Class Reflection

This week in my Constructivist Learning Environment class, we were fortunate to experience a sample lesson that emphasized the importance of engaging learners immediately in a lesson and the effects of a strong learner response. In the sample lesson, the presenter displayed a collage of images that stimulated strong, engaged, and extremely varied responses from the groups. As an instructor, I believe the response was fantastic but there was a challenge - some of the responses from the groups were "off" the intended target/objective the presenter had anticipated. As a result, the unanticipated responses became an issue during the debrief session of the activity when the presenter was not able to reach his intended goal of the lesson. Fortunately, this lesson was just a practice constructivist lesson and therefore the issue was only a learning experience. It demonstrated the amount of preparation and facilitator skills required to bring varied ideas together and focus them back to the agenda for the day.

Personally, the best part of the day came after the presentation, during the critique. I felt that the interactions during the critique of the process was an amazing learning experience. The class engagement and the groups ability to clearly contrast between this lesson and previous ones, made it very easy to identify and analyze the differences in supporting and scaffolding the learner's experience. It emphasized in practical terms the theoretical information we have been investigating regarding constructivist instructors and the preparation, skill, and facilitation necessary to guide the learning experience in an appropriate direction.