Constructing Courses To Enhance Learning Design Theory

This page is part of a paper called Constructing Courses to Enhance Learning, which is part of the Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Learning and Teaching (GCTLT), delivered by the Educational Development Centre (EDC) at Otago Polytechnic, Aotearoa New Zealand. The purpose of this page is to provide a DESIGN OVERVIEW for constructing new courses with appropriate Design Theory and Design Models. You are not expected to become an expert at wikipublishing - the aim is to give you an experience of using collaborative software. Please note that your course design may not include the use of a wiki at all - but you may find it valuable to share your ideas with your fellow students on this page.

=Course Participants=
 * Add your own name and blog address here
 * Rachel Gillies
 * Terry Marler
 * Matt Thompson
 * Jacquie Hayes
 * Lyn Blair
 * Tania Allan Ross
 * Bibiana Guevara-Hunter
 * Jenny Rudd
 * Kristi Carpenter (No blog as yet)

=Design Models=
 * add resources here of Design Models
 * The basics. Do you want to teach someone to hit the brakes when they see a brick wall looming? Maybe BEHAVIOURISM is your bag. Do you believe that there is a body of knowledge that must be inscribed on the blank slates of student minds? Try a COGNITIVE approach. Or if you think that they can make it all up amongst themselves, hit the CONSTRUCTIVIST button and head off to the pub. This part of the course calls for you to find a theoretical approach that fits your students and the content of the course which you are designing.
 * Open educational resources and practices
 * Identity and ownership
 * Wiki structure
 * design overview wiki wooki waky
 * Three online courses
 * Online learning Terry Anderson gives an excellent overview of learning theory here for those who are designing a course that will be mainly online. He has a great section in this chapter on online interaction between learners, teachers and content.
 * Learner characteristics and instructional design Katy Campbell relates qualities of the learner with design principles in this one. Especially good on gender issues.
 * building and construction toolbox a series of games for the construction industry learners. Well worth a look
 * Matt's web page very time consuming but fun.

=Individual Theoretical Perspectives=
 * add your own name and your theoretical perspective which you have researched and referenced, and that is appropriate to your course and your learners, and which should link to the references above. Start a new section for each, seperated by a line, then your title will be put into the contents above.


 * Open educational resources and practices


 * Socially constructed

Howdy folks Matt here. Analysis of the learner and context shows that learners in the building industry do a lot better if they are active while they are learning. This could be learning through discussion, drawing, doing, moving and other hands on involvement in the learning process. The results from the research done by BRANZ show that the learning enviroment is as important as the learning material.
 * Literacy Profile Carpenter


 * Constructivism this is the theory of this type of learning. If you want to understand it though see Willie Campbell she explains it in english.


 * Learning styles of those in the building and construction sector This is an excellent report that takes a long time to read unless you use the index to find what you are looking for. It is a report done by five UNITEC tutors that wanted to find out about a learner group and how they functioned best and worst. It gets into comments made by apprentices, carpenters and building company principals. It covers best contexts and the need for constructivist learning.


 * Creativity - learning theory This is an interesting theory. This explains about creative behaviour or Creativity Theory. Found this theory which would fit into the area I teach Fashion, and also finding my way in wiki, Bibiana.


 * This is an interesting site that compares Behaviourist, Cognitive and Constructivism theories With learning computing skills you will start with cognitive and move on to constructive learning as you gain the relevant skills.


 * learning styles This is a real interesting link to learning styles and how it will help me with my students learning styles.

I believe my learners will be also Cognitive with Behavourist Constructivism, Demonstrator model, Action Learning all in one course.
 * Here is also an interesting site i found on learning styles in a computer base course and its effects and how people learn.learning styles of a computer based course.
 * I have also looked at Kolb learning styles and what training techiniques are used best for optimal learning in computer related training, and the results of this study are behavour modeling has been identified as a technique for improvement, in many training situations they are designed for structured tasks which are oriented proceedures for which behavour modeling methodology works best. This technique can furnish new ways to provide student with conceptional and proceduaral information, with less fustration and higher satisfaction.  Abstract - using multimedia-with easy flow topics, techniques with soundand pictures, with text and graphics and on video, is an innovated way to learning and visual and vocal mulitmedia can be used for independent learning.

http://www.wikieducator.org/Facilitating_the_learning_process_of_kinesthetic_learners_in_the_online_environment Here is a link to Dave's thoughts on learning styles that we learnt in our DLPF course.
 * Some more interesting thoughts about computer based learning styles are
 * social
 * verbal
 * visual
 * aural
 * logical
 * These are benifical to my course,and is a great website to go to, explaining in quite depth the above styles of learning and giving online questionairs to do.
 * Link to Design Overview compiled by Tania for Digital Media course


 * Here is a link to an article with points that are consistent with what is important in the delivery of my course. Kristi

Vygotskian Constructivism - Jenny
Constructivism is closely linked in literature with student centred approaches. Student centred approaches tend to emphasise Piaget’s lone scientist view of learning rather than Vygotsky’s ideas of supported learning in the students zone of proximity. The zone of proximity is simply the gap between existing knowledge and potential knowledge. Vygotsky suggests that if you work with a student within their zone you can greatly extend their learning. For example if you send a student to independently research a topic online for the very first time, they may assimilate new knowledge but are less likely to accommodate it. If on the other hand you sit down with the student in the first instance, encourage them to freely explore the links that interest them, show them how to get back to the original article and discuss the new learning as they go – you are more like to find that the student is accommodating the new learning.

I have published the rest of my design overview here on my blog

=Evaluation Processes=

This is the place to explore some of the different ways you can evaluate the courses you are constructing. What is meant by evaluation? How will you know if what you are doing is working? For example, do your students like the course materials and the way you are presenting them?

Some information for you to look at for this section can be found in a chapter of the eLearning Guidebook called: Evaluating the impacts of eLearning