1. What concept did you find difficult to understand? How did you approach learning the concept?
I don’t think there is a clear distinction between intrinsic and external motivation in the article, which makes it difficult for me to distinguish between the two. To learn this concept, I summarized the two sections of the paper separately and used a search engine to query related materials.
2. Share a story about how you overcame a learning challenge. Why was it a challenge? What strategies did you use? Use the language you learned in this unit.
Learning another language is a massive challenge for many people, but memorising many new words is the most painful thing for me. At the very beginning, I set the Goal setting. Secondly, my intrinsic and external motivations are sufficient because I will live in a place with a new language in the future, which makes me have to learn a new language, which is my extrinsic motivation. My intrinsic motivation is my strong desire to learn the language. In the learning process, I also chose the motivation strategy of motivation theory, reciting words through educational games so that I could have a goal at the beginning and achieve satisfaction after the completion.
3. Share a story about your best learning experience (could be a formal course or something more personal). Why did you enjoy it?
I took EDCI337 last semester, which was my favourite online course. This course and EDCI335 focus on instructional design, unlike 337, which focuses on video whiteboards. I also like making videos very much, but I don’t have much time to make videos because I am busy with courses. This course gives me an opportunity which satisfies my intrinsic motivation. After submitting the first assignment, the teacher gave me a high score, which greatly satisfied my vanity and made my external motivation also have power. Second, all projects must be group, and team cooperation is essential. After my entire interaction with classmates, I also got a lot of advice on video production and the ability to teach design. I think the improvement meets my self-determination theory of three psychological needs – autonomy, ability and correlation. I experienced a lot of autonomy in learning, and this is a great help for me in producing high-quality assignments.
4. How would the learning be designed differently by a behaviorist, a cognitivist, and a constructivist? Scenario: A high school social study teacher is planning a class on climate change.
Behaviorism: Create several scenarios of climate change and use them to answer similar questions
First, I will apply learning theory. Learning theories and research often provide information about relationships among instructional components and the design of instruction, indicating how specific techniques/strategies might best fit within a given context and with specific learners.（Keller，1979） The goal of instruction for the behaviorist is to elicit the desired response from the learner who is presented with a target stimulus.(Ertmer, et al., 2013) The first thing is to design the situation and generate the stimulus. These stimuli have no priming power initially, but elicit conditioned responses after repeated training.
Cognitivism: Ask students to think about climate change in their own lives, look for highly similar cases to guide them, and gradually add new knowledge.
Cognitive theories emphasize making knowledge meaningful and helping learners organize and relate new information to existing knowledge in memory.Techniques used by both camps in achieving this effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge transfer are simplification and standardization. That is, knowledge can be analyzed, decomposed, and simplified into basic building blocks.(Ertmer, et al., 2013) Unfamiliar information can be placed in a familiar environment, so that learners can effectively learn new knowledge from past learning experience.
Constructivism: Get guidance on modelling by interacting with climate experts who participate in real cases, attend climate conferences and seminars, discuss issues with other students, and express your views and opinions.
5. Based on your reading, would you consider your current instruction style more behavioralist, cognitivist, or constructivist? Elaborate with your specific mindset and examples.
I think the current teaching style is more similar to cognitivism.
The philosophical assumptions underlying both the behavioral and cognitive theories are primarily objectivistic. (Jonassen, 1991b)Both learner and environmental factors are critical to the constructivist, as it is the specific interaction between these two variables that creates knowledge. (Jonassen, 1991a)
Here the tasks of the designer are two-fold:
- to instruct the student on how to construct meaning, as well as how to effectively monitor, evaluate, and update those constructions; and
- to align and design experiences for the learner so that authentic, relevant contexts can be experienced.(Ertmer, et al., 2013)
For the first group assignment, the teacher is more inclined to let us design our major course. Cognitivism allows students to connect with previously learned material, use recall prerequisite skills, and design and make analogies to relevant examples.
I read Harry Yan’s blog, which mainly deals with Behaviorist, Cognitivist and Constructivist. I have a clearer understanding of the knowledge points, which is of great help to me.
Here’s a link to his blog:
Another student, Caitlin’s blog
Her blog is all about her personal experiences, and she describes how she learned to succeed in three ways. Very good example. Besides, the beautification of her homepage is very special!
Here’s a link to her blog:
References:
Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (2013). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43-71.
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