winding down

so as we are winding down the summer session I have had the chance to reflect a little on online courses. Though some people lament that you don't always have the human connection in online course that you do in face-to-face courses, I think it all depends on how you structure the course. I took a lot of pains to center the course on student-student interaction, and to have students construct their knowledge through their own effort and interactions with fellow students to the extent possible. Of course teachers are involved in online courses, and this course was no exception, but I tried to be careful to not insert myself into discussions too soon for fear that students would see my contribution as the final arbiter, as if there is nothing else to discuss. Though of course I have a phd in curriculum and instruction, I don't know everything there is to know about learning theories, and my students this semester have such a wealth of teaching experience that it would be a crime for them to not be encouraged to share with each other the insights they have developed. Theory should inform practice just as practice should inform theory. Just as good businessmen learn as much or more from their customers and business partners, professors learn from their students. Not that students and customers are the same thing. I think my students felt a personal connection. I know I feel like I know my students well even though i have only met in person two of them. But I suppose I will see most of them in person for graduation next year.
Of course online courses bring some other benefits....students can be anywhere there is an internet connection, so they can get an education and not have to quit their jobs. Or they can go on vacation during the semester. But face-to face courses are good too. Our department is likely going to have an online MS program starting in 2010, but we are still going to have campus MS and phd programs. For a phd program, it seems to be better to have an on-campus program due to the extensive one to one research mentoring. And many potential MS students just want to have the option of a campus program. And lets face it, Cache valley is beautiful:
http://www.tourcachevalley.com/
So with the online ms and med programs we can reach more people.

one size does not fit all

As I have stressed to my students, learning theories are not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. That is, there is no one learning theory that predicts all learning equally well. Rather learning theories provide different tools that all can be put in a teacher's toolbox. So this week we are talking about case-based learning. It is a very interesting theory, and true enough many students can learn many subjects very well through cases. Sometime they can help you learn content that you cannot learn very well without cases. For example, AECT's professional ethics committee presents cases illustrating the application of ethics principles to realistic situations. It helps show how principles can be applied to real situations. And because readers can relate to the situations, they can see how the principle applies to their lives. But what is important in case-based learning is not the cases themselves, but what students do with the cases. Students need to debate the cases, apply principles to them, and so forth to gain the full potential benefits of case-based learning.

Theory and Research: the link

One of the interesting things about learning theories are their value to both practice and research. They help explain and predict learning. As an education researcher that means it helps both for research and teaching. Though they didn't help me predict accurately the way my students would interpret my initial assignments for the class, they do explain the interpretations. I guess the way I would look at it is from a schema theory point of view. All my students have different schemas and for the most part my communication with them is asynchronous and mostly test. So schema theory is a great way to look at it. Students interpreted my assignments a little differently than I had thought initially. Now I have modified/clarified the assignments and all is well it seems. Perhaps the assignments fit better with their M. Ed. class schema?

Thoughts on Piaget

Piaget is an interesting character. He didn't really study in the education field...he was a psychologist. But he is one of the most influential figures in education, though sometimes for the wrong reasons. For instance, his idea of genetic epistemology is one of his more famous theories, but somehow people lost the point of it. Perhaps it was through bad translations (I speak French and have read both english and french versions of some of his works and there are sometimes some issues in the translations), or people's natural tendency to simplify things. What piaget said was that there were stages in children's cognition that all children go through in the same order no matter what culture they were from. But he never said anything like "Once kids hit their 14th birthdays, they will be able to reason formally." And he never said that when students struggle with something teachers should just throw up their arms and say "my students can't do that because they are in X stage." Rather he said that one should push the limits of students' thinking to help push them to the next stage. Ultimately that is what teachers are in the business of.

learning theories

so now in my learning theories class we are on meaningful learning. I like Ausubel's theory. I remember one of his quotes that went something like this "The most important thing to know about students is what they already know....learn that and teach accordingly." Or something like that. I think it is a very truthful statement. Connecting new material to already known material is always a good thing. Using analogies to already known material is helpful. So for example if I am trying to teach the game of cricket to an American, I might use the analogy of baseball since some of the facets of the game are similar. Students can learn what is different and similar between the games. That will help the new information to be better remembered and also make it so that less information needs to be learned.
Now Ausubel based his whole theory on studies of verbal learning....so learning how things are rather than how to do things or solve problems. But the principles can be applied to procedures or problem-solving also. So the big six could be compared to the scientific method for example.
The most important thing to remember as an instructional technologist learning about learning theories is that the greatest value of learning theories is that they help explain that if you have X learning situation and use strategy Y, then learning is likely to occur. They help ground the creation of instruction in knowledge of how people learn. After all what use is theory if it cannot help us refine practice? Locked up in an ivory tower theory does no one any good, but when applied they can do a world of good.

what is learning?

Since my students are writing about this I thought I should do it too. So what is learning? It is the age old question. If you ask B.F. Skinner he would say that it is response strengthening. If you were to ask Lev Vygotsky he would say something entirely different, probably the construction of knowledge about the world through social interaction. So is one wrong and the other right? No. There is an element of truth in what each of them said. Theories are all about explaining and predicting phenomena. For a phenomenon as complicated as learning, there are bound to be different theories. While theorist now tend to not look at the mind as a black box as did behaviorists like Skinner, there still is no interpretation of what learning is that can be considered the only correct interpretation. The brain is a complex organ...the most complex in the human body. There is some research now into the physiological changes in brains when learning occurs. However it is not clear that knowing this will really help us understand more about learning and be better able to explain and predict learning. Of course I am biased as an instructional technologist, but to me the most important thing to think about when discussing learning theories is the extent to which they can provide guidance on instructional strategies that will lead to learning. If they don't do that they are not much good to me.
I think a good definition of learning is a change in the ability to use information to solve problems. Problems are where there is a difference between the current state and desired state. There are obviously different types of problems. Some may just be a difference between one's current knowledge and desired knowledge, or others may be roofs that leak. If you don't already know how to solve the problem you have to learn. I noticed a slight leak in my house and to fix it I needed to learn about flashing...no not the raincoat kind but the metal stuff that covers transitions in roofs. I learned about what it is and how it should be attached to the roof and how to fix it if it is not working right. Luckily a lot of information to help people learn about that is online. But it takes good information literacy to use it appropriately. Anyone can publish online and so I wanted to make sure any information I found was from a reliable source. So I looked for information from reliable sources and made sure that at least two sites said the same thing, and went to work and fixed the problem.

in Georgia

Since we are talking about learning theories you all might find it interesting that I am in Georgia to work on a grant proposal with collaborators at the University of Georgia. What we plan to do is to embed motivational strategies into computer-based scaffolds, which you will be learning about later this semester. Well, you will be learning about scaffolds. But remember, just because I research about scaffolds does not mean that I think that social constructivism is the only learning theory worth knowing about. You can draw strategies from all sorts of learning theories. Learning theories are not like theories in some fields, for example physics, where you have a theory that hold sway for several years and then gets supplanted by something that describes reality better. Different people learn different content differently. Behaviorism, which we will be covering next week, is still relevant, especially in the context of physical and special education (and pet training) and in providing extrinsic motivation (which some people do not like but still is a common form of motivational support). It really provided the foundation for disciplined inquiry into learning and for the field of instructional technology.
To understand learning theories you have to keep an open mind when reading about them. You may not fully agree with all their assumptions about learning and about learners, and that's okay, just think that it could contain an element of truth and continue to read. Even though my research is all social constructivist I still admire and use learning theories like behaviorism and the people who formulated such theories.