All posts tagged "learning theories"

What Merits Are There To The 19th-Century Schooling System?

Rote learning, or learning by heart, got a bad name quite some decades ago. A Time Magazine article in 1986 showed Japanese schoolchildren in a classroom, with words and numbers in neat columns on the blackboard. The caption read, “...In Japan, rote learning is still emphasised...” The article implied that in the West, rote learning had gone out of fashion, having been replaced by critical thinking.

In Part 1, we looked at three negative implications for e-book readers as a medium. Here in part 2, we will look at what five authorities on language, informatics, and neuroscience have had to say about the medium.

The convenience and utility of e-book readers is undisputed. A few years ago, resolution and readability were an issue; as of 2013, they are amazingly close to physical books. The first time one uses a virtual book is usually an amazing experience. Is there any reason at all to prefer physical books?

Any e-learning courseware designer knows about Bloom’s Taxonomy of the cognitive domain. The taxonomy works as a theory that can directly be applied to e-learning. Others, like Multiple Intelligences, can be used to promote (or discourage) this or that learning system. Broader theories—like Humanism—look at people and learning in all their complexity, trying to arrive at How to Teach People. Why so many theories?

I’ve often found worthwhile food for thought at the Internet Time Alliance. A recent post by Harold Jarche mentions a distinction between Collaborative Learning and Social Learning. I wasn’t aware of one, so I looked at the definition by the Human Capital Lab:

It’s sometimes an important question for a course/presentation designer: “How long is the average attention span?” or “How long can a person stay focused on a topic?”

Ask “What is the role of colour in our lives” and you’ll get one of two responses -- “Yes, colours influence us in many ways,” and “Hmm, perhaps they do… I don’t really know.”

I’ve been reflecting upon learning theories, and it just came to me that ID itself is based upon sound theories. (We don’t usually think of “doing ID” as “doing science.”) Pretty obvious, I know. But in my defence, it’s been a long time since I thought of ID as a field of endeavour.

The Greek roots of “Pedagogy” translate to “leading a child.” In that respect—a teacher leading a learner—not much has changed in the shift from pedagogy to andragogy, or from “teaching” to “adult learning,” even if the methods have.