First of all it has given me a lot of support and helped to change the way of thinking. Have been learnt how to self-regulate my learning, control emotions and raise self-esteem, I have become more confident in my abilities and started to believe in myself. I have learnt to set higher goals and consider the wider range of perspectives that can be given to me. By means of collaborating with group mates and teachers I have learnt how to communicate with people of different categories not being scared to present my point of view. Studying at the University of Oulu has given me an opportunity to work with serious, purposeful, well-read and experienced people who have shown a good example how to succeed in learning.
What makes me different compared to peers? First of all each person has his or her own learning style and has a different set of skills and preferences. People are motivated with the different goals and there can be differences in both internal and external factors. In spite of these differences, people choose methods and strategies, the model of behavior that help to enhance their learning. As for me, I have known what helps me to foster cognitive and metacognitive learning processes, how to motivate and sometimes punish myself, what life and learning models suit me and what qualities are need to continue working on. For the last two years I have made a big step forward, have developed my expertise and learnt how to apply and share my knowledge. I cannot say I have achieved more success that my peers as it is impossible to compare. But the one thing I am sure is that I have achieved huge results if to compare with the beginning of my studying at the University of Oulu.
3. My goal for the following spring terms is developing skills to become an expert of Learning, Education and Technology and graduating from the University of Oulu.
- Behavioral goal:
To increase behavioral control for accomplishing the LET Programme requirements, regulating individual learning, performing the assignments, participating in a group work and seminars and completing Master’s Thesis. In other words I am going to be an active, hard-working student who is eager to participate in studies and fulfill learning expertise.
- Cognitive goal:
The cognitive goal involves some issues such as improvement of problem solving skills, decision making ability, analogical reasoning and information seeking skills. I have been already working on the development of these cognitive processes for a long time, but in order to become an expert of learning I need to master these skills on the higher level.
- Emotional goal:
To control positive attitude to learning especially to such activities as working collaboratively and writing of Master’s Thesis. I have been always interested in learning but sometimes when you face difficulties it can be difficult to regulate emotions and motivation.
References:
Järvelä, S., Hurme, T.-R., & Järvenoja, H. (2011). Self-regulation and motivation in CSCL environments In S. Ludvigsen, A. Lund & R. Säljö (Eds.), Learning in social practices: ICT and new artifacts-transformation of social and cultural practices. Pergamon.
Zumbrunn, S., Tadlock, J., & Roberts, E. D. (2011). Encouraging self-regulated learning in the classroom: A review of the literature. Proceeding of Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC).
Livingston, J. A. (1997). Metacognition: an overview. Retrieved August, 11, 2006.
Dignath, C., Buettner, G., & Langfeldt, H. P. (2008). How can primary school students learn self-regulated learning strategies most effectively?: A meta-analysis on self-regulation training programmes. Educational Research Review,3(2), 101-129.
Dillenbourg, P. (2002). Over-scripting CSCL: The risks of blending collaborative learning with instructional design. In P. A. Kirschner (Ed.), Three worlds of CSCL: Can we support CSCL?(pp. 61-91). Heerlen: Open Universiteit Nederland.
Brand-Gruwell, S., Wopereis, I., & Vermetten, Y. (2005). Information problem solving by experts and novices: Analysis of a complex cognitive skill. Computers in Human Behavior, 21 (487– 508)
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