Learning to learn: E-tivities

I asked the question 'how will I learn?' in a previous blog post and this may well become a theme to explore, as it helps me to reflect on ways others may learn especially when much of the learning activity is online.

The idea of 'e-tivities' relates to this. The term was apparently coined by Salmon (2002), and refers to online tasks for learners to engage in. These would typically be discrete tasks that a student might be asked to complete such as posting on a discussion form, commenting on another student's post, etc. One might say this blog is effectively an extended e-tivity for this course?

Pettenati and Cigognini (2009) present a helpful discussion of how one might design effective e-tivities to promote students' abilities to learn, or learning competencies. In fact they make reference to the term 'Personal Knowledge Management' or PKM that cover seven main competencies:

"retrieving information, evaluating information, organizing information, analyzing information, presenting information, securing information, collaborating around information" (Pettenati & Cigognini, 2009, p. 2-3).

I can see these are all key transferable skills that are inherent in any form of academic learning, and especially so in the learning context I am applying this to at present and in the foreseeable future. They go on to unpack these PKM stills a little further by distinguishing between 'personal knowledge and learning' and 'management of learning' and also between 'basic' PKM skills and 'higher order' PKM skills. The 'basic' skills reflect more relatively straightforward 'know-how' skills (p. 3), whereas the 'higher order' skills reflect a more sophisticated set of reflective and experiential skills that they refer to as 'know to be'. Whilst the basic skills are of course important and needed, it is the higher-order skills that are ones we are keen to develop and support on the MAPP and the MAPP-DL.


References
Pettenati, M. C., & Cigognini, M. E. (2009). Designing e-tivities to increase learning-to-learn abilities. eLearning Papers, No. 12. www.elearningpapers.eu

Salmon, G. (2002). E-tivities: The key to active only learning. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.