So what is this Constructive Model of Learning?

If you want to build a model of learning (which we take to be the acquisition of knowledge), then you need to have a theory about what knowledge is. Traditionally knowledge has been taken to be the perception of reality in the human mind. [You can get very bogged down here with philosophical conundrums, so I hope we can take the above as a working definition.]  One school of thought holds that the meaning of reality is external to the human mind (it is an objective reality) but that the human mind can manipulate internal symbols that correspond to real-world entities. Learning means discovering how to manipulate those symbols correctly so as to know the objective truth. [Most of the material in this blog comes from Constructivism versus Objectivism by C. Vrasidas. It is a good read with many more ideas and insights than I’ll be covering here.]

With this objectivist learning model [See George Marsh], the teacher’s job is to figure out how to transfer the truth, bit-by-bit, from the real world into the learner’s mind. This is the 20^th century version of the traditional model of learning and its curriculum development turns out to look rather like the traditional software development waterfall life-cycle.

Software Development	Curriculum Development
Specify Requirements	State the learning objectives – what knowledge (bits of reality) is to be taught.
Design the software	Devise appropriate learning tasks – including course notes, exercises, demonstrations etc.
Implement the code	Deliver the course – by means of lectures, laboratories, seminars, homework.
Testing	Evaluate student attainment – by means of assignments and exams.

The constructivist model of learning is based on another view of reality – that the human mind creates its own symbols by interpreting real-world perceptions. Because the meaning of reality depends on the experiences and interpretations of each individual human mind, knowledge is internal and subjective. So, generally speaking, there is no correct interpretation and no absolute truth. Everyone will have their own personal truth that depends on their particular experiences drawn from their particular environment and circumstances. Learning is about making meaningful interpretations to construct that truth.

This is another place where it is possible to get into deep philosophical waters. The slogan Reality is a social construct was coined by social scientists and tends to annoy natural scientists (and engineers). We are probably more comfortable with the proposition that the mind cannot encompass the whole of reality in the same way that the eye cannot see a whole three-dimensional object. Instead, each mind has a particular perspective on reality and it is to be expected that each person’s perspective (i.e. their truth) will be a little bit different.

On the education front, Piaget [1970] was a proponent of personal constructivism whilst others, notably Vygotsky [1978], favour social constructivism where knowledge is constructed within a community of practice. The rise of social networking in the last decade has brought this theory into a sharper focus, especially in the education field.

So what is the role of the teacher within the constructivist paradigm?  As Vrasidas says 

“The teacher cannot know in advance all the specific knowledge that each student will construct. What (he) can know is the broad area of knowledge and provide for opportunities for learners to develop the skills necessary to explore further in (the) domain.”

Taking the curriculum development steps one at a time…

Learning objectives – since there is no absolute knowledge, there is little point in trying to define precisely what knowledge the learners should acquire. Instead the focus should be on guiding them to think like experts in the field.

Learning tasks (and delivery) – the teacher needs to facilitate experiences that lead to knowledge construction and that develop knowledge construction skills as follows:

(i)           ‘Thinking like an expert’ requires the development of cognitive processes (i.e. thinking skills).

(ii)         Constructivist educators place a lot of emphasis on collaborative learning because learning alongside other learners (i.e. in a community of practice) introduces multiple perspectives and encourages negotiation of shared truths and values. 

(iii)       Because knowledge is internal, constructivist learners need to develop a degree of self-reflection that allows them control over their learning experiences.

Evaluation – since we didn’t define what the learners should have learned, we cannot tell whether or not they have learned it. However, by focusing on the knowledge construction skills, we can tell whether or not they have learned anything and maybe how well.

In the education world whilst there are hard-line objectivists as well as hard-line constructivists, most people seem to subscribe to a mainly objectivist approach but accepting some constructivist elements. For myself, I think the objectivist approach is fine for teaching and learning factual information – so that would make a good preparation for Mastermind. For a Master of Science however, with an emphasis on problem solving, critical awareness and innovation, those ‘knowledge construction skills’ are also really necessary.

Piaget J. (1970) Genetic Epistemology. Columbia University Press, New York.

Vygotsky L. (1978) Mind in Society, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA.

A curriculum development methodology

For this post I am going to make a start on the Pedagogic Model. As a lecturer you are taught "Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you just told them." This just means that a good lecture should have a beginning, a middle and an end. However, with distance learning or e-learning, at least some if not all of the immediacy that you get with a live presentation has to be replaced with static learning materials. The task of educational technology researchers has been to develop a model of human learning that can (a) occur outside of the traditional classroom; (b) be facilitated by the static resources. One big difference can be that courses designed around a sequence of lectures are period-based - divided up according to what can be learned in a fixed time period. By contrast, most distance learning courses are theme or topic-based and the learning is thus potentially self-paced. In practice, many technology subjects require the knowledge to be built up layer-upon-layer so the order of study comes out the same or similar whatever approach is used.

Just as software developers adopt a design methodology such as the Waterfall model (specify-design-implement-test) to produce programs, so curriculum developers use an instructional design methodology to produce lessons. One such scheme is known as ICARE.
[the original source is Hoffman, B., & Ritchie, D.C. (1998). Teaching and learning online: Tools, templates, and training. In: J. Willis, D. Willis, & J. Price (Eds.), Technology and teacher education annual – 1998.  Association for Advancement of Computing in Education - this article is not online I'm afraid; or try Evaluating Student and Faculty Satisfaction with a Pedagogical Framework, Vincent Salyers, Lorraine Carter, Penelope Barrett and Lynda Williams, The Journal of Distance Education / Revue de l'Éducation à Distance, Vol 24, No 3 (2010)].

The initials stand for the different components of each lesson so Introduction is self-explanatory whilst Connect is intended as a sort of brain-storming session where the learner(s) establish the context within which the study will occur. Then Apply stands for exercises and activities where learners practise and utilise their newly acquired knowledge and skills, and Reflect involves doing things that serve to integrate this new knowledge with prior knowledge. Finally, Extend suggests directions in which learners might like to expand their exploration of the topic. You will notice that all these items (apart from Introduction) are cast as activities that the learners engage in - the teacher doesn't really feature apart from initially setting/suggesting the learning tasks. This is a characteristic of constructivist learning models and I shall return to this issue in a subsequent post.

We used ICARE at Middlesex to develop an e-learning MSc in Business Information Technology. It was found that both students and our staff felt more comfortable when more control was placed in the hands of the teachers. So we added lecture notes to the materials in place on the Connect activities and called it Content so we could keep the acronym.
[Woodman, Mark and Milankovic-Atkinson, Maya and Sadler, Chris and Murphy, Alan (2001) From conventional to distance education: adopting a pedagogy and managing the transformation. In: Stephenson, John, (ed.) Teaching & learning online: pedagogies for new technologies. Kogan Page, London, pp. 120-128.]
In the end though Middlesex modified the model a bit more and came up with another acronym - SCATE
[see for example Enriching a pedagogical model for the implementation of a virtual training environment, Mimirinis, M.;   Dafoulas, G.A. ICALT2005. Fifth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, Sept. 2005]
and this is still the recommended pedagogy for Middlesex-designed distance-learning courses.

In a forthcoming post I'll walk you through the pedagogic model implicit in the Mpirical LMS, but we'll need to return to constructivism first.

About e-learning 2.0

Every programme needs a programme leader. It's an admin. job for academics that involves representing the course on various committees, dealing with internal and external examiners and other 'quality assurance' issues. Most programme leaders are specialists in the field of study, but it's not an essential requirement.

I am the programme leader for this programme (the MSc Mobile Telecommunication Engineering). I was appointed instead of a subject specialist because I have a lot of experience in supporting postgraduate work (going back to 1984) and also in educational innovation, including e-learning (going back to 1979 - yep, I still have in my possession a 300bd acoustic coupler). It is an unusual programme because of the Mpirical/Middlesex partnership and because of the e-learning. Although it is not exactly ground-breaking, the e-learning aspect is quite innovative. Everybody is familiar with the idea that Web 1.0 was about one-way content delivery over the internet whilst Web 2.0 is about two-way delivery - i.e. the 'consumers' are also major originators of content - and this gives rise to the phenomenon of social networking.

There has been a sizeable group of educators that has been waiting for a long time for this development - they are adherents to the constructivist learning philosophy of education. This holds that people create their own knowledge (i.e. learn stuff)  by constructing meaning from their experiences. Some of these experiences might involve interacting with formal sources of knowledge (books and lecturers)  but others could (should) involve interacting with fellow learners. [You'll find a more detailed explanation at http://www.exploratorium.edu/IFI/resources/constructivistlearning.html.]  So by analogy we have e-Learning 1.0 where the teachers upload their material onto some website (by far the most common kind of e-learning) versus e-Learning 2.0 where the learners collaborate together electronically to construct their own materials and hence knowledge. Other educators call this networked learning.

You can see, looking at the portfolio requirements, that students are supposed to develop and submit both 'traditional' and constructivist elements. At this stage we don't know what knowledge the students are going to construct and one of my jobs is going to be to try to determine the expectations of the assessors and convey these back to the course team and students. So that's one of the things I'll be tackling in this blog.

... not that I expect it to be possible to define a sort of performance standard of networked interaction. That's because another line of educational research looks at differences in individual learning styles. [We even did some work on this at Middlesex - e.g. http://ebookbrowse.com/dimitrova-sadler-hatzipanagos-murphy-2003-final-pdf-d57080683.] The content that goes into a Learning Management System tends to be fairly static so it is especially important in e-learning to make sure that you cater for all the different styles. So I want to develop this in the blog and I'll try to comment here about any observed styles of learning,  particularly in respect of some of those constructivist activities like forum contributions.


Finally,  Middlesex tends to be very prescriptive about the way that the learning materials in our LMS are structured and formatted  - it is our pedagogic model or 'instructional design' if you are American  [see http://michaelhanley.ie/elearningcurve/discovering-instructional-design-13-icare-model-middlesex-universitys-experience/2009/06/12/].  The Mpirical LMS has a different pedagogic model and the Middlesex QA processes require this to be validated by one of the in-house experts. This is not an area where I am anticipating any type of problem but it will be an interesting exercise to draw the contrasts between them and I'll try to report my findings here.