School of Education

How People Learn Informs Sakai Design

At the turn of the century, the National Research Council (2000) published a landmark book entitled How People Learn. It is a wonderfully written synthesis of developments in the science of learning, from which three primary principles have emerged. These principles are:

  1. People learn by connecting new information to concepts already learned.
  2. To learn how to reason, solve problems, and augment knowledge in a field of inquiry, people need to understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework that facilitates application to real-world problem solving.
  3. People are motivated to learn when they can set their own goals, reflect on their progress, and feel in control of their learning.

From these principles, it follows that instructional designs should:

  1. take into account the learner's preexisting understandings and correct any faulty preconceptions in order to prevent future misunderstandings;
  2. enable students to study multiple examples of the concept at work in order to learn it in depth in authentic contexts; and
  3. include metacognitive supports that make visible the learner's reflections and enable an instructor to provide scaffolding and guide revisions to improve student learning and reasoning.

This is the kind of environment I created with Sakai, and I believe it has been successful. I base this belief on the following evidence:

  1. Student achievement: All of my students aced the course. I attribute this to the Sakai assignment tool's coaching protocol, which I used to help each student master the course content instead of pass them on with mediocre grades.
  2. Course evaluations: In the Winter of 2008, students completed a rigorous evaluation of the course administered independently through the University of Delaware course evaluation process. In the doctoral course offering, on a scale of 1 to 5, the Instructor rating was a perfect 5.0 (excellent), and likewise, the overall evaluation of the course was 5.0 (excellent). At the master's level, the Instructor rating was 4.75, and the evaluation of the course was 4.67 (4 = very good, 5 = excellent).
  3. Survey results: I used the Sakai testing tool to administer a survey about my students' reactions to Sakai. The following responses are typical of the feedback I received: (a) MyCoursesPlus [i.e., Sakai] in my view is 10 times better than mycourses [i.e., WebCT]. It is more up to date with times and has many more features that were not present in MyCourses. (b) I am very pleased with the new structure for this course. The site is very organized and easy to navigate. (c) This new course management system is very similar to Serf. It is easy to navigate, fun to use, and has a lot of various options for the student to use.