Integrating Technology into Instruction - Fitting the Pieces Together

When I began this class I was convinced that I learn more productively through cues, practice and reinforcement. I knew that I had problems understanding tasks containing difficult concepts, complicated procedures, or a great deal of detail. For such tasks, I did require additional assistance from instructors or a simplified step by step breakdown of the information to be able to assimilate and learn.

I have learnt that the learning theories provide instructional designer with verified instructional strategies and techniques for facilitating learning. It is therefore important for me as an instructional designer not to restrict myself to only one theoretical position. I will need to explore different learning theories that have been developed by psychologist and then apply the principles and concepts that are of value to my specific design situation.

I enjoyed learning about the Behaviorist Theory which focuses on observable behaviors and to study “the relationship among environmental conditions, events, and behavior”. This helped explain some of the strategies that curriculum designers apply in designing course especially in deciding rewards. I also learnt that Cognitivists believes that behaviorism dehumanizes the person. Cognitivism maintains that human beings have an internal mechanism of thought and processes of knowing (metacognition). Some Cognitivists argued that behaviorism was abandoned over 30 years ago.

I have also been reflecting on the nature of self directed learning and how it affects adult learners. Merriam and Caffarella (1991) defined self directed learning as “a form of study in which learners has the primary responsibility for planning, carrying out and evaluating their own learning experiences” p41. As an adult learner, I was tickled by the “briefcase” that adult learners come with to the class. According to Conlan, Grabowski, and Smith, the ‘briefcase’ may have ‘Life experiences (including life altering events that affect cognitive abilities), Work experience, Positive/negative previous adult learning experiences, Performance affecters including cognitive abilities, Time between learning interactions and Aging factors’.

These items in my briefcase make it particularly important to understand the dynamics that affect my learning. I have to juggle between, a full time job, a part time job, parenting and other social responsibilities and still take time to read and study for this class. This makes the study and understanding of theory of Adrogogy of particular interest to me.

Before learning about constructivism and the social learning theory,  I was convinced that it was impossible to create a ‘true’ social environment in an online classroom. I had valid arguments for it:

a)      Meeting face-to-face provides a sense of closeness and a comradeship that online classroom just cannot match,

b)      Physical social contact is crucial as it prepares students to manage appropriate behaviors that will prove fundamental in the work environment.

This was further supported by Ormrod, Schunk and Gredler (2010), observation that “teaching methods should reflect the outcomes we desire in our learners” (p.187). c) Without face-to-face contact, we compromise important social skills that facilitate interaction and communication with others. Although we can be polite and respectful as part of online etiquette, we do not enjoy and celebrate the joy of team successes or manages conflict. I felt it was relatively difficult, even impossible to recreate the personal relationships online.

After reading Ira Socol blog that discusses education reform and my perspective changed. Ira Socol asserts that, “Mobile phones, computers everywhere, hypertext, social networking, collaborative cognition (from Wikipedia on up), Google, text-messaging, Twitter, audio books, digital texts, text-to-speech, speech recognition, flexible formatting - these are not "add ons" to the world of education, they are the world of education. This is how humans in this century talk, read, communicate, and learn. And learning to use these technologies effectively, efficiently, and intelligently must be at the heart of our educational strategies. These technologies do something else - by creating a flexibility and set of choices unprecedented in human communication - they "enable" a vast part of the population which earlier media forms disabled”. Now I understand social media and constructivism better.

As a learner and also in my social life, I am addicted to my HTC Google Android. With this piece of Mobile Technology, I have access to the world. I have access to thousands of applications and I use Google search, Google reader, Google scholar, Google BlogSpot and Gmail as my information sources right from my phone. I also have Outlook as my personal organizer in the office which I use to set deadlines and reminders for important events (including assignment!).

I am sure I am what Marc Prensk would refer to as a Digital Native; a person with an advanced technological skill set. I am more adept at multi-tasking and always connected.