Learning in a Group Essay

1. What do you learn from working in a group? I learnt that by working in a group, we work towards a shared purpose and common goals in doing so shared our varied experiences and skills and in the cooperation with each other. Students are much likely to perform well when they work effectively in a group. This is because good group work creates synergy – where it combine effect of the group is greater than the sum of individual effort. Working together as a group can apply individual perspectives, experiences and skills to solve complex problems, creating new solutions and ideas that, and be beyond the scope of any one individual. As well as enhancing class performance. Good group work benefits individual too. It enables mutual support and learning, can generate a sense of belonging and commitment. I also learnt the following benefits on working in groups: †¢Apply a mix of skills that go beyond the scope of one individual. †¢Solve complex problems that take more than one mud. †¢Generates new ideas. †¢Provide support and help group members. †¢Give students a sense of belonging. †¢Enhance communication. †¢Help students to learn from each other and develop. †¢Generate commitment. Q.2 what do you think can be done to make this course (Lifelong Education/ more interesting. INTRODUCTION Lifelong learning skills are wide concern in tertiary education. Fostering these skills requires reconsideration and changes to traditional approaches to teaching and learning. We are living in a time of knowledge explosion. University or colleges are unlikely to be able to teach all the essential knowledge a student needs for their whole career within a four-year period. Moreover, much of the knowledge student learn in the university will be out of date when they leave, because of the rapid technical developments. This means student and have to master a self-learning method and a set of lifelong learning skills in order to meet the demand of their future, professional lives. Quality teaching and learning in tertiary education should aim to develop student’s lifelong learning skills. Each teacher  should make a contribution in developing these skills when teaching a certain course. How to make the course (lifelong Education) more interesting includes †¢Group working tutorials; workshop tutorial classes are aimed at developing student’s self directed leaving, group work and interpersonal skill the classroom for intervals should have movable desk and class. Each interval class should contain about 15 student and last one hour. The tutor will ask question to guide students to think and to work together to determine potential solutions to a problem. Some questions will challenging and relevant to real world, while some are from previous lectures and assignments. Student in each group are expected to work with each other, to share their ideas to discuss, and to debate and convince each other, thus creating an active and interactive learning environment. One student in each group will be asked to give a short presentation to the whole class. †¢Interaction in lectures Whatever the similarities and differences in learning styles and intelligence among your student, you can help your entire student by employing a range of active learning approaches (talking and listening, writing, reading, reflecting) and by using varied teaching techniques and strategies. †¢ The course lifelong education is suppose to be handle by a professional lecturers, people like Prof .M.B Shitu, Mal. Sani Bala Hassan, those who during the lectures will give students the opportunity to think and talk, and set some time during lectures for asking question or encouraging student to answer and ask question: In this way student understanding can be assess and make them engage with the activity. There is also need to introduce hardware demonstration in lectures. Although software demonstration are cheap and convenient, it is a virtual world . When doing demonstration let student predict what will happen next, and ask them to observe things going on and explain the theory behind it .Some question may follow to make the student learn interactively and to establish connections between pre-existing knowledge and new information. In this way student are expected to develop observational skills and thinking and these will make the course more interesting. †¢The lecturer supposes to use two o three case studies in the course. Case studies tell real and complete story, usually interdisciplinary and set in a real world context, and have academic and  professional significance and social implications. With case studies, students can develop problem solving skills for seeking and assessing information and interdisciplinary knowledge. †¢Students should be taught according to their aptitude. Give excellent student’s additional training. For example, a few exemplary students will be encouraged to give mini lectures to review material or less important sections. Thus, they develop oral and leadership skills from the process of searching for information and inquiry about classmates understanding. †¢Lecturers for the course must consider the features of their courses and the characteristics of their learners before they think about what kind of knowledge and skills students will learn from the course. Then they must decide which teaching strategies are suited to their course. They should try and adapt contemporary teaching strategies to create a more student – centred teaching and learning climate for developing students’ lifelong learning skills. Students are expected to develop problem solving skills, lateral thinking skills, group work ability, self-directed learning skills, and communication skills in the cause of lifelong education. †¢Lecturers’ must adopt student-centred approaches in teaching and learning. The so called student-centred approach means that teachers should think about how the learners learn and make the student actively involved in the teaching process. In most cases, a combination of several teaching outcomes. Lectures in this course should work out the suitable strategies for themselves, the students and the course content. CONCLUSION Teaching and learning is a cooperative process between teachers and students. Before a lecturer tries to teach in a different way, he/she needs to introduce students to new teaching and learning theories. And also need to seek colleagues support and finds to implement appropriate changes. The work may be challenging and time consuming. Hopefully, opportunities will coexist with challenges. A good lecturer motivates him/her self in pursing quality teaching.