Ombid, Angel Mae O.

MST

101a
2014-67001

AR1

LEARNING TASK No. 1: Principle of Learning by Interaction

Teachers,

classmates,

textbooks

or

games(learning

activities) when one is to ask a child about school, they would

answer one of these undoubtedly. Why is that? Are teachers
important to them? Is it fun being with their classmates? Do they
love to read and explore their textbooks? Perhaps, do they love
the games/activities their teachers let them do?
According to John Dewey, as cited by Landrum (2005),
children learn best when they get to act things out and that
education should focus on the whole child and emphasize the
childs adaptation to the environment. Hence, children should
learn how to be reflective problem solver. Withal, as I was looking
through the components of the diagram presented for this
learning task, I ended into some realization: Do children really
learn best by doing alone? What if it is with the people they
interact that they learn best?
On laboratory classes I had gone through, groups are
always

formed

with

members

doing

the

exercises

and

experiments together. The laboratory instructors do this for

valuable reasons. Maybe one of these reasons is the inadequate
laboratory equipment but the key point of these group exercises,
I think, is the teamwork. This teamwork lets the learning by
interaction with peers come off. Based on Philp et al. (2014)s

discussion about the role of learners in peer interaction, the

learners manage to experiment and explore the subject matter
and the language they use in it on their own when they work in
groups. That is, they become independent and able to express
their own thoughts about the subject. Furthermore, the students
learn with fun and there is a lower tendency of getting bored
than that of sitting in a classroom for more than an hour just
listening to the lecturer talking about mere concepts and
principles. However, interaction with peers does not singlehandedly produce effective learning. Instead, it should be
accompanied by other factors, i.e. interaction with instructor and
interaction with content. As illustrated by the diagram in this
learning task, part of the interaction with peers overlaps with a
part of interaction with instructor and with content, furthermore.
Meaning, one component would not be effective without the
other two and those three should overlap each other to produce
effective learning. Back to the laboratory situation I illustrated a
while ago, interaction with instructor also takes place in the
setting. Based on the examples demonstrated by Philp et al.
(2014), the instructor plays a crucial role in an interaction type of
learning. Although the students should work by group and come
up with their answers together without the instructor spoon
feeding them the information, the instructor should still be able
to respond to questions generated by the students, especially to
those questions that involve unfamiliar principles to the students,
to

give

them

sense

of

satisfaction

(Instructor

and

Learner..., 2009). It is very challenging for the instructor to

overcome this kind of situation but given the sufficient passion

and patience, this could be fun for them also.
Considering that I conducted a thorough research about
the learning task, I have not really found out the systematic
meaning of interaction with content. Nevertheless, if I am to give
meaning to it, I would say that the moment a student reads his
textbook, an interaction with the content is already happening. It
is up to the student if he is going to take in the knowledge he got
from the source or he would just let it pass by. I am not certain of
my understanding about the topic though, so I hope you can
enlighten me with this.
Comprehensively considering all the information I gathered
and came up, I guess it can now answer the questions I
introduced in this paper. That is, a student would answer
teachers, classmates, textbooks or games when asked about
school because they have a special interaction with them and
that special connection gives them the freedom of acquiring
knowledge education.

LITERATURES CITED
J. Philp, Adams, R. and Iwashita, N. (2014). Peer interaction and
second
language learning: second language acquisition
research series. New
York: Taylor and Francis.
R. E. Landrum. (n.d.). Brief history of psychology. Retrieved
August 22, 2015 from
http://personal.psu.edu/faculty/a/c/acp103/PSYCH105/brief_histor
y.h
tm
Instructor and Learner Presence Effects on Student Perceptions of
Satisfaction and Learning in the University Online
Classroom. (2009).
Retrieved August 22, 2015 from
https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=TcDVvzhIVMC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&
cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false