While the list of factors that make learning more effective and the strategies that can enable this may seems self-evident, there have also been many different studies carried out and theories presented over the years that underpin this.
Here are some key ideas. In many you can see how interaction and social engagement contribute to increasing effectiveness.
Behaviourism (Operant conditioning)
Behaviourism (Operant conditioning)
Behaviourism is a large topic within psychology that sees human behaviour as being a response to its environment: we see a stimulus and we respond. If the reaction to our response is positive we internalise that response to that stimulus.
This simple stimulus-response mechanism makes the internal workings of the mind, in terms of mood, personality, etc, irrelevant. Behaviourists may therefore see the concept of 'theories of learning' as irrelevant.
The main contributor to Behaviourism as applied to learning was B F Skinner, who is associated with what is sometimes known as radical behaviourism or operant conditioning.
Behaviourist approaches to learning propose that we provide the necessary information or instruction to a learner, test that they have learnt and then provide the appropriate response (positive praise or correction).
A rigorous application of behaviourism in learning design therefore leads to a highly controlled structure, which is why Skinner's ideas are often associated with the concept of the 'learning machine'. While such rigourousness has gone out of fashion, these ideas have inspired later thinking such as Gagne's Conditions of learning and Mager and Pipe's Criterion Referenced Instruction.
Bruner saw learning as an active process in which people construct new ideas based on existing knowledge and experience.
Learning materials should therefore be designed in such a way that it is easy for a learner to:
- access material in a way that is most appropriate for them
- integrate it with what they already know or can do
This integration is helped by contact with other learners.
In practice, constructivist learning design provides a learner with a learning goal and resources that will allow them to reach that goal. They will be provided with a limited amount of external direction.
How much direction depends on the extent to which a learning designer believes it to be appropriate, and herein lies the problem. Many writers feel that the limitations of the brain's working (short-term) memory mean that having to come to terms with a learning process as well as content makes unsupported constructivism an inherently inefficient way to learn, and that more directed, behaviourist, approaches are therefore better for novices. Alternatively, an overall constructivist approach should be supported by monitoring and directed interventions as necessary (often referred to as 'scaffolding').
Pure constructivism seems to suggest that systematic instructional design is inappropriate, but recent thinking regarding the importance of scaffolding has shown that the two approaches can co-exist.
As opposed to pedagogy (children's learning), andragogy is concerned with how adults learn. Knowles' theory proposes that:
- adults need to know why they are learning something
- learning should be task-oriented and experiential rather than simply knowledge
- learning should be relevant to the individual's work
- adults prefer problem-oriented learning rather than content-oriented
The process of learning is therefore more important than the content, and learning materials should be a resource. Trainers should facilitate learning rather than simply instruct, which is the model implied by the experience of the traditional 'schoolteacher'.
Rogers proposed that learning is more effective when someone sees that the subject matter is relevant to them.
Learning activities should be designed so that the learner:
- feels safe and their self-esteem is not threatened
- should have opportunities to self-evaluate their progress.
Spiro felt that if a learner were to be able to apply new ideas to different situations that the learning materials should be designed in such a way that they provided multiple representations of the content. In other words, that it is possible to consider different ideas and applications relating to the same subject.
This particularly influential idea put forward by Gagne proposed that certain conditions needed to be met in order for someone to learn. These conditions for the basis for a sequence of learning activities:
- gain the learner's attention
- tell the learner what the objective is
- remind the learner of relevant knowledge they already have
- present the new information
- guide the learner through the learning process
- elicit a response from the learner
- provide feedback
- assess the performance
- generalise the knowledge and relate it to reality
This process is commonly used in the structural design of learning activities and materials.
Gagne also discussed the notion of 'hierarchies of learning', which range from simple recognition of a stimulus through to problem-solving. This relates closely to Bloom's taxonomy of behavioural objectives.
Learning is most effective when the activity observes certain "laws of organisation". These are:
- proximity, objects that are close together are seen as connected
- similarity, objects that look alike in some way (same shape, symmetry, etc.) are seen as connected
- closure, objects whose physical arrangement complete a shape are seen as connected
- continuity, people assume simplicity rather than complexity
This has various implications for learning design.
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(C) Bryan Hopkins, 2005