The article entitled Constructivism and Computer-Mediated Communication in Distance Education written by David Jonassen, Mark Davidson, Mauri Collins, John Campbell, and Brenda Bannan Haag aims to first describe current thinking and research about the constructivist approach to learning. This approach views the learning environment as learner-centered and believes that learners are not passive recipients of information. The learning process requires the active involvement of the student in constructing meaning. More than soaking in knowledge like a sponge, the learner negotiates meaning within the learning community. The learning-teaching process builds a community of learners working together and individually to: (a) make connections with prior experience, (b) modify prior conceptions if found inaccurate or not supported, and (c) build or construct understandings that become part of that individual's personal conceptual framework. This process of negotiating and constructing meaning happens within a context which becomes an integral consideration for the instructor to facilitate and inspire. Secondly, conceptions of thinking and knowledge acquisition are changing. Researchers and theoreticians are always striving to clarify and make sense of the nature of thinking and describing it in such a way that instructors can apply effective research-based guidelines to determine how to teach. The pendulum has swung away from a behaviorist to a cognitive psychology perspective seeing that "learning occurs not by recoding information but by interpreting it" (Resnick, 1989, p. 2). Thirdly, the authors positively present constructivism as an effective and research-based approach to learning and teaching. They apply constructivist principles to the learning-teaching process through a discussion using a system of four attributes: context, construction, collaboration, and conversation. Context creates a learning environment with a "real world" setting. Situated cognition and cognitive apprenticeships, constructivist learning theories, posit that learning is contextual and meaning construction is dependent upon its context. The process of learning requires active construction of knowledge through communication with others and reflection. A constructivist environment necessitates the learners negotiation of their own meaning of the experience rather than acquiring the teacher's interpretation. Collaboration provides the arena of public sharing of inner thoughts and strategies, which becomes a recursive revision process. The learners through this sharing process build and modify their existing knowledge frameworks. Conversation is an integral and necessary component of the learning process because language mediates knowledge construction. Applying the principles of constructivism to a learning environment requires changes on the part of the teachers. Rather than play the role of information disseminator, teachers focus on guiding the learners through the process of constructing their own understandings of concepts for themselves. Instructional activities change from emphasizing: (a) rote memorization tasks, (b) worksheet activities that call on lower-level thinking processes, and (c) drill and kill practice activities to emphasizing: (a) solving novel problems, (b) generative activities, (c) integrating information from resources, (d) cooperative activities, and (e) creating personal knowledge. The transmission models of instruction are evolving into correspondence models of instruction. Fourth, emerging technologies has inspired new approaches to the learning-teaching process in distance education. Similar to changes in face-to-face learning environments, distance educators are seeking new approaches to create resource rich learning environments, which also is seeing the de-emphasize of the teacher as the main or only source of information. No guidelines or recommendations for applying constructivist methodologies to distance learning has been articulated. This article then represents one of the few articles that offers information on how to create distance learning environments that support a constructivist view of the learning-teaching process. Existing distance learning technologies very appropriately support a constructivist approach to learning. Learning environments supported by computer-mediated communication, computer-supported collaborative work, case-based learning environments, and computer-based cognitive tools provide distance educators with the capacity to create constructivist learning environments. Fifth, the authors discuss the role cognitive tools, or to use Jonassen's term Mindtools, play in a constructivist environment to facilitate the meaning construction process. The importance of these knowledge-construction tools in a computer-mediated communication (CMC) context lies in their capacity to help learners learn with technology. Another term, like Mindtools, could be metatools. By using these tools as mind extension applications a learner engages in a partnership with the tool. A partnership implies a reciprocal relationship wherein the learner partners with the tool instead of experiencing a feeling of dominance or loss of control. These tools are especially helpful in a distance learning environment because they are thought to "distribute the cognitive responsibility appropriately" (Jonassen & Marra). This means the mental load is distributed appropriately between the tool and the learner. Instead of using limited cognitive resources to store information, the learner develops systems of organizing and managing information with Mindtools. These tools can be used individually or in computer supported collaborative work. An ongoing research project at Vanderbilt called The Adventures of Jasper Woodbury is an example of a situated, case-based learning environment. This constructivist environment situates instruction in a problem-solving context, based on an instructional design approach known as "anchored instruction" (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1992). CTGV stress the fact that constructivist principles do not provide specific instructional guidelines. They investigated research-based studies to formulate and support their instructional design. An important instructional approach for the Jasper program was to "create shared environments" (CTGV, 1992). The instructional effectiveness of this environment lies in providing learners, the community of learners, with the experience of encountering problems and exploring solutions using the knowledge (including Mindtools) that experts in the field use in their daily lives. This type of knowledge acquired in a problem-solving context is more likely to be retained (Lockhart, Lamon, & Gick, 1988) than knowledge not acquired generatively (Gick & Holyoak, 1980, 1983; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1985). The data results from this project indicate learning gains equivalent or better than non-Japser learning environments. Another strong indicator of effectiveness is the attitude measurement. Jasper students reported experiencing less anxiety and equally important discovered the relevance of math in their own lives. The importance of a constructivist approach to CMC is rooted in its assumptions about the meaning-making process of learning. The constructivist approach sees learning as "dialogical and inquiry-based." The opposing, positivist, views of learning oversimplify the process and unscientifically reduce the dynamic process into a set of behavioral manipulatives. The learning-teaching process is complex and less stable than the positivist or post-Aristotelian assumptions posit.. Current work in chaos theory indicate that existing conditions in the learning environment, ones not even accounted for, may have "a powerful impact on learning" (Jonassen, et al, 1997). Three propositions of constructivism: (a) "Understanding is in our interactions with the environment," (b) "Cognitive conflict or puzzlement is the stimulus for learning and determines the organization and nature of what is learned," and (c) "Knowledge evolves through social negotiation and through the evaluation of the viability of individual understandings," represent the philosophical tenets of the learning-teaching process (Savery & Duffy, 1995). Research based on these tenets and illustrated throughout this paper indicate a shift by leading learning theorists that learning is a process of making sense of the world around us. Constructing or negotiating meaning occurs not in a vacuum but within our everyday community. Therefore, instruction based on creating a learning environment that supports and celebrates individual efforts will more effectively develop independent learners than teacher-controlled environments, which are limited by the mind of one.
References Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt (CTGV). 1992. The Jasper Experiment: An exploration of issues in learning and instructional design. Educational Technology Research and Development, 40 (1), 65-80. Gick, M. L., & Holyoak, K. J. (1980). Analogical problem solving. Cognitive Psychology, 12, 306-365. Gick, M. L., & Holyoak, K. J. (1983). Analogical problem solving. Cognitive Psychology, 15, 1-38. Jonassen, D., Davidson, M. Collins, M., Campbell, J., & Haab, B. B. (1995). Constructivism and computer-mediated communication in distance education. The American Journal of Distance Education, 9 (2), 7-25. Jonassen, D. H., Hennon, R. J., Ondrusek, A., Samouilova, M., Spaulding, K. L., Yueh, Hsiu-Ping, Li, T., Nouri, V., DiRocco, M., & Birdwell, D. (1997). Certainty, determinism, and predictability in theories of instructional design: Lessons from Science. Educational Technology, 37 (1), 27-33. Lockhart, R. S., Lamon, M., & Gick, M. L. (1988). Conceptual transfer in simple insight problems. Memory & Cognition, 16, 36-44. Resnick, L. B. (Ed). (1989). Knowing, learning, and instruction: essays in honor of Robert Glaser. Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates. Savery, J. R., & Duffy, T. M. (1995). Problem based learning: An instructional model and its constructivist framework. Educational Technology, 35, (5), 31-38. Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1991). Higher levels of agency for children in knowledge building: A challenge for the design of new knowledge media. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 1, 37-68.
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