Do you remember the feeling of turning the page and finally reaching the end of the textbook? The feeling of being able to close or conclude our focus on one topic and move towards the next chapter of learning? The sensation of paper on your fingertips and the awkward crackle of bookbindings against the quiet sound of focus reverberating between the library’s book columns.
I do, and I long for those days. Learning felt simpler, more controlled, and more elementary.
Now it seems everything is contextual, everything messy, everything subjective. What is the reason for this dramatic shift? Have humans changed into another species? Is technology irreversibly changing how we learn? Or is technology merely changing the surface of learning spaces? If so, have the fundamental learning theories that underpin our instructional choices remained the same? Then how can we best match fundamental learning theories with the context of the day?
Welcome back, readers. Our MALAT cohort has returned to the mid-semester messiness of learning, and we are now tackling contemporary issues in eLearning. On-demand learning has transformed during the Web 2.0 era, where smartphones, social media, and the rise of connectivism have inspired us to think differently about how we learn. Gone are the days of textbooks, libraries and my fading memories of distance education economics at Athabasca Unversity circa 2004. In the spirit of constructivist, social constructivist, and connectivism learning theory, our cohort is now challenged to embrace the messiness and scroll the worldwide web for an on-demand eLearning experience of our choice. This blog post serves as an outline of how our group intends to critically analyze our chosen eLearning, introduce a topic of personal interest and invite you to share your experiences in the hopes we can incorporate your voice into future reflections.
Our group is tackling an open-source, on-demand, and free eLearning the Ontario eLearning Consortium (OELC), titled “Teaching online or hoarding frogs in a wheelbarrow” (Pottle, 2022). Teachers who wish to improve their online-facilitated and online-on-demand teaching can read, reflect, and respond to the author’s recommendations. At this time, our group is interested to learn how the resource incorporates its own suggestions and how it acknowledges crowd-sourced contributions. Read more here.
I am exploring the use of foundational learning theories like behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism. I’ll be looking at how this eLearning adequately stimulates the desired response for beginner, intermediate, and advanced learners? Are activities included to help learners encode new information and develop an awareness of their learning process? And are stories or other contextually rich activities prominent to promote filtering, extrapolation, and knowledge creation?
Upon initial review, there are opportunities to make the eLearning in question more effective. First, however, perhaps we need to consider the conscious choices made by the author and how this resource matches the intended audience.
Ertmer & Newby (2013) suggests a complementary approach where the effectiveness of behaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism learning theories rely upon matching the instructional design with the task’s difficulty and learner’s abilities. For example, behaviourist learning theory can help teach low-processing tasks like memorization and association. In contrast, cognitivism is more effective for intermediate-processing tasks like procedures and classifications, and finally, constructivism helps prepared students to complete advanced-processing tasks like algorithmic problem-solving (Ertmer & Newby (2013).
In the context of sport and my thesis work, this opens a pandora’s box that I have been searching for since the MALAT program started.
In the context of our group’s analysis of Pottle’s (2022) eLearning , I’ll be re-reading the resource with a renewed understanding of each foundational learning theory.
What about you?
Do you learn best when the context matches your needs? Or when questions and ways of reflection are included in the experience? Or perhaps you want the quick and dirty summary, what do I need to know and where can I read it in the simplest of language.
So…when playing with legos…do you follow the instructions? Draw out a master plan? Or dump the whole bin on the floor and embrace the messiness?
References
Pottle, T. (2022). Teaching online or hoarding frogs in a wheelbarrow. OELC.
Ertmer, P., & Newby, T. (2013). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43-71.