Learning Design

Scaffolding is a way of structuring your course/s .

Within the course scaffolding is about structuring your course so that students work through at different levels.

They start off with some basic (cognitive)skills, then work to some higher level ones.

For example, the first assignments ask student to match, name, list or identify, while the later ones ask students to evaluate, defend or critique.

Intermediary ones ask students to classify, outline, or order.

(Based on Bloom's taxonomy of the cognitive domain).

An interesting article by John G Hedlberg - Ensuring high quality thinking and scaffolding in an online world discusses the ways in which we ensure students learn effectively online.

Following Saffey and Duffy (1995), he describes four principles that should be applied to modern technology-based learning environments.

1. Learning is an active and engaged process.

2. Learning is a process of constructing knowledge.

3. Learners function at a metacognitive level e.g. learning is focussed on thinking skills rather than the right answer.

4. Learning involves social negotiation.(Hedleberg, 2002:p4).

Other writers (e.g. Boud and Prosser, 2002), he says, have tried to define the characteristics of high quality learning outcomes, and suggest that the four areas of concentration should be:

1.How do the activities support learning engagement?

2. How does this activity acknowledge the learning context.

3. How does the activity challenge learners?

4. How does it provide practice?

The rest of the article is interesting and worth a read.

Reference

Hedleberg, J. (2002). Ensuring high quality thinking and scaffolding in an online world. In (Williamson, A, Gunn, C, Young, A & Clear, T. winds of change in the sea of learning. ASCILITE Conference 2002.Auckland: UNITEC