Week 8: Learner Motivation - Reflection

Over the past 8 weeks, I have formally learned a lot about learning theories and styles.  I now have a solid working knowledge of behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, connectivism, social and adult learning theories.   I have been previously exposed to some aspects of each theory/style informally throughout my life. 

My understanding is now more organized and enriched.  This is a result of exploring how these learning occur and the factors that influence learning.  As I further my knowledge on how people learn, I will be able to appreciate the diversity of different perspectives of learning styles.  I was surprised with how most of the theories were mostly distinct from each other.  There was little focus on the overlap of the possibility of more than one learning theory being applicable to an individual.  The various theories seem to almost be in competition with each other. 

I found the use of technology tools to be useful and I will continue to utilize them.  I had never created a blog before and was happy to realize it’s a fairly simple process. I found it to be a great source of information, especially for brain-storming.  The mind mapping program, webspiration is something I found extremely useful and will continue to use it to no end.  I had previously used RSS aggregators before, but now I am much more efficient and productive with them.

As a future instructional designer, having knowledge of the different learning theories will help me create effective learning experiences.  Being aware of the variances of learner profiles in my audiences is the first step in being able to adapt to their needs.  I am also more aware of my own learning style and that I’m high on the meta-cognitive scale.  With this being the conclusion of my first course, I’m anticipating using more of the technology resources.

Fitting the Pieces Together

Now that I have a deeper understanding of the different learning theories and styles, my view on how I learn has been expanded. Initally, I had only been equipped with fragmented pieces of information on learning theory. My views on how I learn have become more vast, at the expense of becoming more knowledgeable on the topic. I have a great respect to those that have attempted to isolate and define how people learn. Each contributor has brought relevant insight and applicability, but these are only perspectives in this unquantifiable field.

I am still leaning towards cognitivism as my closest fit, but Multiple Intelligences, Social Learning, and Adult theories all have a role in my learning schema. I found Howard Gardner's philosphy on Multiple Intelligences (Armstrong, 2000) to be the most intriguing. I learned that there is much more researchable information available on the concept of someone being 'math smart,' with respect to MI Theory. More broadly, my understandings were enhanced and organized as a whole to concepts such as; stimulus-response conditioning to Behaviorism (Ertmer & Newby, 1993), or group work and learning by doing to Adult Learning Theory (Conlan, J., Grabowski, S., & Smith, K. 2003).

As I continue to figure out how each learning theory applies to me, the role of technology has evolved into an integral component of my daily life. So much information is available electronically, it has become my primary source of research. Research studies, books, newspapers, and more are all readily evailable due the internet. Accessibility has made leaps and bounds as well. Today I have access to information via my personal computer, my laptop, work computer, and cell phone. Mobile devices and cloud computing applications (The Horizon Report, 2009) are a few catalysts of todays cutting edge technology. Since starting the IDT program, I have been using Google Docs, Blogger, and the mind mapping tool Webspiration extensively. I can't wait to experience what's ahead in the near and far-away future.

Armstrong, T. (2000). Multiple intelligences in the classroom (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (1993). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 6(4),

Conlan, J., Grabowski, S., & Smith, K. (2003). Adult learning. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Adult_Learning

Johnson, L., Levine, A., & Smith, R. (2009). The Horizon Report (2009 ed.). Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium.http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/CSD5612.pdf

Week 7 Integrating Emerging Technologies into Instruction

The map I used as structure for my week 7 discussion

Mind Map Reflection

In reflection to my posted mind map, I believe that my digital network resources have only expanded over the past few years. It has been 5 years since I last participated in a traditional classroom learning experience. Previously, I would mostly use the internet as a director of where to find hard copy material. Today, I'm comfortable using electronic resources as my main source of information. I frequently incorporate ebooks, scholarly journals, blogs, and websites as suppliers for my information needs. My personal computers (desktop and laptop) would be my primary mediums, however alternative options such as: my cell phone, DVD player, TV, and mp3 player are readily available. I recently discovered that my wireless DVD player can connect to YouTube. Together with my TV, I now have another access point to tutorials or the latest news updates.

My computer(s) would the best tool to facilitate my learning. In addition to gathering information it is the best platform to organize and process my findings. On my computer I can view, edit, and print materials. The ability to manipulate and organize information is indispensable. I can open and edit a variety of sources from pdf's to Word documents and from audio to video. I have greatly enjoyed the mind mapping software from webspiration. It has allowed me greater organization and understanding of the connectivity of my research and thoughts. When I search a topic such as behaviorism, I can organize multiple definitions, pros and cons, influencing factors, and applications. As I collect data, I can make connections of similarity or difference with other theories. I still would use any printed text or colleague (direct or indirect, via blog posting or group discussion) as a source.

With so many options to gather information from I can't agree more that the "ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital" (Review of Connectivism). There are so many biased perspectives on any single issue, it can be more time consuming to sift through and find what is solid and legit information. A Google search on any single, simple topic will yield millions of results (Learning Theory > 32 million hits). There's just an over-abundance of information available for our disposal (Connectivism). In all learning there will always be some degree of connectivism, it's dynamic and will vary from person to person in how it is attained, processed, and retained.

Mapping My Learning Connections

My first attempt at a mindmap!

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.

Initial Post

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