My personal pedagogical beliefs were shaped over the course
of my own education, teacher training and professional practice. Throughout
this time, these personal trials and experiences have allowed me to develop a
personal pedagogy that I firmly believe in.
To this point, my personal pedagogical practices draw heavily from social
constructivist theory. I am a firm believer that knowledge is constructed
through our interactions and exploration of the world around us. As such,
my personal pedagogy has led me to design my own courses in a way that draws heavily
upon various instructional strategies that encourage active student
participation and collaboration, and utilizes experiential learning methods
such as project based learning and peer assessment.
Morris and Stommel state that much of current online
instruction is nothing more than traditional pedagogical strategies that have
been uploaded to the Internet, to the disservice of students. To this point in my career, all of my teaching
experiences have been in the face-to-face format, so I can provide no personal
experiences validating these statements. Furthermore, Krueger and Ross believe
that online pedagogy should be drastically different from face-to-face pedagogy. While I agree that online instruction should
be much more than traditional instructional methods that have been transferred online,
I am not sure how much I agree that a drastically different pedagogy is needed. I would state that while instructional strategies
intended for the online environment do need to be reconceptualized, I still believe
that social constructivist’s theory provides a solid foundation for the creation
of MOOC learning environment. I firmly believe
that my personal pedagogy would not drastically change when applied to the MOOC
format. In fact, I feel that the constructivist theory that I would
employ could work well in this environment.
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