A Time for Reflection

A Time for Reflection

When this course started I thought to myself that this course would be a breeze.  I have been training adult learners most of my life and have really concentrated on just the training in the last four years.  One aspect of training I am particularly good at is being able to figure out how someone learns and adapt my training style to match that to the learner’s way of learning.  I thought that since I already had this, let us call it “innate”, ability that taking this course would be easy; I could not have been further from the truth.  Truth is that I did not understand any part of the brain; well nothing more than the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and vice versa.  I did not understand all the different _isms or theories that have been developed and studied by people for decades.  The biggest item I found surprising was that I did not know as much as I thought I knew about how people learn especially when it comes to the constructivist theory on learning - this theory was to be my undoing.

When we started the study on constructivism and I read all the material that was required I thought this theory was the most ridiculous theory I had ever heard.  I have a science background and I thought it was ridiculous to tell people that they learn by constructing their own knowledge.  In Chemistry, Math or Physics see how well a student does when they are not given key information or formulas to solve problems.  It was not until after gaining some insight from our instructor and actually studying another _ism, connectivism that I realized how constructivism actually works and where it applies and suddenly things started to make more sense.  I was actually using constructivism to learn about connectivism.  I never realized how much I actually use constructivism in my life to learn new things every day.  This was quite the eye opener to now understand that much of my knowledge is derived from constructs of previous learning married with the new item I am currently trying to learn.  I guess I did not realize that this is how I learn many items but I just never had a term for it, nor did I think to find out the term behind how I learn.  Knowing how I learn though will help me further myself over the course of my life, it will help me when I struggle with difficult concepts and why would it not, this is how I have been learning for years – again just not knowing the term.

After examining all the different learning theories, styles, technology and motivation I have come to realize that each of these items needs the others to complete the learning cycle.  Actually I am not sure “needs” is quite the correct term.  Each theory is enhanced by today’s technology but it does not mean anything if the motivation is not present for someone to learn the theory and/or the technology and if these items are not presented in a style that the learner best understands.  Let us look at my own example of learning constructivism.  After reading the mundane information for constructivism utilizing a lot of jargon and boring writing style I was not interested in knowing anything more than I had to about constructivism.  After posting my discussion for the topic on the class discussion board I received a response from the instructor in the class.  The instructor was able to give me both the motivation and the information on the theory in such a way to allowed me to understand the material in a style that was optimal for my learning the concept.

After the instructor was able to help me just by writing the information that works best for how I learn, that has now helped me with how to handle situations such as these when I have to handle a distance learning situation in my career.  My current position actually allows for me to try these items I have learned through this class and the previous class.  It is great to see that the information I am learning will eventually allow me to obtain a degree in Instructional Design and that I can also make use of this information in my current work environment.  For example, just last week I was able to help someone through a concept that was recently taught in the office by utilizing the constructivism theory.  The person I was helping did not understand one of the new applications being taught.  This person is really accomplished at using Excel on her computer and the new application being taught used a lot of the same features as Excel.  I helped her by making references back to how items work in Excel so she could construct the new knowledge of the new application from her previous experience with the Excel application.  This worked; the person understood the new material after I used the reference back to something with which they were already familiar.

In conclusion, I have learned to realize that I am never done learning.  Work on expanding your knowledge base, it is amazing what you might find.