A portal support to cognitive apprenticeship

Little research effort contributed to help learners reflect on their current cognitive skills. A storehouse of this valuable information could provide valuable indications to experienced mentors to intervene and guide learners improving their learning capabilities. Learning how to learn using the proposed cognitive apprenticeship approach in this paper goes beyond the given classroom knowledge to reflect on how to maximize learning readiness under the supervision of experienced mentors. In this paper, we promote an autonomous inquiry-based learning cycle to support formal education processes, whereby students learn from individual discoveries and from peers. At the completion of each inquiry-based learning cycle, a cognitive apprenticeship cycle is triggered to assess the improvements in learning dispositions and guide apprentices in developing their own cognitive skills. We propose an online instrument for collecting self-assessment data and communicating with mentors, to produce willing, confident and creative lifelong learners. The provided instrument presents a storehouse view of learning disposition through an integrated portal which captures self-stated learning experiences and converts them into analytical results to diagnose deficiencies and prescribe improvement recommendations. In doing so, we provide 'learning disposition' dimensions along which, we analytically measure learning aptitudes of individual learners. The proposed tool in this project generates an inventory of learning capabilities to guide learners reorganizing their learning agenda. Collected data out of the proposed tool reflects learners' perception at a given point of time. The tool is applied again at a later point of time to assess the changes and move the apprentice to the next level of his cognitive skills.