LEARNING THEORY MODULE 1

Similar to my philosophy of face to face education with elementary children, my philosophy of distance education is a strong constructivist approach. With that said, my philosophy also includes some aspects of behaviorist and cognitivist approaches. Given these beliefs I trust more learners will be motivated, engaged, and able to use their strengths and learning styles. According to Anderson (2008), the constructivist view holds that learners interpret the world differently and gain knowledge by observing, translating, processing, and personalizing information connected to their experiences all in order to gain meaning. Boghossian (2006) argued that constructivist approaches can have a variety of names such as inquiry based learning, problem centered learning, differentiated instruction, discovery learning, and others. This includes flexible delivery, flexible learning, situated cognition, and workplace learning. Given these views, my teaching is often inquiry based and directly related to learners’ activities and interests. It allows for their unique interpretations of classroom activities. Altun and Buyukduman (2007) discussed constructivist teaching as being much more facilitative than a traditional teaching approach. Constructivist methods also allow the learners to participate in deciding instructional matters thus creating crossover of roles among students and instructors. My instructional design includes relationships between instructors and learners as reciprocal within the structure provided. Instructors would guide and facilitate learning while also giving autonomy to learners to determine what they learn whether in second grade or graduate school. In addition, assessment in constructivism can be more subjective than traditional assessments of learning and emphasis is placed on students’ self-assessments. Mueller (2005) provided data that contrasted the traditional styles of assessment such as multiple choice tests with authentic assessment styles. These contrasting concepts included: Traditional Authentic selection of responses performance tasks contrived real-life recall/recognition construction/application teacher structured learner structured indirect evidence direct evidence Assessment in my design is authentic and will measures student success in attaining the predetermined learning goals. Learners will be provided a detailed rubric to inform them of the required quality of the work being assessed. Through small group work, learners will be allowed to provide each other feedback so they can strengthen their products thus informal peer assessment will occur. Additionally, learners demonstrate how they were all involved in the projects, and how well they collaborated and made decisions. Required participation in discussions will also occur and serve as one form of formative assessment. A summative assessment will also be provided and will be based on the components of the rubric in determining to what extent students met the learning goals. Authentic assessments are combined with other formal measures to determine what has been learned. Classroom management is another key factor for successful learning. In class, there be face to face instructor meetings with groups as classroom management of the project steps as well as group interactions. Teachers may guide learners through any problem solving that may be needed. For learners with unique behavioral needs, a strong behaviorist approach is implemented to diminish undesirable behaviors and replace them with new behaviors. This may include a chart for data keeping, and a variety of scheduled rewards and consequences to meet individual needs. The purpose of learning theory in technology is to provide a foundation for course design and instruction. A variety of theories allow one to create a variety of avenues to teach a diverse student group. References Altun, S., & Büyükduman, F. (2007, January). Teacher and Student Beliefs on Constructivist Instructional Design: A Case Study. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 7(1), 30-39. Anderson, T. (Ed.). (2008). The theory and practice of online learning (2nd ed.). Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: Athabasca University Press. Boghossian, P. (2006, December). Behaviorism, Constructivism, and Socratic Pedagogy. Educational Philosophy & Theory, 38(6), 713-722. Clark, D. (2004). A brief history of instructional system design. Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/history_isd/isdhistory.html Lee, H. S., & Lee. S. Y. (n.d.). Dick and Carey model. Retrieved February 2, 2009, from http://www.umich.edu/%7Eed626/Dick_Carey/dc.html Mueller, J. (2005, April). AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT in the CLASSROOM... and the LIBRARY MEDIA CENTER. Library Media Connection, 23(7), 14-18. Retrieved August 21, 2008, from Academic Search Premier database. Siemens, G. (2002, September 30). Instructional design in elearning. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/InstructionalDesign.htm The ADDIE Model located at http://www.learning-theories.com/addie-model.html The ASSURE Model located at http://www.ou.edu/class/eipt3043/assure.html