#ocTEL MOOC (week 1 A12) Snapshot on our approach and practice

The second part of the activity of this week focus on our pedagogical approach and our practice. I must say that I have no teaching duty since 1988, when I got a Senior Scientist position at the CNRS. However, I still continued to teach PhD courses and to a certain extent this is not that different from teaching undergraduate. So, let see how I can achieve this A12 task of week 1) From a learner perspective ("My Approach"), we are invited to locate ourself in the following space:

First, I would very much like to balance directivity which would allow me to know where I am going as a learner and whether I am not too far out of the track, and autonomy which would  allow me to experience knowledge and build my own understanding. I imagine that this opinion is very common.

Although important, the social dimension was not the main thing, apart from the joy of collectively arguing. Actually it depends on the content at stake. In mathematics and natural sciences learning collaboratively is quite productive thanks to the fact that the disciplines clearly gives the rules to solve conflict. In literature and several other topics, this is more difficult and the benefit of social interaction is less clear; indeed it brings the context to shape arguments and learn how to manage contradictions. It is a case where "reflective communication with the instructor" is really beneficial.

Hence, I would not fill one graph, but one for each discipline.

From a teacher perspective ("My course"), my first concern once I know what I want to teach is to find a way to pass to students the understanding that there is somewhere a problem and that the knowledge I claim to bring to them is the optimal one (possibly the not the only one) to solve this problem. For this, I start by a situation which allow students to express views, opinion, conceptions about a situation which later on will appear to be problematic in the sense I need in order to teach. If this is successful, for example (A11) having shaped a variety of evidence based opinions on behaviourism, I would stimulate the formulation of the problem(s) which will be the best to justify the knowledge I target, for example (A11) the problem of nature of the meaning built at an outcome come of the learning situation and the problem of its assessment. We understand that these situations blend individual, social and with-the-teacher situations.

Actually, this view is substantiated by the Theory of Didactical Situation, which provides the tools to assess continuously the relations between the activity, the situation and knowledge (to be learned, as it were).