LDES 5001 - Fall 2023: Session 2 Readings

1. Is the purpose of instructional design to guide the student on how to relate to technology? What can we do to filter information? How can we promote pattern recognition and linking knowledge to create complex networks?

1.1. How as instructional designers we can encompass and assure that a collaborative learning is created promoting students from diverse backgrounds with diverse opinions? How much of it is left to the serendipity of these interactions?

1.2. Is there a right answer when it comes to learning theories? Are they standalone theories? Or is it possible to have a mixed-theory approach? Is any of these theories the right answer to promote lifelong learning?

2. How can educators bridge the gap between rewarding so consistently it is no longer effective while still rewarding a behavior enough to enforce that it is correct?

2.1. is there a single best approach or is one approach most efficient? While the ultimate goal is to select the perfect theory for the situation, which side of the spectrum do you think it is best to err on?

3. As an educator in a school that emphasizes constructivist learning, how might we “align and design experiences for the learner so that authentic, relevant contexts can be experienced” (Ertmer & Newby, 2013)?

3.1. Variations in cultural communities and practices: Are there ways we can anticipate or prepare for the “mismatch between what students have learned in their home culture and what is expected at school” (HPLII, p. 21)? How might our early interactions allow us to gather more information about parents’ expectations and values so that we might better understand their child’s tendencies?

3.2. The impact of emotions on learning: If “emotions are an essential and ubiquitous dimension of thought, and emotional processing steers behavior, thought, and learning,” then how can we establish emotional comfort for both child and parent (HPLII, p.29)? Early childhood education, and maybe even K-12, pose the interesting design challenge of considering both parent and child as part of the learning dynamic.

3.3. How will we think about the zone of proximal development as we offer materials, learning experiences, and varied instruction to different kinds of learners? How can we keep them engaged while offering challenges, and scaffold the experience so they don’t become too uncomfortable or discouraged?

3.4. Finally, keeping in mind that “our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today” how might we consider connectivism in harmony with constructivism and consider what young learners will need in order to learn and succeed in a digital era? (Siemens, 2014)

3.5. How will we design our learning community and curriculum to foster a sense of belonging, taking into consideration the motivation to learn, sense of agency, and purpose that are promoted when learners feel they belong? (HPLII, p. 6)

4. As a nation of immigrants, this article led me to question whether our school system and instructional methods are nuanced enough to account for the cultural differences many students possess. Was I at a disadvantage, and was my learning impeded because my mind was molded and operating within a socio-cultural schema different from that of the country I lived in?

4.1. Does the imposition of the Western cultural education model disadvantage students of immigrant origin, thereby contributing to the system of white Anglo-Saxon supremacy that drives inequality in this country?

4.2. My parting question is whether adjusting instruction and education to consider context and culture can be a powerful tool for combating pervasive inequality within the USA ?

5. Behaviorists view learning as change in probability of proper stimulus-response; cognitivists view learning as change in knowledge-states; constructivism views learning as change in subjective meaning; and connectivism views learning as change in connections between information sources (Ertmer and Newby, 2013; Siemens, 2005). Observing this commonality in my table clarified Sheull (1991) 's definition of learning for me. It also raised an interesting question: How could learning theories with varied views on the nature of knowledge share this common element in their definitions of learning?

6. How does race (or the impact of living in a racialized society) impact the way an individual learns? How does this differ based on where a student’s identities fit into their society’s constructed racial hierarchy?

6.1. How can we draw generalizations from research without excluding or speaking over the experiences of marginalized communities? How might the results of a learning study differ if conducted with marginalized communities in the United States?

7. how can we create a learning environment for students with different needs?

7.1. Sometimes the cultural value can affect the content. So how can we prevent that from happening?

8. How we, as a school/learning environment, can make students feel they belong here?

8.1. With all the diversity in cultures all around the world can we really make sure that we are covering all the differences in cultural aspects which can influence the learning possibilities of students coming from different backgrounds? Is there anything more we can do? And does that mean for teachers that they should dive deep into every culture their students are coming from?

8.2. Is there any research on age-appropriate teaching strategies and how educators can support students in transitioning between developmental stages? And as an EdTech platform/online project, how can apply these strategies in order to create better learning experiences for users in different age categories?

8.3. The other day I was walking down the street and overheard someone pronouncing the name of a restaurant and I was like “oh, that's the way it’s pronounced”. Does this mean that “learning” happened to me or did I intentionally/purposely want to learn it?

9. Higher education faces a difficult question: In an increasingly volatile world, what exactly are universities educating their students to prepare for?

10. I support the need for a holistic approach to education while creating effective learning environments and leveraging modern technology. Following this initial reflection, I remain curious about the subsequent topics and ultimately synthesize the concepts and apply them to tangible results.