Learning Tools

I was first introduced to the idea of static vs. dynamic by a young chess player. He had been the Armenian Junior Champion before coming to the United States when he was twenty. He was giving me chess lessons and was attempting to explain the difference between strategy and tactics. Tactics are the forced moves that occur when it is pretty clear that when I do this, then my opponent is going to do that, and so on. But, strategy is much more subtle than that; it requires an understanding of time, space, and material. In static positions, players can each continue to move according to their own strategic plans, but in dynamic positions, tactics hold sway and choices grow limited as the players interact according to the requirements of the position. Consequences grow clear as the dynamic tactics reach their conclusion, and it is once again time to assess the overall strategic plan that each player is working toward. Static situations build until a burst of dynamic activity occurs, and then the situation is once again static, ready for the tensions to build.

When I think of dynamic activities in an online context, I think of tools such as instant messaging and video chats that require immediate responses from the participants. Unlike email and discussion boards that can be accessed when I am ready to do so. I can look at an email and think to myself, “I think this is one that is going to require me to do something; I think I will come back to this one.”

This places tools like GoogleDocs in an interesting static vs. dynamic role; GoogleDocs makes for a great dynamic collaborative tool as each person altering a document can see the shifts in the text and can make additional changes in a free flowing, dynamic way, but it is also a tool that can seem very static if participants move slowly to contribute to a communal product.

Blogs and wikis require me as a reader to access a site voluntarily, and again, like email and discussion boards, I can always come back to them whenever it is more convenient to do so. While these tools open the door for greater communication, they are not nearly as dynamic for communication and collaboration as Webinars, video and instant messaging.

What makes for a successful online class?

Durrington, Berryhill, and Swafford examine the qualities that make for a successful online class, suggesting that “Students demonstrate more positive attitudes and higher levels of performance when online classes are highly interactive (Durrington, Berryhill, & Swafford, 2006, p.1). And, they state that “distance learning can be as effective as traditional instruction when the technologies are appropriate for the instructional tasks, instructors provide timely feedback to students, and levels of student interactivity are high” (Durrington, Berryhill, & Swafford, 2006, p.1). In order for the learning environment to achieve high levels of interactivity, “the learning environment must be supportive, open, and respectful” (Durrington, Berryhill, & Swafford, 2006, p.1). To promote participation in asynchronous discussions, “guidelines for minimum contributions should be established” (Durrington, Berryhill, & Swafford, 2006, p.2). The authors also suggest a problem-based learning approach, “in which small groups are presented with a scenario based on real world problems, and each group develops informed solutions to the problem” (Durrington, Berryhill, & Swafford, 2006, p.2).

Siemens suggests a “curatorial” approach for instructors in an online environment, in which the exhibits put on display the content of the course, leading to active networked conversations and opportunity for students to dissect and experience material in different ways. The curator is not the sage on the stage or the guide on the side; the curator is an expert leading students to understanding. The curator engages in active dialogue with the students to create a rich interplay of ideas between the instructor and the student. The online classroom for Siemens acts as a centralized location for the course content, but the act of learning is decentralized across the larger network of available content.

Siemens’ concept of Curatorial Teaching seems designed for an academic environment in which the instructor facilitating the course is also the same instructor who designed the course. In my experience with proprietary higher education, the instructor facilitating the course is not the same subject matter expert who designs the exhibits and assignments in the course. Although, I do agree with Seimens’ description of the active role that must be played by the instructor facilitating the course. The instructor and instructional designers of online courses should take into consideration the suggestions of Siemens and Durrington, Berryhill, and Swafford; an online course needs to be interactive; the online instructor needs to provide regular feedback to the student; the assignments need to relate to real world situations that provide context for student learning and growing experience.

The online course design should also consider how to use common tools in the instructional process. For example, enabling students to use communication tools like WindowsLive, Elluminate, and Skype create opportunities for more effective collaborative student interactions. Email, instant messaging, and text messaging increase lines of communication between students and instructors. GoogleDocs is a wonderful tool for enabling students to compose and edit a collaborative student project. Blogs and wikis allow students to express themselves in an environment created and managed by the student.

Durrington, V. A., Berryhill, A., & Swafford, J. (2006). Strategies for enhancing student interactivity in an online environment. College Teaching, 54(1), 190-193.

Siemens, G. (2007). Curatorial learning. [Podcast]. Learn Online.Retrieved October 25, 2009, from http://learnonline.wordpress.com/2007/09/20/10-minute-lecture-george-siemens-curatorial-teaching/

EDUC 8842 Video Presentation

Here is my first ever video presentation. It is a good thing that I attended the NECC conference last year, or I would have had even more challenges putting this thing together. Honestly, I am not certain that I would have had any idea how to begin.

Assessing Collaborative Learning

How should participation in collaborative learning community be assessed? How do varying levels of skill and knowledge students bring to a course affect the instructor’s “Fair and equitable assessment of learning”?

If a student does not want to network or collaborate in a learning community for an online course, what should the other members of the learning community do? What role should the instructor play? What impact would this have on his or her assessment plan?

According to Palloff and Pratt (2007), “one of the keys to good assessment of collaborative work online is that it be clear, easy to understand, and easy to carry out” (pp.50). Rubrics should be set up so that students have no difficulty assessing themselves and their peers. Successful collaborative assessment qualities include “learner-centered, teacher-directed, mutually beneficial, formative, context-specific, ongoing, and firmly rooted in good practice” (pp.41).

Participation in a collaborative learning community should be assessed on the individual efforts of each member, that while students are working as a team toward a common goal, each person is being graded upon his or her individual efforts, and team feedback regarding member participation should be included. In many of the courses at the online school where I am an administrator, teamwork assignments are set up in each course and represent a significant portion of the student grade. The instructor is asked to facilitate the process by answering student questions about the assignment and the process. If members of the team choose not to participate, the active members of the team are not penalized, and in many cases, the assignment requirements are modified so that one person is not completing the entire project on his or her own. Instead, that student will complete the portion of the assignment that they would have contributed if all members were participating successfully to the process. Students not participating are assessed according to the rubric, and awarded points accordingly.

One might say that if each person is completing individual assignment, then there is not much of a collaborative community. However, I would contend that if each person is aware that his or her contributions are being assessed individually, it takes the pressure off of the team as a whole, and, each person becomes a willing contributor to the overall project. A solid, clear rubric regarding project requirements and individual participation make for pretty successful team experiences.

The instructor acts as the mediator of group dynamics, attempting to bring the team together so that all members participate fully and are satisfied with the overall efforts of the team. By encouraging individuals to contribute to the process and make collective decisions about how each member will contribute, team members are more willing to engage in an actively collaborative process. Also, when students engage in contracts with each other regarding individual responsibilities, then students can gain confidence in the process, and again are more willing to contribute to the collaborative process. The instructor role in team management is essential; in many cases, the instructor is an additional team member with a vital role of ensuring the success of the team as a whole.

Reference:

Palloff, R. M., & Pratt, K. (2007). Building online learning communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Video Presentation Outline

• A Brief Description of My Topic: Virtual Gaming in Online Education
• A Brief History of Second Life
• Implications in Educations
• Relationship between Virtual World Games and Second Life
• A Brief History of Virtual Games
• Potential Uses of Virtual Worlds and Games in Online Education

Technologies Change the Way Work, Play, and Learn

According to George Siemens, a shift toward the triple helix model of education of universities, government, and business “form a strand of interaction to provide and to equip students for this online environment.” We must bridge the gap of comfort so that students will take to online education; their positive experiences with taking online courses and using online communication technologies will fuel the continuing growth of online education.

Over the last several years, I have grown increasingly familiar with online communications technologies through conducting WebEx seminars for student services and instructor training, course developer training, and just regular conference calls in which I interact with my colleagues from all across the country. Communications tools, such as Skype, oovoo, Windows Live, iVisit, and many others are becoming popular tools in the business world. eCollege, for example, has even added Elluminate features to its course management system to enable students to interact with each other, using video, desktop sharing features, and other software sharing capabilities. Blackboard is integrating wikis, blogs, and many other features into its course management system as well. Video conferencing is no longer the purview of business environments. Blogs, wikis, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, RSS feeds and many other communication technologies are increasingly relevant to modern community building.

A few years ago, I met Jeff Borden, Senior Director of Teaching & Learning for eCollege. He has an interesting blog post called “No Internet Allowed” at the following blogsite: http://blog.ecollege.com/WordPress/. There are quite a few other interesting blogs that examine other trends in educational technology at this site as well. In reflecting on Borden’s experiences at a university computer lab, I couldn’t help but recognize similar experiences. It seems strange in some ways that educators seem often to lag behind popular culture and business practices. No wonder students are bored in school; everything is so low tech.

Here is another interesting site that I came across related to this blog topic:

http://www.masternewmedia.org/teaching-skills-what-21st-century-educators-need-to-learn-to-survive/

The educator for the 21st century world must adapt to a very new virtual world that will continue to change the way that we work, play, learn and communicate.

What is the future of distance education?

What is the future of distance education?

In the “Equivalency Theory” and “Distance Education: The Next Generation” videos, Simonson contends that distance education is not identical to face-to-face instruction, but that it is equivalent to it. Simonson defines distance education as formal education in which the learning group is separated by geography and potentially time. According to Simonson, distance education must provide the same learning outcomes of any traditional face-to-face classroom with equivalent learning experiences to meet those outcomes.

In reflecting on the role of distance education in the future, Simonson contends that distance education will not replace traditional educational institutions, but be does insist that distance education is nearing what he calls critical mass in that it has become widely accepted and needs to be nourished. More importantly, distance education offers significant motivational, accessibility, and return on investment to traditional classrooms for the institutions, instructors, and students.

In “The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web,” Moller, Huett, Foshay, and Coleman examines the concepts of needs assessment and return on investment as it relates to distance education, suggesting that many businesses that use online training do so because it is cheaper than traditional training methods, and that in fact, there is a need for better assessment capabilities for distance education training overall, since there is still some question about the merits of online training. The authors insist that there is a danger that poorly constructed distance education materials will stigmatize distance education as a whole, since learners are not able to tell the difference between high quality e-learning and poor quality content and delivery, and there are currently inadequate tools for assessing the quality of online training.

The authors suggest that “In examining the potential of web-based learning, the focus must contain capabilities not possible or at least highly impractical
in a traditional classroom,” which seems to agree with Simonson’s view that there needs to be an equivalency tests when comparing face-to-face classrooms with online courses. The authors further suggest that instructional designers of online curriculum must come to understand “how learners interact with the various e-learning instructional models and the contexts in which they do so.”

The authors state, “Many contemporary approaches assert that while most traditional instruction does well to control and to manage the educational experience, it does little to maximize, and may even inhibit, natural human learning abilities (Marshall, 1997),” suggesting that distance education standards may someday come to define standards for all learning environments.

So, what is the future of distance education?

There is real promise in distance education for aiding instructional designers, corporate trainers, and online educational institutions in providing truly significant learning experiences. I agree with Moller, Huett, Foshay, and Coleman’s cautions that “much of real promise is buried under the hyperbole of a quick fix, much like a TV commercial that makes exaggerated claims of losing weight while one sleeps.” Distance education has great potential, but those designing, delivering, teaching, and taking online courses must stop comparing online courses to face-to-face classrooms, since such a comparison is an illusion. Online education must be an outcomes-based, assessment-based, learner-centered, connective experience. The potential for online education lies not just in the convenience and motivation inherent in online courses; it is instead more relevant that online courses have the potential to create true educational standards while providing individualized interactive learning experiences for students. We as distance educators must be examining how and why students interact with technology and online learning modules.

I agree with Simonson that technologies will be integrated into all learning experiences and expect the traditional institution of today to vanish as we know it. Existing communication technologies have changed the way that we interact with each other, and the Internet is rapidly becoming a blend of the distance and local communities of the future. As traditional institutions adopt these technologies and integrate them into what they do, the face of the institution will become virtual worlds unto themselves.

Laureate education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2008). Principles of distance education: Equivalency theory. [Motion Picture].Baltimore, MD: Laureate Education, Inc.

Laureate education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Principles of distance education: Distance Education: The Next Generation. [Motion Picture].Baltimore, MD: Laureate Education, Inc.

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008, May/June). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 1: Training and development). TechTrends, 52(3), 70-75.

Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Huett, J. (2008, May/June). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 2: Higher education). TechTrends, 52(4), 66-70.

Huett, J., Moller, L., Foshay, W., & Coleman, C. (2008, September/October). The evolution of distance education: Implications for instructional design on the potential of the web (Part 3: K12). TechTrends, 52(5). 63-67.

A Model for Motivational Design - ARCS

A - Attention
R - Relevance
C - Confidence
S - Satisfaction

While most people see the need and the importance of adopting new technologies, many are still quite resistant to change. In the last eight months, many of our campus coordinators have been given administrative access to eCollege so that they can review and resolve their student issues more effectively. Yet, many of these coordinators still send student issues directly to my team to be analyzed and solved for them without ever having used their administrative access.

In a couple of weeks, I will be flying out to Tampa, Florida, to be a part of an online coordinator workshop, and I will be employing the ARCS model to try to break down some of this resistance. I believe that there are several factors that have contributed to the campus coordinators not fully employing the tools that they have. First, I am not sure that they understand the relevance of the new processes to them and how the changes will benefit their ability to provide support for their students. Second, they do not have the confidence with the new tools necessary to use the tools effectively. And lastly, they have not achieved the satisfaction of resolving student issues without assistance.

While I have some specific information and processes that I will be covering in the presentation, I will focus on the needs and expectations of the campus coordinators by doing the following.

Attention: I will begin by collecting a list of common student issues that they would like to know how to resolve themselves. What do they want to know how to do?

Relevance: The campus coordinators will be providing the issues and situations that they want to be able to resolve. There is a PowerPoint presentation that provides the same information, but it will have greater relevance, and act as a better resource, once they have used the tools for real issues that have meaning to them.

Confidence: If the campus coordinators understand what their administrative profiles enable them to accomplish, they will be more confident in using the tool effectively. I will provide a variety of scenarios and ask the coordinators to locate the information in eCollege themselves. I will have an active online computer available to demonstrate the different tools, and I will have the coordinators walk me through the screens to locate the information that they want to find.

Satisfaction: Confidence and satisfaction are acquired through doing. I expect these coordinators to be better trained, confident, and motivated to use their online eCollege access once the presentation is completed. I am certain that they will have a greater sense of satisfaction for their ability to resolve student issues themselves once the presentation is completed and they are using these tools in their daily activities.

Connectivism and Learning

How has your network changed the way you learn?

I am not certain that my network has changed the way that I learn so much as defines it. As my mind map reflects, my network is divided into specific categories: work, play, family, friends, learning, and teaching. These are the balance points of my life. There have always been people in my life who have held a greater degree of influence on my views of the world than others. It is to those people I turn to seek guidance and support. My father has taught me self-reliance, self-respect, and responsibility. My colleagues have taught me friendship, collaboration, and partnership. My husband has taught me trust, love, and communication. My children have taught me patience and the joy of play. My friends have taught me to understand and value difference and to find common values that make human interaction worthwhile, namely honor, integrity, and compassion.

Which digital tools best facilitate learning for you?

It is digital tools where I find the greatest changes in my life. I spend most of my day in front of a computer, such that I have grown adept at using all sorts of digital tools. I send and receive hundreds of emails daily through work. I interact with my online learning community here at Walden through email and in my online courses. I use MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint regularly. I conduct conference calls and use WebEx tools to conduct meetings. I find all of these tools help me frame my thoughts and better communicate with the people in my life. The process of writing and communicating helps facilitate my learning by forcing me to articulate and share my thoughts with others. Their responses reshape my own thoughts by helping me refine clarify them.

How do you learn new knowledge when you have questions?

The simplest answer: I ask the people whose opinions I value. I believe learning is an ongoing life process that is not restricted to a classroom. Opportunities for learning life lessons abound in my daily activities. However, I do find that continuing education is one way to focus my efforts while also validating that learning through the attaining of traditional degrees.

To -Ism Or Not To -Ism...

As I read through the blogs by Bill Kerr, Stephen Downes, and Karl Kapp, I was struck by the discussion related to different learning theories. Is there a single theory that addresses the way that people learn? As an educator, how can I adopt, or is it adapt, the theories that currently influence instructional designers in order to create an effective learning environment?

Do I need to reject theories? For example, Stephen Downes rejects the concept of behaviorism when he says, “it remains puzzling that so much of the instructional design community remains rooted in behaviorism - this more than 30 years after the theory was abandoned everywhere else.” He rejects the notion of human stimulus-response, which he considers a programmable behavior, and in Kerr's words a dehumanizing conceptualization of human understanding. Downes emphasizes that humans understand by using cognitive processes like recognition, inference, and association.

Do I need to meld theories? Karl Kapp suggests that “lower level learning (lower cognitive load) requires a behaviorist approach (memorize, recognizing, labeling) as does the expectation of outcomes that must be measured. I then suggest that procedural and rule-based learning requires an emphasis on Cognitivism and finally, problem-solving, collaboration and creativity require a view of Constructivism.”

Personally, I am not willing to reject behaviorism entirely. I think that there are some significant ideas that should be retained in its fundamental beliefs. Mastery learning is possible through carefully sequenced units of learning. Curriculum development should take into consideration behavioral objectives. I think there has been too much emphasis on stimulus-response concept; the concept is often misunderstood. For example, Skinner strongly suggested the importance of the learner being actively engaged in the learning process in order to ensure that learning has occurred. The theory is not just about stimulus-response. It is about measurable outcomes and mastery learning.

Cognitive learning theories provide a useful framework for understanding learning strategies appropriate to individualized instruction, since it recognizes the unique processing capabilities of each human through its concepts of short and long term memory, human processing of sensory information, cognitive stages of the learner, inquiry and discovery models. Cognitive sciences emphasis that learning takes place as internal mental processes of the individual. As a result, educational technologies that encourage student inquisitiveness, critical thinking, creativity, and problem solving are going to be of great import for the future.

Of all the comments on the blog site, I preferred the one by Miguel, “Learning theories seem to serve only insomuch as they help us get passionate about human learning and the possibility that we may be able to predict how people learn.” Bill Kerr poses an interesting question about -isms like constructivism, behaviorism, cognitivism, and connectivism, “Should we stick to -isms or should we cherry pick different useful ideas out of the various theories?” He suggests that learning theories do not stand still; instead, they evolve as theorists listen to the criticisms of others and adapt their theories accordingly. I find myself in agreement with Kerr when he claims that each -ism is “offering something useful without any of them being complete or stand alone in their own right.” There is indeed a lot to learn from ongoing discussions like this one. When we create a one-size-fits-all solution for the learning process, then it will be time once again to question everything we think we know.

How can technology facilitate collaboration among learners based on constructivist principles?

Do you believe that humans have a basic instinct to “interact and work as a group,” as Rheingold proposed in his discussion of the evolution of Wikipedia as a collectively developed encyclopedia? How can technology facilitate collaboration among learners based on constructivist principles?

In Rheingold's presentation at TED, he discussed the move from a survival of the fittest model of community in which competition drives business, politics, and societal choices to one of cooperation and collective action. Rheingold suggested that technologies, such as the printing press and the Internet, have enabled communities to escape social problems like the prisoner's dilemma and the tragedy of the commons by enabling them to choose not be prisoners at all. Instead, those who are able to find solutions beneficial to all parties will be able to protect individual self-interest, while also enabling others to benefit from the solutions as well. Lack of trust means no exchanges; no benefits for anyone. The ability to engage in cooperative efforts and collective actions, such as the development of Wikipedia, allow all members of such societies to benefit, that “a certain kind of sharing is in their self-interest.” Rheingold encouraged cooperative uses of technology to increase trans-disciplinary discourse, suggesting that technology greatly influences changes in cultural cooperation.

I believe that the tendency to interact and work as a group is greatly driven by self-interest. All actions are weighed on a scale of punishment and reward: pleasure vs. pain. Rheingold described the nomadic family unit, in which the family was bound together by the need to survive; together, they had a better chance of doing that. Tribal nomads who banded together to take down bigger game are not only able to survive, but were able to do so more efficiently. The scale grows but the principle does not change. In agricultural communities, larger families had a greater economy of scale. They could produce more together, leading to trading with others to the benefit of all. In the world of self-interest, there is indeed a need to balance the scales; individuals recognize the value of the hunter and the producers of wine and other valuable products. People do not like cheaters, nor do they want to feel cheated. It is not uncommon for people to recognize that it is in their self-interest to work together, that there is such a thing as a win-win scenario. They also recognize the need to punish those who do not work in the best interest of the community; hence, one of the most powerful tools of early societies was exile.

It is also natural for people to want to improve their living conditions; to work less for more. As society has grown more affluent, we have moved from the primary levels of need relating to survival and personal security to secondary levels of need have become more significant; the need to belong to a community, the need to have the respect of our peers, and the need for self-actualization are more common concerns of the members of modern society. Thus, cooperation and collective actions become significant forces in affluent cultures. As Rheingold suggested, technologies have greatly influenced our abilities to overcome the prisoner's dilemma by choosing not to remain a prisoner.

Constructivism encourages critical thinking and reasoning, the understanding and use of knowledge, self-regulation, and mindful reflection; in effect, it encourages learners to interact actively in a learning community through social negotiation and the recognition and understanding of multiple perspectives and multiple modes of learning. It also encourages ownership in the learning process, self-awareness of knowledge construction, and the use of complex and relevant learning environments. Technologies, such as the Internet, mobile devices, and asynchronous communication tools, enable learners to interact with people all over the world in solving complex real-world problems, in part by bringing the needs of some distant community to the attention of another that may be in a position to help find needed solutions. The nature of communication technologies allows people from all over the world to share ideas, resources, and critical information in ways that once could hardly be imagined. Methods of instruction like role playing, debate, and problem-based learning are increasingly possible through emerging communication technologies.

In local communities, computer technologies can enable more people to participate in a project than ever before. For example, parents, students, teachers, and administrators can share ideas and resources as never before. Individuals can work with others to protect against the greed and gluttony of pure self-interest, or as Rheingold suggested, altruistic punishment is the glue that holds a society together. Collaboration and collective actions act as preventative measures. In a world in which every desktop is a marketplace, a printing press, and broadcast station, it is increasingly difficult to hide information from those who are looking for it.

How do people learn best?

1. What are your beliefs about how people learn best? What is the purpose of learning theory in educational technology?

Most of us have moments in our lives that stand out as pivotal learning experiences. As I reflect upon these questions about learning and learning theory, several stories and their lessons come to mind. I started teaching right out of college, and I have strong memories of the first in-service in teaching methodologies conducted at our school. In many ways, that experience has shaped my values as an educator. The first lesson was about left-brained versus right-brained learning strategies and teaching techniques, but the lesson that I took away from that experience can be summarized simply as: know thyself.

In my case, I was on the extreme left-brained learning style. I discovered why I always hated outlining; it seemed like extra work to me, since I naturally look for logical connections between ideas anyway. I also discovered why I have always resisted what I call "touchy feely" exercises; they go so much against my nature that I have to struggle to find the benefits of these activities. But, another concept that I have also carried with me ever since is the idea of developing complementary styles, seeking a holistic approach. Since I do not do some things naturally, I must attempt to incorporate those foreign activities into my toolbox so that I am able to teach and communicate with those aliens in the right-brained universe.

Another significant lesson came from my department chair while I was there. Initially, our relationship was one of mutual respect and admiration; she was my mentor, but we ultimately reached a point where we wanted to strangle each other. Everything became a battle. In an effort to try to resolve our issues, she asked me to take a test, which in frustration and desperation I agreed to do. At that time in my life, I had never heard of Myers-Briggs. When we shared our personality types with each other, a certain clarity immediately occurred. I am an ISTP; she an ENTJ. In many ways, we could not be more different. Once again, a new realm of awareness was mine.

For the last two days, I have been participating in situational leadership training for my company. A few ideas from that training come immediately to mind. First, there is no one right way to learn, or lead, or do anything for that matter. There are a lot of stereotypical ways of categorizing ourselves, and while the tools may attempt to pigeonhole us as leaders, or learners, things always change. After eighteen years of teaching, I am much closer to an E on the Myers-Briggs, but that does not change my intrinsic nature. While I may have found myself in the Promoter quadrant of the Controlling, Analyzing, Supporting, Promoter grid in yesterday's workshop, I am aware that I generally adjust my style to the situations and people with whom I am working.

For me, learning theories provide a common language for teachers and students so that they can better understand each other. How many times have you heard someone say that they are "visual learners"? While they may not truly understand what that means in theoretical terms, they are attempting to identify how they learn best so that you can best help them. And, I think that this is where learning theory in educational technology has a uniquely fundamental impact. Audio, video, and other media technology can be incorporated into the learning process like never before. With sophisticated programming we can provide immediate feedback to learners about where they are in learning mastery and outcomes. We have a great opportunity with modern technology to provide students with multiple ways to engage the learning experience in any course, for students to find the approaches that are best suited to them at that particular moment.

For me, the process of learning is as unique as the individual learner. Successful learning often has very little to do with the content of the course itself, but instead it has everything to do with the adage of teaching someone to fish. If we are truly successful as educators, we teach someone how to learn not just what to learn.

Kimberly