Six weeks ago I described my personal learning style as consisting of two main factors: a quiet, calm learning environment and the relevance of the material. If both of these components were present, I believed my ability to learn was maximized. This conclusion, however, was made without much knowledge of the current learning theories that impact today’s education: behaviorism, cognitive, constructivism, social learning, connectivism, and adult learning. Looking back I also realize that I made my learning style assessment based on what worked for me as an adolescent learner throughout high school and college and not what currently works as an adult learner.
Although the learning environment and relevance of material do improve my learning, they cannot explain what triggers my long-term memory or retrieval. After comparing and contrasting the different learning theories I have come to the same conclusion that Bill Kerr came to in his blog post when he stated that, “each _ism is offering something useful without any of them being complete or stand alone in their own right” (Kerr, 2007). Even though each theory has produced several learning strategies that have been helpful for me, combining the cognitivism and connectivism learning theories best explain my personal learning preferences.
A few weeks ago I created a Mind Map of Connections. The diagram depicts where I turn to when I need help learning new material. Connectivism is an ever-evolving theory because my network of connections is also always changing. My network consists of two main branches: technology and people. Technology plays a large role in my network. Social networking, blogs, search engines, online encyclopedias and databases, and the walden library are just a few of my connections that help me gather information. Once I have gathered information, I often rely on people in my network of connections to help me sort through relevant versus extraneous information.
Cognitivism maintains that memory only retrains information that has been stored in an organized manner and holds some personal significance to the learner (Ertmer & Newby, 1993). Technology has helped me become an efficient and organized learner with the use spreadsheets, tables, or word documents. Looking back, I had trouble differentiation between the six learning theories. It wasn’t until I struggled through filling in the learning theory matrix that I was able to grasp the similarities and differences between each theory. The matrix forced me to take large amounts of information and summarize it in a few short sentences.
Connectivism explains how I collect and sort through information while cognitivism explains how I organize and store that information. With the help of technology, forgetfulness is taken out of the equation once the information is organized and stored. Of course, I still have to remember where I decided to save the file!
Resources
Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (1993). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 6(4), 50–71.
Kerr, B. (2007). [Blog]. Retrieved from: http:billkerr2.blogspot.com/2007/01/isms-as-filter-not-blinker.html
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