Overview and Introduction

While you read this section, please think about and comment upon:

1. This article was written in 1999, knowing what we know now, do you think some of what they suggest may happen has actually now happened?

Critique: Overview and Introduction

The overview of the whole paper is succinct, and clearly establishes the outline of the  study.  The results are revealed in a balanced manner with both the positive and negative outcomes as well as proposing some caution about using problem-based teaching methods.   The summary is perhaps lacking in a little more detail of the research methodology and whether it was qualitative or quantitative. We have to presuppose this by assuming ‘responses and perceptions’ means qualitative.

Within the introduction, although not overtly stated, the paper is coming from a cognitive background, perhaps more specifically a socially constructed.  Evidence for this can be found when they propose  learning paradigms such as  – ‘from a teaching to learning focus’, ‘from instructing students to explaining learning’ and “from content centered to outcome based approaches’ (Oliver & Omari, 1999).

A citation is missing where they suggest ‘problem-solving and collaborative activities are seen to support higher order thinking and learning’ (Oliver & Omari, 1999). Support for these comments would add validity here.  Another omission here and a more important one in the context of this paper is they talk of educators increasingly turning to learning technologies to support teaching large groups of learners. I think this glosses over the hundred years or so of correspondence learning and how this achieved the aims of teaching large disparate groups of students (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, Zvacek, 2010).

Overall, however, we leave the introduction with a clear picture of the problem at hand and their motivation in addressing it.