MONTESSORI METHOD ADAPTATION FOR
TEACHING OF SUBJECTS OF GRADUATE AND
POST-GRADUATE PROGRAMMES
David de la Mata-Moya, M. Pilar Jarabo-Amores, Jose C. Nieto-Borge and Manuel Rosa-Zurera
Departamento de Teoría de la Señal y Comunicaciones, Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, Spain
Keywords: Montessori Method, WebCT, EHEA and individual learning.
Abstract: In this paper, the application of the Montessori Method for teaching of subjects in graduate or post-graduate
programmes is proposed. The Montessori Method is a pedagogical method used successfully in nurseries
and is based on autonomy, independence and initiative for their own student learning. These principles are
part of the guidelines of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Taking into consideration the aim of
the subject Advanced Radar Signal Processing Techniques of the Master Degree on Information and
Communication Technologies of the University of Alcalá of Spain, a learning path is proposed based on the
main elements of the Montessori Method: the learning environment, didactic areas, learning materials and
teacher activities. The final project is a web tool in WebCT platform divided into didactic areas, with
material for self-taught students, combined with a teacher who monitors students through the web
environment and seminars.
1 INTRODUCTION
The European Higher Education Area (EHEA)
defines a new model of knowledge transmission
(European Ministers, 2009) that requires an
adjustment of the current model where prevails the
concept of unidirectional transmission, where the
student can see his role reduced to a passive one.
Students must be presented as protagonists of their
learning mission. There are teaching methods widely
used in earlier educational stages in which, the
emphasis is on student independent learning.
Montessori Method (Montessori and Hunt 2009) has
been successfully implemented in nursery schools.
This method, which was developed by Maria
Montessori, engineer, biologist and doctor of
medicine, is based on developing the potential for
absorption and abilities of children in a specific
environment and using scientific observation of a
trained teacher.
Despite of Montessori Philosophy is based on
the child development theories; this article aims to
describe how this methodology could be adapted to
a teaching method in graduate and post-graduate
programmes. The subject of Advanced Radar Signal
Processing Techniques as an example is considered.
This subject belongs to the Master Degree on
Information and Communication Technologies of
the University of Alcalá of Spain. From the
educational point of view, the purposes are
preparing students for their professional
development and maintaining a broad, advanced
knowledge base and stimulating research and
innovation.
In addition, post-graduated students usually have
limited time resources, since they could be
immersed in the labour market. Access into the
proposed teaching method should be widened by
providing adequate conditions in anytime and
anywhere for the development of particular skills
and interests of each student. In this paper, an
adaptation of the Montessori Philosophy based on an
eLearning platform is proposed. The designed
learning tool must not limit student action to
observation but must proceed to experimentation.
Then, didactic material has to be completely
manipulative in order to empower flexible and
individual learning.
407
de la Mata-Moya D., Pilar Jarabo-Amores M., C. Nieto-Borge J. and Rosa-Zurera M.
MONTESSORI METHOD ADAPTATION FOR TEACHING OF SUBJECTS OF GRADUATE AND POST-GRADUATE PROGRAMMES.
DOI: 10.5220/0002778404070410
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2010), page
ISBN: 978-989-674-023-8
Copyright
c
2010 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
2 ADVANCED RADAR SIGNAL
PROCESSING TECHNIQUES IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALCALA
The subject of Advanced Radar Signal Processing
Techniques belongs to programme of Master Degree
on Information and Communication Technologies of
the University of Alcalá of Spain. This subject is an
elective one with 4 ECTS (European Credit Transfer
System).
The aim of this subject is that students will be
able to raise problems of radar targets detection and
classification through hypothesis tests from
statistical models of desired targets and interference
(clutter and noise). Then, the difficulty of these
systems design and the limitations of the solutions
used in practice are presented. In this way, the
current lines of research attempting to design more
robust systems with higher capacities and detectors
are described. Understanding the operating principle
of HRR (High Range Resolution Radar) and SAR
(Synthetic Aperture Radar) is also an important
objective in order to define the problems to solve in
the processing techniques of these types of signals
used nowadays.
Every detail of the subject is easily accessible
from the website of the Master Degree:
http://proptic.uah.es/(Jarabo and Nieto 2009).
3 MONTESSORI METHOD
The basic principles of Montessori Pedagogy are
based on autonomy, independence, initiative, liberty
and self-discipline, which are also underlined by the
new educational guidelines.
There are four main blocks in this method: The
learning environment, creation of didactic areas,
design of learning material and description of
teacher activities. An adaptation of each identified
block following the Montessori Method basis for
Advanced Radar Signal Processing Techniques
teaching is described.
3.1 Learning Environment
The learning environment must be specifically
prepared for students to be academic, comfortable,
and to encourage independence by giving them the
tools and responsibility of its management. An
environment in where all students move usefully,
intelligently, and voluntarily, could foster innovation
and creativity.
In graduate and post-graduate courses, an
environment, that is easily accessible and flexible in
time, is proposed in order to allow students free
movement to go and come as they like, throughout
the entire day in any place. Currently, an Internet
platform seems particularly suited to provide these
facilities. WebCT (Web Course Tools) or
Blackboard Learning System (BLS) (Yaskin and
Everhart 2002) platform is the official eLearning
platform at the University of Alcala. The BLS is a
powerful instructional tool that is easy-to-use and
built to provide a flexible environment to work
inside and outside the classroom in ways that make
sense to the students learning. A powerful analysis,
that permits a monitoring of students academic
progress, is also offered to the responsible teachers.
Figure 1: Website of Virtual Course (BLS).
In Figure 1 the Virtual Course of Advanced
Radar Signal Processing Techniques is presented. In
this virtual space, students have access to all
necessary learning material in a simple way. The
material is organized into different didactic areas
that have hands-on approach to learning the main
topics of the corresponding subject, as is suggested
in the Montessori Method (Montessori and Hunt
2009). In this environment, students can work at
their own pace, encouraging collaboration against
competition.
3.2 Didactic Areas
These didactic areas, corresponding to the major
thematic blocks of the subject, encourage the
extension of the knowledge and understanding in
parallel and adapted to each student. All proposed
areas must be interwoven, not taught in isolation.
In Figure 2, a division into areas of the learning
environment is presented attending to the purposes
of Advanced Radar Signal Processing Techniques
defined in Section 2.
Students are self-taught to decide the order in
which they are going to develop the learning mission
attending to their skills and concerns. Teachers have
the responsibility of observing the students learning,
for example, using control tools to ensure that all
students have gone through all the defined areas.
CSEDU 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education
408
Figure 2: Example of creation of didactic areas in the
environment of the corresponding Virtual Course.
3.3 Learning Material
The design of specific material, that encourages an
independent learning, is a primary task for the
success of this teaching method.
In the practical application of the proposed
method, didactical material is divided in grades of
difficulty (basic, intermediate and advanced) for
each area. This is a helpful organization with the aim
of facilitating the planning of their learning path
without diminishing freedom and responsibility.
Regardless of the grade of difficulty, materials
must be familiar and intuitive, but mostly
manipulative by students to encourage active
learning through experimentation. Research and
innovation with this type of teaching method is
stimulated.
Figure 3: Example of basic grade learning material in the
didactic area of Clutter Signal Models.
Material of basic grade (Figure 3) is composed
of three types of tools: a learning guide, designed by
teachers, which serves as a supporting document to
work with the fundamental bibliography; the basic
books of theory; and the main links to URL with
information of interest.
The basic knowledge understanding allows
students to use materials of intermediate grade
where the new acquired concepts have to be applied.
In Figure 4, two types of tools are presented. First
one is a document developed by the students
themselves in order to obtain a final draft of notes.
Although, initially is a document prepared by
teachers, with graphs and equations of interest,
students have to manipulate it with their own words.
Moreover, simulation exercises with software tools
are proposed as laboratory classes.
Figure 4: Example of intermediate grade learning material
in the didactic area of Clutter Signal Models.
At this level of difficulty, a discussion forum is
very interesting because the student-student and
student-teacher dialogue is facilitated.
Figure 5: Example of calibration tool.
In these two grades of difficulty, a calibration
tool, or error control, is proposed in order to allow
students assessing their knowledge. Following the
Montessori Philosophy, the proposed tool (Figure 6)
is based on an adaptable and flexible test developed
in the BLS. Students can choose each time, for the
exam, the didactic areas and the level of difficulty.
MONTESSORI METHOD ADAPTATION FOR TEACHING OF SUBJECTS OF GRADUATE AND
POST-GRADUATE PROGRAMMES
409
With this self-assessment, students learn to correct
their own mistakes instead of relying on a teacher to
give them the correct answer.
Finally, at the advanced grade (Figure 6), an
updated view of the subject under study is presented.
The learning materials are innovative papers in
international and national scientific journals on lines
that are fostering greater professional and research
activity. The final purpose is the development of
particular skills and interests of each student
individually and the possibility of a lifelong
learning.
Figure 6: Example of advanced grade learning material in
the didactic area of Clutter Signal Models.
3.4 Teacher Activities
Self-learning is as important as a scientific
observation by the teacher (Montessori and Hunt
2009). Students monitoring allows teacher to know
what they need to improve individually.
Design and creation of learning material to all
three grades of difficulties, as well as the adaptive
tool for self-assessment is a preliminary work of
teacher.
During the class period, teacher plays an active
role in monitoring the interest and participation of
students in each area. Student-teacher dialogue is
developed through the discussion forums or
seminars. For example, the seminars could be
planned with a brief speech from each student about
the done activities in each area with the
corresponding grade of difficulty, discussing about
both the acquired knowledge as emerged doubts in
the learning process. Thus, public speaking is trained
and personal growth is encouraged through social
relationships with peers.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Taking into consideration the new learning paths of
European Higher Education Area (EHEA), a
teaching method used successfully in other stages of
education is considered.
In this paper, the adaptation of the Montessori
Method for teaching of subjects in graduate or post-
graduate programmes is proposed. The Montessori
Pedagogical Principles are based on the cognitive
structures and social development.
A learning environment, easily accessible
through the WebCT platform of eLearning, is
suggested. This environment is divided into didactic
areas where students can move freely and
independently to study each of them. The purposes
are to create individual learning plans and to
encourage an active learning. Inside each area, there
are learning materials classified by grade of
difficulty.
The designed materials are mainly characterized
by allowing students their self-development through
experimentation. An adaptable and flexible
calibration tool is proposed as control error in order
to encourage that students learn of their own
mistakes.
Teacher must observe monitoring of the students
through discussion forums and seminars to ensure
their progress in all defined areas.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been supported by University of
Alcala of Spain, under Project UAH/EV299.
REFERENCES
European Ministers Responsible for Higher Education,
2009. The Bologna-Process 2020 – The European
Higher Education Area in the new decade. In
Communiqué of the Conference of European Ministers
Responsible for Higher Education.
Montessori, M. and Hunt, J., 2005. The Montessori
Method, Ed. Kessinger Publishing.
Yaskin, D. and Everhart, D., 2002, Blackboard Learning
System (Release 6). Product Overview White Paper.
Available at: http://www.blackboard.com/docs/wp/
LSR6WP.pdf.
Jarabo-Amores, P. and Nieto-Borge, J.C., 2009. Web Page
of Advanced Radar Signal Processing Techniques:
http://proptic.uah.es/course/info.php?id=22
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