I have enrolled into a very interesting and challenging course offered by Georgie tech Coursera; Fundamentals of On-line Education Planning and Application.

Course objectives cover; (1) understanding on-line learning pedagogy and androgogy, (2) reviewing  on-line learning components, (3) creating on-line learning components, (4) investigating on-line course design, (5) exploring learning managemnt systems, and (6) creating an on-line course. Especially ” creating an on-line course” will be really interesting.

The course has just begun and at the onset we were asked to react to course content which focused on learning theories.

Here is my response…

On-line Teaching has been becoming widespread and it has affected instructional design and implementation profoundly. The terrain of on-line learning environment has changed the notion of classroom, roles of teachers, roles of students, curriculum design, tasks, course content, methodology and assessment of learning objectives.

What’s the ideal learning theory to fit the on-line learning environment?

If I was designing an on-line course, then among constructivist (discovery learning- Bruner, social constructivism-Vygotsky, categories of learning–Gagne, progressive movement- Dewey) and cognitive approaches (cognitive load-Sweller, info processing approach, Androgogy) I would build the course around the premises of social constructivism and discovery learning to cater for the needs of on-line learners. Social constructivism involves cycles of related activities, dialogue, talk, collaboration and the social context in order to help the individuals to construct his or her own reality and understanding. Learning involves (re)learning, (re/de)construction, reflection and change of the input (assimilation). Also, social constructivism does not abstract the person from socio cultural landscape and ignore social dimensions of experience, learning and communication.

Teaching Approaches:

Peer instruction and The Flipped instruction would suit on-line learning environment because in both methods teacher is nor perceived as the sole authority and traditional teaching principles are not prioritised. Instead students are actively engaged in course content and learn from each other, constructing representations of their learning. Also they are compatible with Kolb’s experiential learning and Bruner’s discovery learning.

An Example On-line Program Model

Roger Schank reports their experience of building an online program model which is based on learning by doing principles in the video entitled “How Does Online Learn By Doing Actually Work?”. 

In this program the instructional design is modelled after ecological validity of real life situations. In other words, the program is project-based, theme-based and curriculum emulates real-life settings. So, when students work together on real-life projects they also get oriented to real-life situations that will be encountered in their professional life later on. In this design students are not tabula-rasa, not empty vessels to be filled in with information. Perception of education is not transmitting knowledge to passive students. On the contrary, in this model students put in greater effort, they are active actors who take on responsibility of their own learning. It’s also stated by the course participants that their retention was higher because they actively engage in class tasks and focus on and interact with course content. In “What We Learn When We Learn by Doing” Schank labelled the long retention and positive backwash of the curriculum design as “The Acquisition of Functional Knowledge”. According to him “learning by doing allows for the natural acquisition of micro-scripts that supply a learner with a set of individual or packaged executable procedures that, if practiced, will be of use for as long as necessary”. Furthermore learn by doing model does not assign directive roles to teachers. Here, teachers are Socrative mentors who monitor and guide students in order to assist them to become independent thinkers. Therefore, teachers have abandoned traditional methods of teaching, especially standing in front of large classes and lecturing. Instead they have increased quality interaction time with their students via project-based, task-based projects which aren’t outcomes of the curriculum but the curriculum itself.

References:

Schank, Roger C.  (1995) What We Learn When We Learn by Doing. (Technical Report No. 60). Northwestern University, Institute for Learning Sciences. (http://cogprints.org/637/1/LearnbyDoing_Schank.html)

Lowes, S. 2008. Online teaching and classroom change: The trans-classroom teacher in the age of the internet. Innovate 4 (3).

http://innovateonline.info/pdf/vol4_issue3/Online_Teaching_and_Classroom_Change-__The_Trans-Classroom_Teacher_in_the_Age_of_the_Internet.pdf