MED 858: Effective Learning Environment

Effective Learning Environment

After viewing Dr Quek’s podcast and reading other comments, I am now aware that:

1) Learning environment influences the person.

2) Learning environment influences personal needs.

3) Learning environment influences human behaviour.

An effective learning environment must therefore be a place which is non-threatening, a place which have a sense of orderliness and a place which provides opportunities to gain knowledge without the fear of making mistakes. Ideally, teachers are expected to be able to arouse students’ interests and induce intrinsic motivation for them to learn through a wide range of pedagogies.

Unfortunately, due to the exams-oriented nature of the education system and the additional burden of miscellaneous duties for school events, teachers may find it difficult to align the school’s expectation with the broader vision of education.

In addition, from the readings that I have read, I realized that in current Singapore context, for effective teaching and learning to take place, teachers have to customize their lessons to match the expectations of the students. What I mean here is that, given our advanced state of technology, students expect teachers to deliver lessons which are IT-infused or even IT-centred. We can see that students are becoming less interested with the traditional way of teaching – chalk and talk, textbook and workbook based, etc.

They expect stimulation of visualization and animation. Lessons that do not seem explicitly applicable will need to be converted to Problem-Based Learning style so that students can appreciate the meaning of these lessons and apply the knowledge learnt.

I feel that if students were given the choice, they would prefer lessons to be conducted with the usage of computers. In this way, whenever teachers mention a new concept, they would be able to ‘Google’ it and explore for themselves. Students may then ask questions after self-exploration do not satisfy what they want to know. The teacher’s role would then to mediate, fine-tune and finally realign understanding to the objectives of the lesson.

Personally, it can be quite a challenge to always catch up with the students in terms of the use of IT and multimedia technology. I salute those veteran teachers who have been in the service for 20 to 30 years or more. Imagine how hard it was for them to progress from the era of the typewriters, to that of computers, Powerpoints and now E-Learning.