Session 3: My Reflection

Today, I am introduced to the the theories of important contributors to the field of learning environment such as Moo, Murray, Fraser, Fisher, Leary, Walberg and Lewin. The characteristic of a learning environment can be assessed properly if the instruments employed are supported by a definition of what a good learning environment is, on the basis of cummulative knowledge and available relevant theories. (Allodi, 2005, p159). Thus it is pertinent for us to learn and understand these theories.

One very important work is Moo's schema that is divided into three dimensions:

Personal Development: (Personal Growth & Self-enhancement)
Stimulation - Pleasure & Satisfaction,
Achievement - Improvement of performance, progression & broadening of interests
Efficacy - Feeling of competence, ability and success

Relationships: (Extent of people involvement & support for each other)
Helpfulness - Cooperation and support among students,
Participation - Participation and valuation of each individual in the group,
Responsibility - Trust and responsibility of activities and learning

System change/maintenance: (orderliness of environment)
Creativity - Personal expression with creative and artistic activities,
Influence - Expression of views and ideas on school matters and opportunity to be heard,
Safety - Absence of danger, violence and harassment,
Control - Presence of rules, organisation, self-discipline

My group was assigned to search about information on Timothy Leary. I definitely had a hard time searching for scholastic work by him and I was more intrigued by his hedonistic and eventful life. Minyi raised an interesting question if we can take his work seriously considering his background. Back to a serious note, his Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality impresses me. It states many personality attributes that was arranged meaningfully. But I need more explanations. Thus far, I only found a paper that is too brief to describe his model.

We also viewed some short clips on different teaching pedagogies-didactic, kinesthetic, problem-based, case study and socratic. It is not recommendable to jump into the bandwagon and adopt the 'in-style' widely in our curriculum without understanding the needs of the students. What we should focus on is to engineer an optimal mix of learning environments and take into account students' perceptions of the blends of teaching pedagogies. (Gijbels, Watering, Dochy & Bossche, 2006: 224)

[Other miscellaneous takeaways:

• Sample size for own quantitative research - 30 subjects(safeguard)
• Sample size for qualitative - 1
• 4 pt Likert's scale is most appropriate, omitting 'Not sure'
• We need to take into account of the cultural environment when we administer the tools.
• We need to know the guidelines and principles behind the instruments before we apply them.
• We need at least 1 week to study one article! No wonder...
• online surveys can be created to assess learning environment rather than pen-and-paper. (OLES)
• Perceptual measures: give a sense how they perceive the environment
• SLEI: Some negatively worded items. Researchers need to negate the scores. Purpose of negating???
• Flexible learning environment]