Online Education Blog

As you might have seen, I have already posted the first and second part of it with 350  words limit for each! The last part has also been done in due time but not posting it right now due to obvious reasons.

I have also started doing the second assignment that I’ll have to submit by 2nd April as I want to clear all my assignments within April so that I can go on a tour during summer vacation ( End of April to 3rd week of May).

Here are the questions for the second assignment that deals with education psychology : -

Answer the following questions in about 1500 words.
i) What do you mean by motivation? Why is it important in the teaching-learning process?
(350 words)
ii) How do learners differ on the basis of creativity? Explain in brief. (350 words)
iii) Develop a plan to identify maladjusted children in your class and discuss the strategies you would apply to help those maladjusted children. (800 words)

I’ll of-course keep on slowly posting all my answers one by one as they might be of some reference to my fellow IGNOU students in coming years.

This is the second part of my assignment, 350 word limit ( I might have exceeded it my 20-25 words but that perfectly acceptable by the authorities) - I might have changed a few words or sentence structures here and there - but that might count only to 1% of my whole assignment. So, its quite original piece.

The aim of education is to transfer knowledge to students through mediums of instruction. In India, it is mostly done via the lecture method where a teacher delivers lecture in the classroom and students follow him. Without debating on the methodologies of instruction, we can say that a without a clear objective, the system of teaching-learning and evaluation process won’t succeed as instructional objectives are part of the whole systematic instructional process. Before organizing any activity, one must know where exactly that would lead and incase of instructional objectives where would it take students.
There are two types of objectives in educational process- i) instructional objectives and ii) behavioral objectives.
When the teacher selects the course, subject matter, materials and resources, methodology and activities that takes the teacher and students at a measurable level of achievement it is known as instructional objective. To succeed, the instructional objectives require skills and personality development through tangible, concrete ways in a classroom situation.

Importance of Instructional Objectives:

Instructional objectives are of immense significance in today’s education process. They provide organizers of the process with the opportunity to delve into learners mind and know where they are heading. Instructional objectives provide teachers the opportunity to design proper assessment procedure through tests and evaluation. Students know what they are supposed to do, use before or after a particular class. Instructional objectives also help trace the amount of change that has been brought about in a student. It gives a definite direction to the whole teaching-learning and evaluation process of a particular class in classroom situations. It also helps both the teacher as well as students in determining particular educational goals and enables them to focus their attention on specific learning activities to achieve those goals. Through instructional objectives – the organizers of educational process can determine the resources, course materials, curricular and co-curricular activities, relevant contents and references etc. which are so vital to make the process functional.

Instructional objectives also lead the teacher into discovering the best learning situations, strength and weaknesses of the prevalent learning process, level of growth and development of learners through a pre-determined evaluation process. In short, instructional objectives help in monitoring and evaluating the whole educational process in minute details.

This is the first part of the 3 part assignment that I am doing currently. I’ll post the other parts tomorrow when I’m done with it. Word limit for this part is 350 words and my answer is 373. I hope there is some concession as its quite difficult to write on such a large topic within those words!

Activity Based Instruction:

What does activity based instruction classroom look like? Well .. active! Here, the teacher is mostly that of a facilitator rather than of authority in knowledge. He engages the learners into tasks and makes abstract ideas into concrete ones. It is learning by doing rather than learning by listening It can be done in two ways – i) Student cantered instruction where students have freedom to choose a problem and formulate strategies to solve them and ii) Teacher cantered instruction where the teacher takes the lead role.

Advantages of Activity Based Instruction:

1) The most important feature of activity based instruction is learning by doing. So this method of instruction can fulfil the natural urge of a growing child on one hand also can help them learn their lesson.

2) The method also promotes better understanding of a lesson among students as they learn the lesson by practicing the task themselves.

3) It inspires the students to apply their creative ideas, knowledge and minds in solving problems as well as promoting competitive spirit among them.

4) It also helps learner psychologically as they can express their emotions through active participation in something useful.

5) The method also helps in developing their personalities, social traits and inter-personal management skills.

Disadvantages of Activity Based Instruction:

1) The activity based instruction method requires long-term planning with minute details of the whole process because before engaging the learners, the teacher has to make sure that all students have sufficient knowledge and skills regarding the task they are going to perform. So this method can not be used on a regular and daily basis as it involves a lengthy procedure.

2) The objectives of the method can only be fulfilled if the planning of the lesson is flawless. If there is slightest flaw in the planning, this method would do more harm than good.

3) Learners have varied levels of merit and understanding. So less meritorious students might not prepare for a task as other which might lead to failure of objectives of the whole process.

4) Many renowned educationists also are of the opinion that the activity based method is more suitable for branches of experimental sciences and less useful for subjects of social sciences.

Some old readers might remember that I was doing an advanced course on teaching. Unfortunately I could not finish it completely. So this year I enrolled for the same course with Indira Gandhi National Open University. I have to submit my first assignment by Monday, the 8th March. AT the moment - the class 10th & Higher Secondary examinations are also going on and most of us, teachers have been deputed to the board as invigilators. Hence, I’ll have little problem arranging couple of days of holidays without taking any official leave.

Here, I am posting what type of assignments I’ll have to do in the coming months including time schedule

(Note: I have downloaded the assignment from IGNOU  University website)

Once I finish each assignment, I’ll post them here.

ASSIGNMENTS-SUBMISSION SCHEDULE FOR B.ED.

It will help you to complete the assignment in time if you start working on the assignments as soon as you get the print material. You should pace out your work in such a way so that the assignment for each theory course is submitted by the date specified in the schedule.

Last Date of Submission Course Code Assignment Code
March 8, 2009 ES-331 01-ES-331
April 2, 2009 ES-332 01-ES-332
April 26, 2009 ES-333 01-ES-333
First Teaching Subject (ES-341 to ES-345)
Choose any one subject
May 22, 2009 ES-341 to ES-345 01-ES-341 to ES-345
First Teaching Subject (ES-341 to ES-345)
Choose any one subject
June 15, 2009 ES-341 to ES-345 01-ES-341 to ES-345

Please note:

a) There is one compulsory assignment for each theory course.
b) The Assignment Responses (AR’s), may be submitted by hand at your Programme Centre or sent by post to the Coordinator of your Programme Centre.
c) You should retain a copy of all the assignments in your own interest.
d) If the last date for the submission of assignment falls on a holiday, the Assignment Response should be submitted on the following working day.

Assignments
B. Ed. (1st Year)

ES-331 : CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION
Assignment 1
Answer the following questions in about 1500 words.
i) What is ‘activity-based instruction’? Discuss its advantages and disadvantages with examples? (350 words)
ii) Explain the importance of instructional objectives in teaching, learning and evaluation?
(350 words)
iii) What do you mean by effective management of instruction? State any two problems commonly faced by you in managing your classroom. Explain as to how you dealt with those problems. (800 words)

ES-332 : PSYCHOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING
Assignment 1

Answer the following questions in about 1500 words.
i) What do you mean by motivation? Why is it important in the teaching-learning process?
(350 words)
ii) How do learners differ on the basis of creativity? Explain in brief. (350 words)
iii) Develop a plan to identify maladjusted children in your class and discuss the strategies you would apply to help those maladjusted children. (800 words)

ES-333 : EDUCATIONAL EVALUATION
Assignment 1

Answer the following questions in about 1500 words.
i) Explain three important criteria of a good evaluation tools with examples. (250 words)
ii) Define rating scale and state their uses and limitations. (250 words)
iii) While evaluating your students’ performance, you must have used oral test. Provide the one test used and write a report on their preparation and also explain how did you make it meaningful and purposeful? (1000 words)

ES-341 : TEACHING OF SCIENCE

Assignment 1

Answer the following questions in about 1500 words.
i) Explain briefly the nature of Science. (250 words)
ii) Describe “Scientific Method” with examples. (250 words)
iii) While evaluating Science practicals, you must have conducted Science practical examination. Write a report of practical examination highlighting the following:
(a) How did you set question paper for Science practical examination? (Enclose the question paper.)
(b) List of apparatus and chemicals to be used.
(c) General instructions for students.
(d) Key to the question paper. (1000 words)

ES-342 : TEACHING OF MATHEMATICS
Assignment 1

Answer the following questions in about 1500 words.
i) Explain briefly the principles of formulating Mathematics’ curriculum. (250 words)
ii) Differentiate Analytic Method with Synthetic Method. (250 words)
iii) While evaluating mathematical learning you must have used observation method. Mention two aspects of Mathematical learning taken for evaluation through observation method and write a short report on the use of observation method with the help of rating scale. (1000 words)

ES-343 : TEACHING OF SOCIAL STUDIES
Assignment 1

Answer the following questions in about 1500 words.
i) What are the approaches to organizing Social Studies curriculum at secondary school level? Which one of the approaches would you adopt and why? (250 words)
ii) Formulate specific instructional objectives and teaching-learning activities for transacting the content ‘social life and economic conditions during Indus Valley Civilization”. (250 words)
iii) Choose themes from Class IX Social Studies Curriculum. Organise instructional activities for the same themes using the following group-directed instructional techniques.
(a) Debate
(b) Panel discussion
(c) Brainstorming
Write a comprehensive report mentioning the planning and organization of the instructional activities and the experience gained by you as well as students.
(1000 words)

ES-344 : TEACHING OF ENGLISH
Assignment 1

Answer the following questions in about 1500 words.
i) Discuss how the physical and social environment of a learner helps him/her to acquire language skills. (250 words)
ii) What should be the criterion for selecting texts for reading purposes? Illustrate your answer with a variety of texts that can be selected for the purpose. (250 words)
iii) What is the role of the controlled and guided writing tasks and free writing in teaching writing? Illustrate your answer by framing tasks of each type. (250 words)