Social Constructivism and Online Learning

I believe an online education can be a fulfilling and valuable experience, but it has obvious limitations when scrutinized by Constructivists.

The best experience I had in education was at San Antonio College. I started there after high school in the Advertising Art program. Many of the classes I took there were taught by professionals from the local advertising and design agencies. Even the permanent faculty worked closely with the different agencies. Most classes were centered around the completion of an advertising campaign based on an assignment given to us by the agency. If it was a copy writing class the focus was on copy and the agency’s copywriter would be our advisor. Two or three times throughout the course we would meet at the agency and discuss the progress of our campaign. The final class was at the agency and we had to pitch our final product to the professionals as if they were the client. It does not get much more authentic than that. I learned so much during my time there. I did not really appreciate it until I moved on to Texas State University. The program is highly rated, but I found a much less authentic environment and was disappointed with my experience.

Constructivism is strongly tied to social interaction. Although we have great discussions via the internet there are several issues that make it difficult to say it is as constructive as a face-to-face class. The authentic learning which is important to Constructivists is not always practical in this setting. The blogs are a great way of connecting to other professionals but still does not provide the same experience I mentioned before. Responses by others in the class are great but the ideas are usually well thought out and lack the spontaneous debate that happens face-to-face. I think the discussion is often deeper than a face-to-face would be so there are some benefits. Scaffolding, Reciprocal teaching, and Peer collaboration all have their limits in this forum. Another issue with online courses is the environment. When you go to a brick and mortar school and sit in a class the environment is conducive to learning. That environment is not always available in this situation. Another idea that stood out in the reading this week fell under the premise of Situated Cognition. Students exposed to a certain procedure for learning a subject experience situated cognition for that method; in other words, that is how this content is learned (Ormrod, Schunk, & Gredler, 2009, p. 187). If we learn in an online environment will we only be able to perform in an online environment?

I think that these issues and others mentioned in this week’s text are minimized by maturity and experience in both learning environments. Personality and learning style also plays a significant role. I believe in online education and feel I will get as much out of it as I put in. There are however, limitations to this format.

Valuable Resources - Creatively Speaking

All this talk about brains and learning theories have me thinking about two people who have influenced me in my career choices in the past fifteen years. As an Instructional Designer I find their influences are still relevant and form a good foundation for my future.
I was introduced to Edward de Bono when I started college in pursuit of a degree in Graphic Design. De Bono’s book, Serious Creativity, was required reading at Southwest Texas and for good reason. Strategies like Lateral Thinking and Six Hats method are great for developing creative or “out of the box” approaches to problems. You can find more information including weekly postings by Mr. de Bone at his official website
http://www.edwdebono.com/index.html

In Education, a new Learning or Teaching theory comes around every five years or so. When I started teaching, Harry Wong was the name I heard most. His classroom strategies and techniques for building relationships with students was the hottest thing going. Today, Robert Marzano has educator’s attention. His strategies are firmly based in learning theory and educational research. His book, Classroom Instruction that Works, was the subject of a district wide book study 2 years ago. You can find more information about Mr. Marzano and his research at the following link.
http://www.marzanoresearch.com/research/researched_strategies.aspx

Survey of Instructional Design Blogs

My background in Graphic Design and Education has led me to a Graduate program in Instructional Design and Technology. I am excited about using this blog to explore the field of Instructional Design. This medium allows for a wide variety of views on the subject. To start the blog I looked at more than twenty blogs pertaining to Instructional Design. The themes and content of these blogs varied greatly and I quickly got sucked in.

http://en.wordpress.com/tag/instructional-design/
Blogs about: Instructional Design was a great resource with a large variety of subjects. For general but very good information I think this site is excellent.

http://learningvisions.blogspot.com/2009/11/independent-instructional-designers.html
The Learning Visions blog by Cammy Bean is really nice because I felt a more personal connection with her and the ideas she was sharing. The information seems focused on the development of Instructional Designers. There as an extensive amount of information and it is well organized. This is an informative site that I will be following now and in the future.

http://sailingsound.blogspot.com/
The Sailing By Sound Blog by Dennis Coxe was my favorite. I during my initial exploration of Instructional Design blogs I spent more time here than any other. I found the subject very forward thinking and innovative. Focused on elearning and education, the blog also provides links to good sites related to learning theories and brain based methods. I was interested in the blogs concerning learning and text messaging. I thought about the students at my school and how so many of them have cell phones. If only we could use them for good and not evil in a middle school setting.

It will be interesting to see how my opinon of these site change as I learn more about the ID field.