Monday, January 25, 2016

Modularization: The Unknown Unknown


An ideal (a.k.a. radical) modular system has some important criteria. a. Curriculum and the relations to other educational programs: Restriction of learning content and/or qualifications, flexible combination of different modules; b. Curriculum and guide lines: Standardization of learning contents, qualifications, and methods of measuring learning outcome; c. Assessment: Output-orientation; d. Certification process: Certification of each unit; e. Participants: Unrestricted entrance and exit opportunities by participants; and f. Providers: Unrestricted option to offer all types of modules by all kinds of schools and training providers. [Pilz, M. (2002). Modularization in the Scottish Education System: A View from the Outside. Scottish Educational Review 34(2): 163–174.] Those Ethiopian higher education institutes implementing the modular programs can easily see the inadequacies of the programs in terms of these criteria.

Cognitive-Metacognitive System


Metacognition is regarded as an important construct in helping educators develop better teaching and learning strategies, contexts, and materials. The development and use of good teaching and learning strategies and materials emanating from metacognition require profound understanding of how it promotes the efficiency of the cognitive system in learning. A proposed system called cognitive-metacognitive system illustrates how the metacognitive system promotes the efficiency of the cognitive system. The cognitive-metacognitive system enters into a six-step sequence of mental activities to process cognitive inputs; and yields cognitive outputs. It is well-established that metacognition promotes learning via identifying and deploying appropriate and effective cognitive processing strategies and tools; and identifying and deploying metacognitive strategies to regulate cognitive processing. Hence, the effectiveness of the cognitive-metacognitive system in promoting learning depends on its ability in helping learners generate manageable meta-level models of cognitive inputs for cognitive processing.