Week 2: Evaluating and Identifying Online Resources

I came across the article Hierarchical Spreading of Activation by Farzad Sharifian & Ramin Samani http://cogprints.org/2061/0/act1.html while searching for articles on spread activation. Most of the srticles and scholarly journals I found were exhaustive in the introduction of technical terminology and theory. In this article, the authors expanded on the topic of spreading activation and provided an overview of their experiment "that nodes in the memory network are represented in a hierarchical fashion, and that activation also spreads in a hierarchical fashion in the network."

The experiment was valuable to me because it gave me more insight than a simple example of what spreading activation really means. The experiment reminded me of logic theory, I learned in an abstract algebra course I took in my undergraduate days. If p implies q and q implies r, then p implies r. The idea was that you can associate the groups (p & q) and (q & r) easier than (p & r). They essentially took out the middle man (q & r) to see how it would effect the participants responses. To no surprise, the response time was longer to make the p-to-r connection, but I was surprised that the reaction time wasn't greater.

I felt that I needed a little more background on Gestalt Theory and found this design site http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/gestalt_principles_of_form_perception.html. In the course text Learning Theories and Instruction (p. 59), I did not seem to grasp what it really was and how it applied to Instructional Design. The direct examples of how the principles are applied in everyday life helped clarify how they are used and implemented. I also found this site http://facweb.cs.depaul.edu/sgrais/gestalt_principles.htm to be useful. The instances of the principles were illustrated in a more artful manner. It's helpful to see the same concepts depicted from different perspectives.

Learning Theories and Instruction: Week 1

After exhaustive blog and resource searches, I finally picked selections for the week 1 assignment of EDUC:6115 Learning Theories and Instruction. It was somewhat challenging for me because most of my blog searches yielded undesirable results. I primarily played with my keywords in the Google and Wordpress blog searches for plenty of hours. Most of the undesired results were others completing their ID assignments or a sales pitch for a product.

My first choice was http://davidtjones.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/learning-theories-and-e-learning/. This was the first resource with intriguing information regarding Instructional Design that I came across. The author (David Jones) identifies 4 levels of learning theory. Having had my first dose of Instructional Design theory coming from Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (1993)
The introduction of a possible 4th theory called Connectivsm, had spiked my interest into looking further in his referenced material. Initially, I was surprised that learning theory as whole was contained by 3 categories. As my exposure into the field deepens; I feel it borders ultimate questions like, "what is the meaning of life?"

I selected http://www.about-elearning.com/learning-theories.html, which provides a detailed perspective of the Behaviorism, Cognitivism and Constructivism theories. Aside from the sales ads fully integrated within the site, the sub page http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/802papers/mergel/brenda.htm went further into the differences and of the theories and helped me mentally connect dots of my understanding of them. I was especially amused by the atomic theory to learning theory development continuum diagram. As I read the Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (1993) article, I kept feeling as if Behaviorism, Cognitivism and Constructivism somehow correlated to the level degree expertise of bachlors, masters, and Ph.D. respectively.


The site Training & E-Learning Zone for Quizzes site and blog are more useful in the practical sense. This site: http://www.quiz-creator.com/blog/2009/09/8-ways-create-online-test/ provides direct instruction for creating online tests and quizzes using a variety of software and methods. Knowing that we will be using Adobe Web Premium in the future, the information on using Adobe Flash and Dreamweaver may be extremely valuable to me. Generally, I need more than the software guide for learning new programs. After subscribing to the blog, I found even more tutorials, instructional tools, and software reviews.

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