When talking about the cognitive and constructivist perspectives, I have to mention the constructivism. As we can draw from the name, we can conclude that it takes learning as a process of constructing or making something needed to learn. I firstly run into this term when I conducted my research for my dissertation for my master’s degree. It is really a classical theory in education, which demonstrated the learning process following the natural law of learning. In the context of education, the teachers or instructional designers need to create conditions for meaningful learning in classroom and courses, so as to build an proper environment for students to construct the knowledge of the world for himself or herself.
From Wilson, we can know that the constructivism still influences some specific forms of learning such as flipped learning, active learning classrooms (ALC), mobile learning and serious e-learning and so on. What mostly attracted me is the mobile learning and serious e-learning. As we know mobile learning is a learning by mobile devices like cell phones, tablets. Due to the ownership and long-time company with the learners, the learning willingness of the learners also increases accordingly. The learning process gradually becomes an active and self-directed activity, and learners get a sense of control of the learning. As for serious e-learning, its products often generate in many settings and are completely consistent with a constructivist approach. It is necessary for our instructional designers to bear in mind that the theory of constructivism is typical theory to refer in the education field, and we need to note this common sense reflect the meaningful, authentic and problem-based characteristics when design an instruction in reality.
Reflection:
Duffy, T. M., & Raymer, P. L. (2010). A practical guide and a constructivist rationale for inquiry based learning. Educational Technology, 50(4), 3-15.
Wilson, B. G. (2018). Constructivism, for active authentic learning. In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (4th Ed.), (pp. 60-67). New York, NY: Pearson Education.
Spiro, R.J., Coulson, R.L., Feltovich, P.J., & Anderson, D.K. (1988). Cognitive flexibility theory: Advanced knowledge acquisition in ill-structured domains. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois, Technical Report No. 441.
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