Whether you realize it or not, cognitive learning has played a vital role throughout our lives since our birth. We learn through our experiences, emotions, feelings, bonds, and connections and this process never stop. It defines who we are and how we live in this world
After reading this, the question arises, what is cognitive learning?
Cognitive learning is a type of learning which enables students to use their brains effectively. Instead of going for traditional learning methods such as rote-learning, memorization, and repetition, Cognitive learning focuses on long-lasting, constructive and active method of learning through experience which fully engages the students so that the learning, remembering and thinking process gets easier.
It builds on past knowledge and by making relevant connections and reflecting on it. This dramatically increases the analytical skills of the students and helps them to better learners.
Incorporating Cognitive Learning in the Education System
The benefit of going back to college is that a lot of schools are switching towards the methods of cognitive learning. A lot of activities are being geared down in order to push students towards solving difficult problems and stimuli.
Some of the activities which are being crafted include situations where students are made to work under pressure and that they have to apply logic, creativity and their analytical skills to come up with an answer. The idea is to incorporate factors like exercise, emotions, mood, interest, and experimentation, which are the pillars behind successful and effective learning.
The cognitive model of education works in a way which enables students to process to more difficult concepts, phases, and application through working on a strong foundation. Not only that, the cognitive model makes sure that the students learn through a variety of new experiences, but the key aspect of these experiences is that they anticipate the future outcome on the basis of their previous knowledge.
One of the biggest advantages of this approach is that not only does this approach seems a bit more personalized and progressive to the students, but it also focuses on developing their analytical skills.
There are five main principles of cognitive learning that can be integrated into the education system.
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Remembering
This refers to all these activities and tasks that rely on students in order to remember and recall their previously learned information in order to accomplish the current task. This includes:
- Mind mapping
- Creating a timeline of events that incurred
- Put down what you recall in writing to every little detail
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Understand
This refers to a wide range of activities in order to engage students as to see how they interpret and analyze the situation, that whether they look at the situation from a different perspective and have the mentality to think about outside the box. Some of the things which need to be considered are:
- Listing down examples
- Justifying and defending their points
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Applying
This is the main aspect of the entire process where students have to rely on their skills and knowledge to get results.
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The idea is to push students where they have to rely on their previous experiences in order to solve these new challenges.
- Students need to identify the problem
- Solve the problem using past experiences
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Evaluating
This area focuses on making judgement calls based on the analyzed information. The information will be weighed based on the previously based criteria. This includes activities such as:
- Constructing graphs and charts to illustrate the developments
- Noting down important information
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Creating
Cognitive learning has an approach where it is centered in adapting to new situations to solve or address different issues and problems. It relies on students to come up with decisive ideas, thoughtful solutions in order to answer these problems. Some of the few activities include:
- Writing different scenarios to address the problem
- Writing a guidebook for demonstrating new information
Advantages of Using Cognitive Approach of Learning in Universities
The cognitive approach to the education process focuses on integrating or passing down of information to students through direct involvement over the course by various encounters. These encounters provided to a given student change in the light of their previous experiences — supporting for more advanced levels of association and more complicated ideas as the student’s prior knowledge allows.
The upside of this approach is that it centres around on the individual student and his/her learning process and progress. If a student faces difficulty in understanding and getting a grip on a certain process or concept, additional help can be provided through immediate experiences.
These are designed to provide assistance to the student in any case. In an ideal world, the student would ace that level before moving on to the next level of cognitive development.
Another benefit is that since the learning occurs in the cognitive memory structures located in our brain and these memory structures not only perceive, process, store but also analyze these memories for short and long term retrieval. This approach not only validates the link between cause and effect between learning but rather also of other cognitive processes such as personality, beliefs.
This approach can be beneficial as explicit learning of high-level cognitive skills can be easily evaluated and approached.
The Wrap Up
We need to incorporate emotions, feelings, experiences and interest in the minds of the students. It not only aids them in absorbing, processing and retaining information but also helps them to become analyze the situation and come up with a solution. The skills to solve a problem are one of the main features of a strong education. Learning the way to think and resolve issues and other complexities will help students with different facets of life.
As, such it is essential to enhance the classroom learning environment so that the student becomes actively involved in such learning process. These learning processes will define how they will shape their own future.
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