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the warm-up before class, interaction in class,
and review and exercise after class, WIRE for
short. The WIRE model has been experienced in
the Department of Information Management of a
university in Taiwan for 18 weeks of a semester.
For quasi-experimental research method, the par-
ticipants were divided into two groups (classes).
The experimental group adopts WIRE model
while the control group adopts lecture-based ac-
tivities with the encouragement of warm-up and
review lessons. The preliminary findings from
the learning achievement, questionnaire, and
focus group interview show some conspicuous
dissimilarities between the experimental group
and control group on the degrees of the motiva-
tion, interaction between teacher and students, and
collaboration among students The WIRE model
can help enhance the learning effects.
learning formats to help students keep active on
the scheduled instructional plan. Especially, the
learning content and its objectives are different
from the training courses for enterprises, which
focused on the knowledge construction and the
cultivation of learning abilities. Some learning
outcomes cannot be evaluated immediately and
explicitly, but will exert the influence on students'
future development. Therefore, the instructional
design for the blended learning in schools should
take into account the students' cognitive devel-
opment in learning the new knowledge and then
adopt appropriate learning technologies.
By referring to the learning objectives in cog-
nitive domain of Bloom's Taxonomy (1956), the
instructional plan should be designed in a smooth
process that can develop learners' knowledge and
intellectual skills, starting from simplest behavior
to the most complex, that is, from knowledge,
comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, to
evaluation. The challenge in designing a blended
learning model in the school setting is to gradu-
ally incorporate the cognitive skills, from basic
to advanced, into a serious of learning activities
with the use of appropriate technologies. This
study divided the whole process of learning a
new concept or topic into three stages, including
the 'Warm-up' before class, the 'Interaction' with
teacher and classmates in class, and the 'Review
and Exercises' after class, that is WIRE model.
In order to cultivate students' high-order thinking
skills, students are requested to understand the as-
signed learning materials as far as they can before
class. Then, in face-to-face class, the teacher can
put the emphasis on the analysis and application
of the new knowledge to inspire students to higher
order thinking, such as the synthesis and evaluation
of knowledge. The most important key principle
in WIRE model is to keep effective interaction
between teachers and students during the learning
process in order to maximize the learning effect
towards the abilities of synthesis and evaluation.
tHE rEquIrEmEntS of
dESIgnIng BLEndEd
LEArnIng In ScHooLS
the Aspect of cognitive
development
The type of a blended model can be various com-
binations of different environments, strategies,
technologies, and medias for learning (Osguthorpe
& Graham, 2003; Singh, 2003; Valiathan, 2003;
Rossett, Douglis, & Frazee, 2003), which de-
pends on the characteristics of audience, time,
scale, application, content, and resource (Bersin,
2004). The designer of blended learning should
consider how to gain the biggest benefits for the
organization under the minimum cost of time
consuming or resources. However, in the school
setting, a teacher who adopts blended learning
in a subject for a whole semester has to design
an appropriate blended model that generally
integrates eLearning and face-to-face classroom
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