Cover image credit: "PLE/PLN and learning theories"by Chris P Jobling is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
The first Massey University Foundations of Digital Education (261.764) assignment was focused on critically evaluating foundational learning theories (behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism, connectivism) and linking them to digital education and my current practice. To demonstrate my knowledge and understanding of these theories I was asked to create a visual artefact. I chose to produce this ebook below using the cloud-based platform, LucidPress.
The course design included a number of activities to help participants achieve the assignment and course objective which was to critically evaluate links between the theoretical foundation of digital education and situated practice.
So What?
This assignment made me review and update my knowledge and understanding of learning theories in relation to my current roles and previous educational experiences. I found a number of the readings displayed in Table 1 to be very helpful in consolidating and developing my knowledge of the four learning theories.
Table 1. Key Assignment 1 Course Readings
An area that proved challenging during the early stages of this assignment was my ability to confidently apply my knowledge to identify digital activities that were designed based on a specific theory, or theories. In particular, connectivism and the idea that MOOCs can be associated with several learning theories. This difficulty quickly highlighted to me that my understanding of these learning theories was not as good as I initially thought and that I needed to do something in order to improve.
Armed with this new information, I then revisited my draft assignment to restructure the content and ensure I was able to successfully outline each theory and demonstrate competency of the course objective.
This new structure helped me to systematically work through each theory so that I was able to demonstrate sufficient depth in understanding. Based on the assignment feedback in Figure 1, I believe that I was successful in this. An area that I could improve upon is being more explicit with details so that the reader understands how these digital tools support learning.
Figure 1. Assignment Feedback
Now What?
Some takeaways from this assignment are the need to better structure my assignments to achieve the specific objectives. In this assignment, the new framework enabled me to clearly identify gaps in my knowledge when critically evaluating links between my current practice, experience and theoretical foundations viewed from a digital education perspective. An example of this occurred when exploring connectivism as this learning theory is relatively new compared to the others.
Finally, this assignment continued to strengthen my view about the importance of being informed by learning theory when designing for learning, rather than bound by it. (Wilson & Meyers, 2000).
Bibliography & References
Wilson, B. G. & Meyers, K. M. (2000). Situated cognition in theoretical and practical context. In D. H. Jonassen & S. M. Land (Eds.), Theoretical foundations of learning environments (pp. 57-58). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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