Pedagogical approaches supported by Blackboard

In education a teacher can use several pedagogical approaches. In this post I will explain you something about five of these pedagogical approaches. In addition, I will relate the approaches to the support of a Course Management System (CMS) like Blackboard.

Traditional learning

This first pedagogical approach is probably the one that is the most familiar to you. You can describe traditional learning as an approach of ‘telling the students the content of the lesson’. Traditional learning is used in many situations. It’s about a teacher who is giving a lecture and students who are just receivers. In most classes the way of teaching is still like traditional learning. Nowadays there are more and more approaches with lots of interaction, but the traditional learning approach doesn’t need that much interaction. The teacher is just teaching, giving you an assignment and you can get to work.

In many of the courses I’ve followed, the support by Blackboard was like the traditional approach. Blackboard gives me some information about the course, like the schedule, some staff information, some announcements and sometimes the assignment(s). There is no interaction or communication within the environment. The teacher just posts some information on Blackboard and you as a student can get it or read it.

Problem-based learning

Like the name of this approach already suggests, students have to solve a problem and reflect on their experiences. The students work in collaborative groups to solve open-ended problems. The role of the teacher is extremely different to the traditional learning approach. In this case the teacher is more like a facilitator. Students have to collaborate and take responsibility for their group. They have to organize the learning process by themselves and create a solution together.

An environment like Blackboard can be very helpful for the collaboration of the groups. Beside the ‘traditional information’, Blackboard can support the students by a workspace for adding documents and a discussion forum or a chatbox for collaboration within the group. Off course the teacher can add documents on Blackboard about the problem that has to be solved.

Workplace learning

Nowadays workplace learning is becoming more and more popular. It means that people also learn on their workplace and not just on the educational institute like a University. The advantage of workplace learning is that the student can learn in practice. It could be that there is a kind of a problem on the workplace the student has to solve. Actually there are many ways of workplace learning. You can think about formal learning activities like trainings or workshops on the workplace, but informal activities like asking help from others or observing others also include workplace learning.

For a student who is learning on his or her workplace, Blackboard can be very helpful. In this case Blackboard can support in a way of communication tool between the teacher and the student. Additional information for the student to solve the problem on the workplace can be placed on Blackboard, but also functions like a discussion forum or a chatbox can be integrated in Blackboard. In this way the student can communicate from his or her workplace to, for instance, the teacher or co-students. Blackboard can also be used for handing in assignments and giving feedback to each other.

Collaborative learning

This approach means that students will work in groups to complete a task, given by the teacher. The students have to discuss and come to a fruitful solution. In many situations of collaborative learning there is one team coordinator who will lead the process. The group should make appointments about the performance of subtasks, so they all have responsibility. Just like in the problem based approach, the teacher fills the role of a facilitator.

The support of a CMS like Blackboard can also be equivalent as in the problem based approach. The major point of these support is to create a tool for the students to discuss and share their thoughts. This could be a discussion forum or a chatbox. The advantage of a discussion forum is that not all the team members have to be online at the same moment. They can post a reaction whenever they want. This could lead to a long waiting time for getting response by other group members, what can be seen as a disadvantage. In that case a chatbox will ensure that the students give immediately answers, but they all have to be online at the same moment. The teacher has to decide what kind of discussion function will fits the best to the assignment or project.

Inquiry learning

This last pedagogical approach, inquiry learning, is a kind of discovery learning. In this case a teacher is presenting an interesting question. After that the students have to search information about a possible answer to the question. Most of the time students have to find an answer on the question whole by themselves, individually. In this way they have to deal with responsibility for their own process and their own answer.

When a teacher uses the inquiry learning approach, I think there shouldn’t be that much information available on Blackboard. If the teacher gives the student lots of support in this environment, you cannot call it inquiry or discovery learning anymore. So, my opinion is that the teacher should give just a little information about the assignment or the question. The learner has to discover it by themselves. Of course there should be some standard information about the course like staff information, the schedule, and so on. Finally, it can be helpful to add a workspace for the student where he can keep the resources and the information that he had found.

I cannot say that I have a preference for one of these pedagogical approaches. I think they all could be useful, but all in some different situations. Sometimes it is just necessary to sit down and listen to the teacher what he or she has to say, like the traditional approach. But in other cases it can be more useful to discover a phenomenon by yourself or collaborate with co-students. I think it just depends on the content of the course and the assignment that you have to complete and it’s up to the teacher to choose the most fruitful approach for the students…