ePortfolio

Journal 11: Transfer

 

Everyone pretty much starts out with a blank slate and during growth and development, learning begins to take place as people figure out how the world works and what skills they need to acquire and possess for life.  No two people learn the same way and through measuring transfer, Bergmann and Zepernick believe they can measure the quality of learning experiences.  

 

One major component of measuring transfer was the importance of understanding versus memorization.  Memorizing creates a rigid environment that is inflexibly and difficult to change.  By knowing about the concept, one can better address a situation when circumstances are different. Another characteristic of transfer was adaptability; being able to use different, more effective means of addressing a situation in variable ways.  Understanding can lead to better adaptability too.  Understanding oriented learning is also more effective than performance oriented learning.  Being able to conceptualize at high abstraction is more beneficial and this also falls into flexibility.  Because everything takes time and learning a new skill is built upon over time, one must constantly reflect back to what they know and adapt or change depending on the information.

 

Final assignment four reflects upon this past semester and how my personal writing experiences has changed, grown, and developed.  Developing a theory of writing requires looking back at the past assignments and readings and putting together a a theory that encompasses all of writing.  This is very fluid and adaptable.  It seems like every time I revise my theory, it changes slightly.  I think this is because in every writing situation, a different aspect of writing plays an more or less important role depending on the context. 

 

How People Learn” mostly emphasizes understanding, adaptability, and abstraction.  Effective transfer processes involve being able to use what you know and applying it in a variety of ways depending on a situation.  Being stuck in one mindset leaves little room for growth and expansion.  If a cup can only be used for drinking, that limits the function.  But, when relax the parameters of a cups function, you realize it can be so much more.

 

Bergmann and Zepernick argue that first year writing courses lay the groundwork for future writing and is a skill that isn’t as easily taught in other disciplines than students perceive it to be.  They believed that students weren’t able to see how applicable writing was to their future careers because they were not transferring it properly.  Lack of connection between writing and future jobs roles led students to reject what they had learned about writing.  Students perceived themselves to be competent writers, but didn’t know how to apply writing to things outside of specifically writing based courses.  Bergmann and Zepernick believe that teaching students how to learn to write will better enable them to recognize opportunities where writing is related to their job fields.