USING AWARENESS OF LEARNING PROCESSES TO HELP STUDENTS DEVELOP EFFECTIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES

摘要

A large body of research in engineering education has been devoted to the study of engineering student teams. This work focuses on understanding the factors that shape the dynamics, interactions, and performance of teams, identifying pedagogical strategies and resources that improve team functioning, and developing methods of assessment to measure team skills. Among the factors that have been studied are students' learning processes, commonly measured using learning styles inventories. This study employs a particular instrument, the Learning Connections Inventory, and methodology, the Let Me Learn process, for characterizing the individual learning processes of students. The Let Me Learn (LML) process is a comprehensive strategy for building metacognitive awareness in students. LML differs from learning styles approaches in that learning styles typically identify the learner with a personality type or category rather than a profile reflecting degree of preference for multiple interacting patterns, and also in that LML emphasizes the learner's capacity to use his/her patterns strategically to adapt to different learning expectations instead of merely seeking compatible learning conditions. The process begins by having students take the Learning Connections Inventory (LCI). Responses to the LCI's 28 statements about learning preferences, using a Likert scale ranging from Always to Never Ever, yield a profile of the extent to which an individual utilizes each of four types of patterned learning processes, listed below with some of the key preferences characterizing each pattern: Sequence (organization, planning, order, structure). Precision (information, details, knowing for the sake of knowing). Technical Reasoning (hands-on learning, relevance, self-sufficiency). Confluence (risk, innovation, alternative views, freedom from rules).