Week 1 Reflection

Week 1 of ICTs for Learning Design got us to focus on the Learning Theory. The Learning Theory has four main principles; Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Constructivism, and Connectivism. I will give a brief overview of these four principles.

Behaviourism: has its roots in behavioural psychology and states that learning is characterised by an observable change in behaviour. Digital tools such as quizzes, online tutoring, etc are behaviourist in design.

• Pro's - Low-level content, process & routine skill development 
• Con's - Not targeted at development of higher order thinking skills

Cognitivism: understanding learning in terms of mental processing (3 stage model).

Constructivism: learning is founded upon social interactions within a learning community or expert community.

Connectivism: proposed by George Siemens, identifies the networked nature of learning with computers and the internet. Can be described as "the pipeline and its connections is more important than what is in the pipeline."

Overall I found this week's learning experience quite manageable, information was well presented with relevant visual aids. Additionally 'optional' links were available with extra content information on the learning areas covered.

Learning Styles

 
After completing Felder & Solomon's Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire I found that my learning style is predominantly visual. Visual learners remember best what they see whether that be in the form of diagrams, flow charts, demonstrations, etc.

Visual learners are at disadvantage in classes which present minimal visual aids, an example of this environment could be a university lecture where majority of information is delivered in a verbal manner.

I find Felder & Solomon's questionnaire to be fairly accurate as I do tend to process information best when I can find a diagram or a visual aid to compliment written text. I also have developed a habit to color-code my notes with highlighters so that all relevant information is in the same color.
 
The implications for visual learners on online learning design is that there is a wealth of visual aids to accompany text online, whether these visual aids be found from online search engines such as Google or in video formant from places such as YouTube.

For anyone that would like to take Felder & Solomon's Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire it can be found at: http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html