In each of the coming eight lessons, we will discuss different theories and concepts of learning. The theories are associated with learning, motivation, and language. Each lesson contains multiple assignments to complete. Generally, you will complete a self-assessment to be completed after your readings, self-reflection exercises, and one or two scenario-based assignments per lesson that are related to a specific technology enhanced learning problem.
In the first lesson, you learned that people have been thinking about learning for many centuries. It was not until the early 20th century that researchers like John B. Watson, Edward Thorndike, and later B.F. Skinner brought the scientific approach to the study of learning by developing their behaviorist theories of learning. Watson argued that if psychology were to become a science, it had to structure itself like the physical sciences, which studied observable and measurable phenomena (Schunk, 2011). This meant that the observable phenomenon that psychologists would investigate would therefore be human behavior. Please learn more about behavioral views of learning by studying the readings of this lesson.
Behaviorism and learning: learning occurs when experience (including practice) causes a relatively permanent change in an individual’s knowledge or behavior (Woolfolk). This change must be brought about by experience and the interaction of a person with his or her environment. Changes that occur as a result of maturation do not qualify as learning. Some theories will focus on the change in knowledge and others will focus on the change of behavior. This lesson will focus on the behavioral view and the emphasis on external events. Classical Conditioning
Operant Conditioning:
Learning new behaviors and maintaining established ones
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Please take the quiz below to assess your own learning and understanding of the main concepts and principles related to behavioral views of learning. They provide you with feedback that can help you better understand the reading materials and will give you a better understanding of the theories and principles you understand well and which ones you may still need to work on. Because the purpose of the self-assessment is to determine your readiness to proceed with the assignments, you will not submit it nor receive any points for completion.
Click here when you can't see the quiz belowPaul is teaching a five week online workshop for faculty on the use of Photoshop at the University of Teaching and Learning. Every Monday night, Paul lectures for approximately 45 minutes using Adobe Connect and then assigns the class a related homework assignment that they should complete individually throughout the rest of the week. They are asked to submit the assignment by Friday. Paul will then grade all assignments before the next lecture and also provides each of the workshop participants with feedback. Faculty can obtain 5 points for the completion of each assignment. Paul deducts half a point for every assignment that was submitted late. Throughout the five weeks Paul states that he checks attendance during 3 of the 5 sessions, but does not tell the faculty upfront which sessions he will be checking. Paul finds attendance to his workshop crucial, so for each time that Paul checks attendance, faculty can earn 25 points for attending the session. The faculty need to obtain at least 80 points in order to receive certificate of completion for the course.
Even though Paul loves to teach the workshops and tries to make the content in the course interesting and relevant for his learners, he feels as if the faculty are not engaged while he teaches his workshops. He sometimes asks questions during his lecture and he does not receive many responses from the faculty. When he does, it is always from the same one or two people. He wonders if the participants may be busy doing other things while he lectures, such as surfing the web or checking their respective Facebook pages. He does not dare to directly confront the workshop participants about this though. He also notices that many of the faculty submit assignments late and that some students do not even complete all assignments that he assigns to them. He wonders if they may simply have forgotten about them or if there are any other reasons for this. Regardless, most faculty members in his course do actually successfully complete the workshop by obtaining at least 80 points, even though Paul is not sure that they really learned much.
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Paul wants to receive all assignments by email in Microsoft Word. To his surprise, he noticed that about 5% of his workshop participants do not have the computer skills needed to successfully complete any assignments. He therefore wants to develop an online tutorial for these few students. He wants these students to independently complete the tutorial before the start of the workshop. He wants these students to be able to embed saved images from their computer into Microsoft Word and to add arrows and other shapes into Microsoft Word pointing at specific parts of the images. Paul also wants to motivate students to actually complete the tutorial.
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