Situated learning and Technology

By: Alejandra Alvarez O.José Carlos Cifuentes H.

What is Situated Learning?

Situated learning is an instructional approach developed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger in the early 1990s, and follows the work of Dewey, Vygotsky, and others who claim that students are more inclined to learn by actively participating in the learning experience.

Lave and Wenger assert that situated learning "is not an educational form, much less a pedagogical strategy“.

Examples of situated learning activities:

Field trips where students actively participate in an unfamiliar environment.

Cooperative education and internship experiences in which students are immersed and physically active in an actual work environment.

examples of situated learning activities:

Music and sports (physical education) practice which replicate actual setting of these events, e.g., orchestras, studios, training facilities

Laboratories are used as classrooms in which students are involved in activities which replicate actual work settings These examples illustrate that students are actively involved in addressing real world problems.

Traditional vs Situated Traditional learning occurs from abstract, out of

context experiences such as lectures and books. Situated learning, on the other hand, suggests

that learning takes place through the relationships between people and connecting prior knowledge with authentic, informal, and often unintended contextual learning.

Situated learning involves students in cooperative activities where they are challenged to use their critical thinking and kinesthetic abilities.

These activities should be applicable and transferable to students’ homes, communities, and workplaces .

Provide authentic context that reflect the way the knowledge will be used in real-life.

Provide authentic activities. Provide access to expert

performances and the modelling of processes.

Provide multiple roles and perspective. Support collaborative construction of

knowledge.

The learning Environment will

Provide coaching and scaffolding at critical times.

Promote reflection to enable abstractions to be formed.

Promote articulation to enable tacit knowledge to be made explicit.

Provide for integrated assessment of learning within the tasks.

Select situations that will engage the learners in complex, realistic, problem-centered activities.

Provide a scaffold for new learners, knowing the type and intensity of guidance necessary to help learners master the situations.

How to include it in the classroom

Teacher turns from transmitter to facilitator of learning by tracking progress, assessing products produced by learners, building collaborative learning environments, encouraging reflection.

Assess students through discussion, reflection, evaluation, and validation of the community’s perspective”

The act of writing in a Weblog, or “blogging” can go a long way toward teaching skills such as research, organizations and the synthesis of ideas.

Examples of Situated Learning and Technology

Social networks like Facebook, Twitter allow learners, once they move beyond the personal connections, to embrace a community where they can learn from each other.

Students are able to mimic what they see and hear which enables them to retain information for the long term.

Through visualizations of different types of computer applications; the student’s knowledge is defined by the social process of interacting and doing.

It allows the students to learn naturally as a result of social behavior. The computer application acts as a guide while the students learn naturally from their own experience. As always, situated learning accelerates a student learning process and ability.

Summarizing ….

Conclusion Situated Learning approach focusses on developing skills that will be helpful for learners in a real context, students need to engage and create products, all this through collaborative work, reserarch, hands on activities and experience.

Thank You

José Carlos Cifuentes H.Alejandra Alvarez O.