Critical Peer Reviews of Course mates' Authentic Learning Tasks Presentation

This blog post summarizes my views on my course peers presentation in line with the Authentic Learning Task

Oyekola, O. (2020) Using Google Classroom to facilitate collaborative construction of knowledge in a final year class. Proposal for EDN4502: Learning and Teaching with Emerging Technologies. University of Cape Town

Oyekola’s illustration on the socio-cultural analysis based on Cole (1995) Garden metaphor explains that there is "interdependence of different activity systems and their continuous interactions".  He clearly set a valid justification for the need to establishing virtual classroom with structures in readiness of any mode of learning that may be necessitated by the times such as the COVID-19 period. His writings elaborates on how his target audience been Final year students will be better off equipped with relevant real world skills based on his authentic learning approach of “facilitating collaborative construction of knowledge within a community of learning” leveraging on Google classroom and other emerging technology tools suitable to his context of focus. This closely aligns to my interest  with specific focus on his pick on the authentic learning principle of constructive collaboration of knowledge

LYDIA NALULE (2020) Towards authentic e-learning: enhancing collaboration using WhatsApp and Blogger. Proposal for EDN4502: Learning and Teaching with Emerging Technologies. University of Cape Town

Similar to Oyekola’s, Lydia focuses on Collaborative Construction of knowledge but this using WhatsApp and Blogger. She aligned her contexts based on the Lim’s garden metaphor where she laid out her approach sequentially in a logical manner. Her proposition is to “Promoting authentic learning through enabling a Collaborative knowledge construction environment using WhatsApp and Google blogger”. Conceptual questions generated to further improve on her article did include – How WhatApp and Google blogger can be used effectively to engage students in a collaborative construction of knowledge? This question critically intends to guide her arriving at the activity objective. Additionally, Lydia did represent in details a diagram of the activity system which serves to further facilitate the achievement of the objectives of her work.

 Sella Terrie Jwan (2020) Transformative Pedagogy: A case of teaching a postgraduate class using Zoom Proposal for EDN4502: Learning and Teaching with Emerging Technologies. University of Cape Town

Similarly to Oyekola, Sella’s writing kicks off with the current condition the COVID-19 pandemic has left schools to battle with in Kenya leading to the dire need to rethink the delivery of teaching and learning. Sella just like Lydia illustrated the Lim’s garden metaphor in detail where she narrated the sociocultural context an authentic task should be situated in. Additionally, her proposition highlights that the nine elements of Authentic Learning will be incorporated, I would rather suggest that emphasis be narrowed down to at least two to three of these elements that has the potential of positively impacting her target audience largely.