Design of one online learning course, performance-based, in Pedagogy to develop Lifelong Learning Competences and its Evaluation

I. Objectives

In this paper, we point out the importance of developing students’ lifelong learning competencies throughout the academic curriculum, using basic principles of instruction for goal-directed learning, together to strategies as key questions on theory and practice, formative assessment and feedback, and competencies for lifelong learning, and their evaluation for improvement educational quality purposes.

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and the ABET, in USA, express its commitment to key competencies, specifically for lifelong learning (LLL), considering its cross-cutting nature, making them essential to provide added value for young people, employers and for social cohesion, and is expressed as: A ‘recognition of the need for, andan ability to engage in life-long learning’.

The course design and its strategies to students’ participation in the forum of theory and practice, beside the critical role play by Professors as Educators help students to afford complex performance problems, contributing to their development as lifelong learners.

II. The course design

Our course design is based in

A) The instructional course design principles based in Gagné (Gagné, Briggs &Wager, 1988) which are the following:

1. Gaining attention, motivating, informing the student of the learning outcomes and stimulating recall of prerequisites,
2. Presenting the material,
3. Eliciting the performance (Merrill, 2008)-Task-centered, Activation existing knowledge, Demonstration, Application, Integration new knowledge into the learner’s world, by being directed to reflect-on, discuss, or defend their new knowledge or skill-.
4. Learning guided by questioning, formative assessment and feedback to empower students as self-regulated learners. Self-regulation is manifested in the active monitoring and regulation of a number of different learning processes, e.g. :

• The strategies used to achieve goals,
• The management of resources,
• The effort exerted,
• Reactions to external feedback,
• The outcomes produced. (Nicol and Macfarlane-dick, 2006).

Students generate internal feedback as they monitor their engagement with learning activities and tasks, and assess progress towards goals. All this is related to lifelong learning competencies.

B) The Lifelong Learning Model

Our Lifelong Learning Model is characterized by the following stages:

1. Deliberation on what I know and what I have to learn, self-assessment,
2. Planning the action learning, pre-active, self-management,
3. Action learning and performing, self-monitoring assessment,
4. Evaluation phase of the learning action and outcomes, self-reflection and self-regulated learning.

C) Performance-centered learning principle

Providing just-in-time, just-enough, and just-at-the-point-of need information trough a set of authentic problems and tasks related to a specific working environment, applying adequate formative and collaborative feedback.

III. The instructional design in action, in the virtual course, to develop competencies for LLL

We apply the principles mentioned above, in one course on ‘Program Evaluation’ in Pedagogy in the Spanish University for Distance Education, which includes the

• ‘Student Learning Guide’, with the course syllabus, the practice to perform ‘and generic competencies to develop, for a better and competent practice of the profession.
• A wide variety of instructional supports as video-classes and web-conference, and others learning resources, as articles.
• Links between every theme and their correspondent
• Forum on theory: key questions, theory related practice questions, peer-collaborative feedback, and teacher feedback.
• Forum on practice: students present their practical proposal, and the teacher assesses and gives formative evaluation for all.

Students are encouraged to put in common their suggestions to improve the proposal of the others, and are motivated to share their experiences, and based on the need to go beyond individualism, to generate a better understanding and richness of learning, from the social constructivist perspective (Vygotsky, 1978).

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