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

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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