A Theory of Online Learning
I created the attached online learning conference with two of my peers in the Master of Educational Technology course, ETEC 512, Applications of Learning Theories to Instruction, to summarize my belief that online learning environments are best designed from a constructivist perspective that is learner, content, community, and assessment centered. A teachers role in twenty-first century education is (in my opinion) far more complex than it once was. Anderson (2008) argues in his article, Toward A Theory of Online Learning, that online learning is “often limited by bandwidth constraints, which limit the users’ view of body language and paralinguistic cues” (p.47). I think that the onus falls on a teacher in an online classroom to plan activities that make a learner’s pre requisite knowledge known, (such as self-assessment activities, surveys, and questionnaires) and thus rely less on body language and paralinguistic cues; which in actual fact could be easily misunderstood and are at best a subjective form of assessment. Online learning may be more challenging to design, and to facilitate, but it is also far …
taraavenia.com 