E-Learning Design Assignment 2, Part 1: Design Recommendations Report

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The Humanist approach developed from the Cognitive but focuses on experiential learning and the assumption that the individual is ever seeking greater personal adequacy, self-esteem and self-actualisation.

Humanists emphasise the individual’s innate need to achieve personal worth, dignity and creativity and believe a better society will evolve by nurturing these qualities.

Humanist teachers can create a positive classroom climate and encourage the psychological growth towards the creation of self-actualising people.

Humanists believe that learners respond to their environments as they experience it – part of that is the person themselves – the self.

Feeling and emotions play an important part in learning.

What effect might e-Learning contexts have for the Humanist approach?

There could be some obstacles present within e-learning contexts for the humanist approach, whereby the positive classroom environment, feels and emotions, and encouraging atmosphere are not present in online sources as much as in face-to-face contexts. This has a constraining effect on the core values of humanistic approach, therefore various tools would need to be employed to overcome the barriers and create the self-actualization that is the important facet of humanism.

Principles emphasised by Humanist theory:

§  People learn by relating the world to their previous experience – they learn by doing

§  People learn in a free environment that permits and encourages development of potential, self-expression and self-determination

§  People learn co-operatively, which includes constructive feedback in a non-competitive environment

§  The learning that has most meaning for people is that which is contructed by individuals out of their experience

Burns, R. 1995, The Adult Learner at Work, Business & Professional Publishing, Sydney.

Cognitive psychologists emphasize the role of experience, the development of meaning, and the use of problem-solving and insight as the sources of learning.

The individual learner will perceives organised wholes – rather than disconnected pieces.

Each person will behave and learn in terms of what is real for them.

Learning is therefore based on the re-organisation of experiences into systematic and meaningful patterns that lead to problem-solving and insight.

This will mean that interpretation is subjective – reality is what each of us perceives and understands at any given time.

TASK: Watch the following video from the Wharton University of Pennsylvania:

http://www.learningwiki.com/theory  

Part 2 – Cognitivism

Examples you may be familiar with:

Meaningfulness:

According to cognitive theory – our brains look for patterns and completion.

Our brains have the capacity to associate anything with anything else and will find associations if we allow it to! This allows us to be creative and problem-solve.

Each person will create their own meaning based on the current context and their past experiences.

Insight:

The sudden Blinding Flash of the Obvious!

The realization of how to solve a problem by a cognitive restructuring of the environment – looking at things differently!

Until we start thinking around the problem (restructuring and reorganising) we will not be able to gain any insight into how to solve the problem.

What effect might meaningfulness and insight have in e-Learning contexts? 

Meaningfulness: in any learning context, including e-learning, meaningfulness would, in my opinion, have positive effects, as inofrmation would be related to subjective individual meaning. This would make the information being taught relatable to the learner, which would in turn result in greater retention and recall ability.

Insight: gaining insight and subsequently reorganizing and restructuring would ensure attention is retained and that the learner is thinking about the information provided to them, interpreting it by restructuring and reorganizing, and then making ultimate meaning of it.

Advance Organisers:

An advance organiser provides a scaffold for the ideas – or cognitive structure – which will bridge the gap for the learner between the content – what’s known and what they will need to know before new material becomes meaningful.

The scaffolding is intended to provide a higher level (more generalized) concept that will then allow the learner to incorporate more detailed and differentiated materials into the structure.

Advance organisers use current and relevant concepts that the learner already has – to make it possible to put new learning into the framework.

The sequencing of content must allow new concepts to be related to old ones.

How can we use Advance Organisers in e-Learning contexts?

Advance organizers can be utilized in e-learning contexts via the bridging of the gap between the known and unknown for the learner, and what is needed to get there. By making information relevant to current knowledge, the gap will be closed as the learner will be able to underpin new knowledge with the knowledge that exists and that they already have the advance capacity to comprehend.

Principles emphasised by Cognitive theory:

§  The perceptual features of the problem as interpreted by the individual affect what is learned

§  A learning problem should be structured by the teacher so that the essential features are open to the learner’s inspection

§  The organisation of knowledge should move from simple to complex to create a meaningful whole

§  Feedback as hypothesis testing is a basis for correcting faulty learning

Burns, R. 1995, The Adult Learner at Work, Business & Professional Publishing, Sydney

Behaviourists attempted to study behaviour and learning from a scientific approach – only observable and measurable behaviours are reliable. 

They explain human behaviour in terms of cause and effect – therefore learning is a modification of behaviour by application of stimuli, shaping of responses and the provision of reinforcement.

Learning is demonstrated in the response or behaviour of the learner.

TASK: Watch the following video from the Wharton University of Pennsylvania:

http://www.learningwiki.com/theory  

Part 1 – Behaviourism

Examples you may be familiar with:

Classical Conditioning – Pavlov’s  Dogs

The learner (dog) is conditioned (learns) to emit a response (dribble) which was originally a natural response to another stimulus (food) to a new stimulus (a bell).

Classic conditioning can also be demonstrated by our ability to generalize our responses to stimuli.

Eg. A household drill may cause a reaction for a person that has had an experience with a dentist’s drill!

What effect might generalizing have in e-Learning contexts? 

I feel that generalizing in an e-learning context could be extremely constrictive, and ultimately a disadvantage to successful e-learning. Many people have stereotypical generalizations relating to e-learning which means that they do not consider the vast range of possibilities available to them. Observing e-learning more specifically and broadly would have positive effects, as the feasibility and effectiveness of specific e-learning tools could be considered. 

Operant Conditioning – Skinner

Skinner argued that people learn to behave in ways that help them obtain things they want or avoid things they don’t want.

Reinforcement is used  (money, promotions, success, praise etc) to increase the likelihood of the desired response being repeated.

Skinner believed that by ignoring a response, without reinforcement the behaviour will die out.

Negative reinforcement – knowing how to avoid unpleasant or dangerous circumstances.

Punishment – creating unpleasant situations to decrease unwanted behaviour.

Feedback – is used to reinforce behaviour and let learners know how they are doing.

Principles emphasised by Behaviourist theory:

§  The learner must be able to respond actively

§  Frequency of repetition of responses is important in acquiring skill

§  Reinforcement is vital to obtain repetition of required or correct behavior

§  Generalisation suggests the importance of practice in varied situations

§  Immediate feedback of results is strongly motivating

§  Shaping behaviour by the reinforcement of approximate responses is essential in learning new skills

Burns, R. 1995, The Adult Learner at Work, Business & Professional Publishing, Sydney

What is learning?

“The best definition is to conceive of learning as a relatively permanent change in behaviour with behaviour including both observable activity and internal processes such as thinking, attitudes and emotions.”

Burns, R. 1995, The Adult Learner at Work. 

What is your definition of learning? 

I would define learning as the process of being presented with and retention of information and/or experiences, which interlink to currently existing knowledge to become relatable and retainable. I would suggest that there are various forms of learning, which can ultimately be categorized as formal or informal. In an organizational workplace setting, for example, learning can occur when an individual attends training courses or on-the-job training, and also informally through experiences.