Good afternoon,
I wanted to share with you a summary of the third of three LINCS webinar from the series, Supporting Adult Student Motivation, which was offered to adult educators in LINCS Region 2. The third webinar focused on monitoring student learning and the learning environment. Cris Smith led the webinars and provided guidance between sessions through a study circle that was set up for participants through the LINCS Community. Below are the highlights from the third webinar.
Self-Regulation
- Adopting a learning process where one (1) formulates learning goals, (2) tracks progress towards these goals, (3) identifies gaps in one’s knowledge or skills needed to achieve their goals, and (4) searches for relevant information or strategies to help them fill those gaps.
- “Meta” knowledge of how and when to employ different learning strategies.
Scaffolding
Instruction should be structured, explicit, intensive and “scaffolded”: Sequencing and structuring content and tasks to be learned and providing prompts that help a student develop their skills on that task.
Fine-grained feedback
Feedback detailed and specific to the task at hand, with hints for improving their skills at the task (e.g., not just giving a score or grade or correcting errors)
Error management
Helping adults expect errors as part of the learning process and then providing strategies to cope with and learn from errors.
Value of a Learning Task
A student’s belief that a task is intrinsically interesting, useful, important to identity or sense of self, and worth investing time in.
What types of activities, strategies, or practices have you used in your programs and classrooms to create optimal learning environments for your learners? How do you monitor student learning?
Gail Cope, SME, LINCS Program Management