Skip to main content

Week 1 - Part 3

For part 3 of week 1 assignments, we are to choose from one of the ID articles posted by one of our classmates and write a blog reflecting on what we have learned from the three readings.  I choose the article posted by my classmate Justine Randle, written by Loren Brown, titled "Constructivism Learning Environment and Defining the Online Learning Community."  Brown's main point is that the constructivist theory creates an effective learning environment in online communities as it nurtures and allows students to self-discover, reflect, and evaluate their own learning.  Also because of teachers in online learning environments act more as guides and coaches, the constructivist learning theory is a better fit.

From the article I choose for week 1, titled "A constructivist approach to online college learning. The Internet and Higher Education."  In this article by Rovai (2004), I discovered the term "backward design model."  Wiggins (1998) describes that in the backward design model, the instructor should contemplate what he/she expects the students to remember in 1 or 2 years after the completion of the course.  Wiggins also mentions that the instructor needs to consider what expectations agencies, society, and professional organizations expect from the learner in the future.  Rovai too mentions how the instructor's role will change to that of a tutor, just like Brown mentions in his article.

In the article by Savery and Duffy (2001), the authors discuss the links between the constructivist theory and the instructional design and the practice of teaching.  This article also elaborates on the "eight instructional principles for the design of a constructivist learning environment."  According to the authors, the interaction between learners and the environment is the core concept of constructivism.

All these articles had the same topic in mind, constructivism.   Because I do not have a teaching background, unlike many of my peers in this program, at times I have felt like I was trying to catch up when it come to learning theories. After reading these papers, I feel I have a better understand of the constructivist theory, I can see why these authors see a connection between this theory and online learning.

References

Brown, L. (2014). Constructivist Learning Environments and Defining the Online Learning Community. I-manager’s Journal on School Educational Technology, 9(4), 1-6.

Rovai, A. P. (2004). A constructivist approach to online college learning. The Internet and Higher Education, 7(2), 79-93.

Savery, R. & Duffy, T.  (2001).  Problem-Based Learning: An instructional model and its constructivist framework.  (Research Report No. 16-01).

Available at: http://works.bepress.com/john_savery/4/
Wiggins, G. P. (1998).  Educative assessment:  Designing assessments to inform student performance.  San Francisco:  Jossey-Bass.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reflection on Week 2 and 3

Week 2 In week 2, my group and I worked on the analysis design document.  The way we split the work was for all four members to place their name in the areas they wished to work on.  For our group this worked very well however, I can’t help but feel that my writing skills are not as advanced as the other members of my group.  I had continuously look at an example of Blooms Taxonomy to complete this assignment.  We also met with our client (online) and our meeting was very productive as it cleared some misunderstandings.  For example, we had originally believed that our target audience was going to be the Houston University Downtown students but as it turns out our target audience will be faculty, staff, and volunteers acting as mentors to minority students.  We were also able to pinpoint exactly what the project’s name needs to be as well as identifying some of the learning modules.  Week 3 For week 3, we read ...

Week 8 Blog - Learning Styles and Group Project

Complete a blog entry about what you have learned since your last blog post. Be sure to include your results from the “What is your Learning Style” quiz. Do you think this assessment gives an accurate view of your learning style? My Learning Style According to the learning style quiz, I am not very good at anything in specific.  I have always said that the person I know the least about is myself.  I have always felt such disconnect with my own persona and this makes it difficult for me to know whether if I am being truthful in quizzes like this.  I am linguistic only 33%, logical-mathematical 38%, visual-spatial 42%, intrapersonal 50%, interpersonal 56%, musical 31% (funny because I don’t know anything about music), bodily-kinesthetic 17%, and naturalistic 50%.  I’m just all over the place.  I would say my learning style is a combination of visual and auditory.  Visual learners like to take notes of lecture and hear oral directions....

Week 14 - Final Blog, We Made it to the End!

It has been almost two months since the last time I wrote a blog for this class and so many things have transpired since then.  Our group project is just about finished, we are only waiting on our client’s notes so that we can do final revisions.  We had our group presentation last Thursday and there were so many great presentations.  The only negative thing I have to say about it is that the group presentations went over the 15-minute maximum time.  We were told to keep our presentation to 15 minutes and since we were four people in our team, my part of the presentation was limited to three minutes.  Although I went by the time restrictions, watching other speak for long periods of time made me feel guilty for not having presented longer. So what have I learned since my last blog post?  I have learned that group projects can wear me down a bit.  I felt that this project went on for way too long.  Part of the problem is that we were working w...