Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
and compare with the previous answers to assess
how effective the classroom activities are. In
order to get the learning outcome into students'
long-term memory, the teacher can offers one to
three exercises to ensure their understanding. In
addition, to cultivate the abilities of synthesis and
evaluation, the exercises could be a small project
for individuals or groups. To a certain extent, it
could be a form of problem-based learning that
encourages student to cooperatively accomplish
the assigned mission. The supporting technol-
ogy should provide a common workspace with
adequate scaffolding tools for each group to
initiate the project.
Each cyclic process of the WIRE model, called
a scenario, could be conducted for a lesson, chap-
ter, unit, or any scale of learning content. When
designing instructional plan for a WIRE scenario,
the teacher can classify the learning content into
three parts for each stage according to the cogni-
tive objectives, and design corresponding concept
questions, deep questions, and high-order think-
ing questions or small projects for each stage
respectively. A scenario could be a combination
of the three stages but should keep the sequence
from W, I, to R & E. That is, a scenario may con-
sist of multiple warm-up, interactions, reviews,
or exercises based on the attributes of learning
content. For example, a common scenario that
frequently occurs in freshman year can arrange
multiple combinations of warm-up and interac-
tion if most learning content emphasized on the
comprehension of basic knowledge, such as W >>
I >> W >> I >> R & E. Another example, if the
focus of learning activity is put on the synthesis
and evaluation, the WIRE cycle can be designed
with more time for review and exercises, such as
W >> I >> R & E >> R & E.
rESEArcH dESIgn
The WIRE model was experimented upon a class
of the Department of Information Management of
a university of science and technology in Taiwan
for 18 weeks a semester. The course was originally
offered by distance learning, but the researchers
changed it to adopt the blended mode which
interwove with some face-to-face classes. The
subject for this study is 'Data Structure' which is a
fundamental course for data processing. Therefore,
the WIRE scenario designed for each chapter of
the learning material consists of twice warm-ups
and interactions, and then twice stages for review
and exercise (see Figure 1). The whole process of
this scenario was conducted for three weeks on
a chapter of the textbook, and therefore there are
five chapters provided in the experiment.
By following the general class scheduling rule
in universities, this study supposes each week has
one day for interactive activity either online or in
face-to-face classroom, such as the day 4, 11, and
18 in Figure 1. Each WIRE cycle has only one
face-to-face classroom interaction (Interaction2
on day 11), and the other two interactive activities
(Interaction1 and Interaction3) were conducted by
the synchronous text chat on eLearning platform.
For warm-ups, the learning content for Warm-up1
Figure 1. The WIRE scenario spread over three weeks
Search WWH ::




Custom Search