WEEK 4: | Instructional Design

ID Learning Theories - WEEK 4

Instructional Design and Technology:

Instructional Design Learning Theories - IDT100x:

Cognitivism

The cognitivist paradigm essentially argues that the “black box" of the mind should be opened and understood. The learner is viewed as an information processor (like a computer).

The cognitivist revolution replaced behaviorism in 1960s as the dominant paradigm. Cognitivism focuses on the inner mental activities – opening the “black box" of the human mind is valuable and necessary for understanding how people learn. Mental processes such as thinking, memory, knowing, and problem-solving need to be explored. Knowledge can be seen as schema or symbolic mental constructions. Learning is defined as change in a learner’s schemata.

Resource:

Learning Theories - Educational Psychology

https://www.learning-theories.com/cognitivism.html#references

WEEK 4 -

Submitted: 29.10.19

Learning Theories - Cognitivism & Connectivism

What will you learn this week?

By the end of Week 4, you will be able to:

differentiate between Behaviorism, Constructivism, and Cognitivism,
identify and describe how to develop training and instructional materials grounded in Cognitivism, and
discuss examples of Cognitivism and Connectivism in learning environments.

Resources

Smith, M.K. (2002) ‘Jerome S. Bruner and the process of education’, the encyclopedia of informal education. [http://infed.org/mobi/jerome-bruner-and-the-process-of-education/ Retrieved: 08.11.19]

McLeod, S. A. (2016, Feb 05). Bandura - social learning theory. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html (Retrieved: 08.11.19)

Learning Theories
CONNECTIVISM (SIEMENS, DOWNES)
https://www.learning-theories.com/connectivism-siemens-downes.html
Retrieved: 08.11.19

Discussion 4: Cognitive Load Example

For this week’s discussion, you will locate one instructional material on the Internet and discuss how the material addresses (or do not address) cognitive load needs. Instructional materials can be found very widely on the Internet; you can't go for many clicks before you find someone trying to teach someone something.

Once you have found an instructional material, post the following to the discussion:

Link to the instructional material
2-3 sentence overview of the instructional material
Choose 1-2 principles from this week’s readings and give examples of how the instructional material does or does not address the principles of cognitive load.
Identify at least one approach or strategy to fix or alleviate the cognitive overload.

Response:

Instructional material

The following instructional web page is a description and process of how to design and build a Russian Constructivist style poster using Adobe Photoshop.

"We will cut up some images and paste them together to create a stylized revolutionary design. We'll then tie it all together by overlaying some texture to give it a vintage feel"

This is a series of sequential instruction on how to use the various tools in Photoshop to create the layout.

Create a Constructivist Inspired Poster - by Sean Hodge22 Feb 2008

https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/create-a-constructivist-inspired-poster--psd-92

Positive aspects:

The tutorial is presented as sequential numbered steps, which support the screen shots visually describing the steps.
All images and artwork is gathered from the web, teaching students where free resources are found and the final expected work is shown at the start.
The language is minimal, to the point and doesn't get caught up in technicalities, which can be part of the technical descriptions of Photoshop tools.

Negative aspects:

The are 26 steps to complete the tutorial, which is 17 screens deep of an average resolution. This makes it a very lengthy tutorial.

There is distracting advertising to the right of instructions, which are unavoidable if this is the commercial model of the website.

Recommendations:

Take out any distracting advertising banners on side of page(Remove non-essential content).
Try to shorten the number of steps and depth of page by providing some of the more complex
steps as short videos(Using visual and audio channel), giving the student a chance to hear a description and see the navigation around the application interface.

----------------------------------------------------------

Portfolio Activity 3: Cognitivism and Connectivism Learning Theory

You have been adding to your Learning Theories pages each week by describing and applying each theory as it is introduced. This week you will add both Cognitivism and Connectivism.

Present an overview and comparison of both Cognitivism and Connectivism, this can be text based or a visual such as a Venn Diagram and describe a learning scenario that presents each learning theory in practice. You can use the same learning scenario for each theory and then alter or shape the scenario to fit the learning theory constructs.

Community, collaboration and peer feedback supports acquisition of knowledge. It's important to be actively engaged in discussions and provide your thoughts and ideas to peer in a professional manner. Therefore, you will be asked to return to Week 1 activity, Prepare your Portfolio and review two or three classmates pages. Feel free to provide feedback or discussion to your peers.

Response:

For this exercise I have generated two info-graphics. The first one is a Venn Diagram which compares the Cognitivism vs. Connectivism approach as it applies to last weeks project(Russian Constructivist poster design).

The second info-graphic identifies the two theories and where and when they are being applied to the eight week project.

Please click on each of the info-graphic icons to enlarge and download.