Reflection at the End of the Course

When I started the Learning Theories and Instruction course, I expected it to be taught a certain way – lots of reading, lots of lists and rules, lots of explicit instructions on what to remember, and some case studies – lots of concrete and definite information. Instead, the emphasis was placed on personal research, and lots of reflection and generating my own ideas. I kept expecting some critique and correction of my writing and my thoughts. This never happened. Everything was new, surprising, VERY interesting and VERY overwhelming. Some things we were left to discover on our own, such as the fact that this unusual way of learning is called constructivist. Also, I found surprising that, looks like this is the only theoretical course on learning theories required for us, future instructional designers. Even as this class closes, I am still feeling that some theories are not quite nailed by me. Seems natural to continue this exploration on a deeper level, but I understand, again, that I’m expected to do this on my own – I was given quite a lot of excellent tools for this.

However, despite the seeming confusion, I managed to find out quite a lot about my own personal way of learning: the comparison of my initial ideas with the ones towards the end, brought a surprising revelation, that I actually prefer the constructivist way of learning – through creating of my own meaning out of the class’ experience. In spite of my initial expectations, I do like to generate my own ideas, and often moan at the necessity to cite some literature, which is so abundant, that I simply don’t have time for everything! This brings me to the major problem - the lack of time. I found the hard way that if I think a task would take me X hours, I should multiply it at least by 3 to get the realistic timeframe for that particular task. I’ve analyzed this phenomenon using the tools and ideas I’ve learned in this class and came to the one-word self-recommendation: simplify! Sounds “simple”, but it’s not – it takes a focused effort to eliminate years of bad habits of making everything complicated and nearly perfect.

In this class we’ve touched upon different major learning theories (Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism, Connectivism, Adult learning theories, and Social learning); we’ve learned about learning styles (each person has a unique way of learning), multiple intelligences, motivation, and the use of technology (now and in the future). All this makes us look at learning from different angles and deals with the problem of making learning more efficient. As prospective instructional designers, we should consider all of these theoretical and practical aspects of acquiring knowledge and skills by our students.

As I have stated at the beginning, it is inconceivable for me not to continue learning about learning – keeping this knowledge up to date is essential for an instructional designer. I still do not know how, but I have to learn to manage my time better in order to read blogs, articles, books, online news, etc. So much to do!!!