Applying learning theories to build effective online education communities

Online Learning

Theories of Online Learning -- a research framework

The Need for Education Theory

The Theories of Learning

Attributes of Learning

The Learner Centered approach

The Knowledge Centered approach

The Assessment Centered

Possible variations to the Theories

Online learning is a mode of education that is rapidly developing and gaining in popularity. It eliminates the distance factor in education and improves on the concept of distance learning with additional benefits of face-to-face interaction and virtual class rooms via the internet.

Even though the online learning process might seem to be a completely different in terms of teaching and learning theories, researches have shown that the basic principles of learning transcend mediums and can be applied for effective online education and learning. One of the present trends of online learning is the creation of virtual communities of students and teachers to enable effective teaching and learning process. Therefore the paper attempts to delve into the existing theories of education and learning and try to correlate them with the requirements for effective online learning (Phye, 1997).

The well-developed and established theories of learning are social constructivist, connectivism and transformative learning theories. Such theories comprise of components that have relevance to the building of communities through dialogue, discussion and reflecting. Such attributes help the learners to gain knowledge through deeper understanding of the subjects being taught (Mezirow, 1991).

The salience of online learning has increased rapidly in the past few years in higher education. This has necessitated skill development from instructors regarding ways to build online communities and a framework adequate for online teaching and learning in a way that is beneficial to students. While technology like video conferencing can be an aid to the online teaching process, teachers and instructors need to follow a basic framework that must be based on the foundation of the theories of learning yet adapted suitably to meet the demands and the needs of online students.

This has given rise to the necessity for the creation of efficient interactive learning environments for students who participate in online courses. The best methods of teaching needs to be understood and assimilated by the educators and instructors with the technology and the resources that is present at hand (Phye, 1997). The use of technology can increase the inclusiveness of community learning environments.

An atmosphere where the student and the teacher interact to construct a class culture and where the entire learning process essentially takes place in a community setting, the social constructivist theory can be useful. In the era of technological development, the speed at which knowledge is increasing is also growing exponentially. In the online environment for learning, the connectivism approach to learning can be useful for students and teachers alike to know how to find pertinent information. Akin with the development of online learning, is transformative learning theory that focuses on the reflective ability of learning process (Miller & Pound, 2011).

This research will attempt to identify a theoretical approach based on these basic models of learning in a way that an effective and efficient model can be developed for the benefit students of online courses. The paper would also examine the possible effects of the various learning theories on the students undertaking online courses and engaged in online learning.

The Need for Education Theory

According to Dills and Romiszowski, (1997), there are three major roles for a good educational theory relative online education. Education theory for online learning makes people aware of the ways that enhanced communication, information retrieval, and management capability of the internet can be taken advantage of by education. This provides people with a vision for the education type and nature. It is often seen that technologies are used without any sort of direction where new actions are tried to be formed based on old formats and contexts (Dills & Romiszowski, 1997).

The most effective usages of the limited time and the resources for online learning can be identified with educational theories. Often a good theory on education helps educators to make new permutations and combinations to create new strategies. The growing demand for education, especially online education, even with the existence of many opportunities, the dearth of adequate resources makes it most important that the resources be adequately and most effectively used (Dunkin, 2006). Wilson argues that good theories are generally build on knowledge that already exists in the public domain or what is already known. Such theories help people to prepare for the unknown. A good theory of online education ensures that the robust and considered online learning is possible.

The Theories of Learning

The Behaviorist School of Learning

For the quantitative approach and analysis of the topic, it is important to review the process and the effects on students of behaviorist approach to learning. This approach deals with the quantitative observation of a reaction to a stimulus while it ignores the thought process that goes on behind the reaction. This approach measures success of the learning process from the observed and measureable indicators that result out of learning (Letchworth & Good, 1990)

This approach, when viewed from the point-of-view of online students can be quite fruitful if certain measures are taken. Using this approach would mean quantitative evaluation of the students and hence the students need to be informed about the expected outcomes of learning process that allows them to set standards for themselves to achieve. There is also need to test learners to determine the level of achievement of the standards that the students have managed to achieve (Mitchell & Myles, 2004).

The essential requirement of following this approach to online learning would be to have provisions for online testing or other forms of testing and assessment. This assessment tool is necessary to meet the primary requirement of this approach-to check the learner's achievement level. This approach entails the sequencing of learning, one sequence followed by the other and interrelated to the previous one in a way that it seems to be a continuous model. This aspect of behavioral learning also needs to be incorporated into online format using this approach. This aspect of the approach allows students to have an idea of their progress and act on the feedback provided to correct themselves (Dunkin, 2006). This theory represents the evaluation of quantitative observation of results of students' development and hence would be useful in assessing the hypothesis.

The Constructivist School of Learning

Active learning rather than passive is the primary characteristic of constructivists approach to learning. In this approach, knowledge is created form the learner's interpretation and processing of the information that the learner receives through the senses rather than knowledge coming from someone else or from some other source (Phye, 1997). This is an important theory that can explain the qualitative qualities associated with the research hypothesis. The instructor or the teacher simply plays an advisory role in this approach while the student or the learners is at the center of the process. This approach or theory allows learners to create and gain knowledge themselves instead of such knowledge being imparted to them through instructions (Jonassen, 1996). Viewing learning as being contextual and situated is a major emphasis of constructivists.

Adapting this theory of learning into the online learning scenario requires designing of activities related to learning that allows the learners to contextualize the information that they receive online. In order to ensure that learners are able to apply the information to a wider range of subjects, multi-contextual learning should be used online if the information passed on to inline learners is to be applied in many contexts.

Tapscott (1998) says that shifting to construction and discovery of knowledge from one way instruction is learning (Tapscott, 1998). The transformation theory of learning put forward by Mezirow (1991) explains how people learn by using both the constructivism and cognitivism approaches (Mezirow, 1991). The process of using a prior interpretation to construe a new or revised interpretation of the meaning of one's experience in order to guide future action," (Mezirow, 1991, p 12).

Further explaining transformative learning Mezirow (1991) says: "reflectively transforming the beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and emotional reactions that constitute our meaning schemes or transforming our meaning perspectives" (Mezirow, 1991, p. 223). Five interacting contexts were claimed by Mezirow (1991) to be involved in learning. They are the frame of reference or meaning perspective in which the learning is embedded, the self-image of the learner the conditions of communication, the situation encountered during the learning process and the line of action (process) in which the learning occurs.

Attributes of Learning

Theorists like garrison and Shale (1990) say that since online learning is just an extension of general learning, the issues that are related to general learning would also be applicable for online learning and how students cope with various issues online (Schwier & Misanchuk, 1993). Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (1999), in their book "new science of learning," say that four converging overlapping issues or lenses are the bases that form an effective learning environment (Guan & Li, 2004). Learner centered, community centered, knowledge centered and assessment centered are the four lenses that they talked about for effective learning. Understanding the theoretical importance of these lenses or issues of learning in general would also help to understand the way it is applied to online learning.

The Learner Centered approach

Awareness of the unique cognitive structures and understandings of the learners that they bring to the learning context is the essence of the learner centered approach according to Bransford et al. However it should not be confused as an approach where the whims and peculiarities of each individual learner are taken care of. In this context theorists have included the teacher and the institution and a group of students in this approach. The pre-existing knowledge of the student which would include the misconceptions would be tried to be understood by the teacher before the students starts the learning for the producing new knowledge (Harrell, 2013). The languages and the particular forms of expressions that are used by a learner are respected and accommodated in the learning environments as the learner uses such expressions to express and understand knowledge.

The Knowledge Centered approach

The advocates of this approach like McPeck (1990) argues that generalized thinking skills and techniques that are used in teaching needs to be grounded in some form of knowledge domain They argue that this is necessary for effective learning (Sarpong, 2009). Epistemology, context and language of thoughts define and bounds effective learning according to Bransford et al. (Jonassen, 1996). Unique ways of understanding and talking about knowledge are often provided by a world view of every discipline or field of study. Moreover expert thinking can be generated if students are allowed to have opportunities to ponder upon their own thoughts about various fields of study. But to develop new knowledge structures or to effectively transfer one's knowledge in a context that the student is not familiar about, reflective capacity is necessary. This is an opportunity that is given by the internet to the students who can dwell into the depths of knowledge that are essentially boundless. The students are able to move around and are able to seek knowledge in the internet.

The Assessment Centered

The requirement of effective environments for learning is the focus of assessment centered approach. The assessment of the students is done by formative evaluation instead of summative assessments. The aim of such assessment is done so that the results act as a force to motivate, inform and give feedback to the student. This allows the student to judge and make rectifications. A lot of such assessment opportunities can be got on the internet (Jordan, Carlile & Stack, 2008). For online students peer review, feedback, and expert opinion is also available in effective online learning.

Possible variations to the Theories

There are a few variations that one must keep in mind while undertaking these models. The research can have independent variables when assessing the hypothesis through the quantitative theory of learning. Such variables are essentially associated with the quantitative answers that students would tend to provide about the measure of reaction to stimulus. The dependent variable in the research work would include those that are associated with the various approaches to online learning styles of students and how they related to the various theories of education. This variable can also be found in quantitative analysis of the sensory and processing impact of various knowledge inputs in various forms from the internet. There is a definite relation between the variable as each one essentially would describe the effects or results of online education on the students. Therefore it can be said that all the variables are interrelated and would considered in union in the research.

Conclusion

The research question 'the affects of online learning on college students" would essentially be tested and evaluated by the theories and approaches to learning. The variables of the theories would be considered for the evaluation and measuring of the hypothesis. In this context it is pertinent to conclude form the above discussions the for the effective imparting of knowledge and learning trough the online medium a framework that is based on one or more of the learning theories needs to be developed. Such a framework or a number of frameworks can be made taking into consideration the various styles of learning of students and the three approaches to learning. Online courses need to designed to suit the various needs of students in general based on the assumptions in the theories.

The learning components mentioned in the theories of learning needs to be incorporated into the online learning framework and while designing of online study materials and courses. The use of the web to go through the sequence of direction with the aim of completing a learning objective and achieveing the desired and preset results of the learning would constitute online learning (Loughner & Milheim, 1999)