Web Teacher: Diane K. Kovacs Jennyfur11 1

Tommy Learning? Tommy has his textbooks, but how can he learn from them? Can I? Can you? 2

Tommy Teaching? Tommy is trying to teach me to stop working and take him for a walk. This is very context specific teaching. A teachable moment. Consider how teaching and learning require communicating. 3

Psychology of Learning/Educational Psychology Perspectives: What is Teaching? What is Learning? describes teaching and learning through operant conditioning; negative and positive feedback (aka rewards and punishments) 4

Psychology of Learning/Educational Psychology Perspectives: What is Teaching? What is Learning? The Developmental perspective (Jean Piaget et al.) describes how we are able to learn as we grows and mature overtime or developmentally. 5

Tuppence Learning to Come Tuppence was 4 months old – just a baby. This is the best she could do at that point. But, she was responding to positive feedback. She gets a small piece of mild cheese when she obeys basic behavior commands. E.g., Sit, Wait, Come, Down, Go. 6

Psychology of Learning/Educational Psychology Perspectives: What is Teaching? What is Learning? describes how we remember what we learn and re-use skills and knowledge in new situations and environments and how we build on skills and knowledge over time. 7

Psychology of Learning/Educational Psychology Perspectives: What is Teaching? What is Learning? brings together key elements of behavioral, developmental, and cognitive perspectives and describes how we learn from interacting with each other formally and informally. 8

Tommy Learned to Crack and Eat Hazelnuts... …by observing his people crack and eat them and then share with him. He enjoys eating hazelnuts.* *We do not crack nuts with our teeth, but with a nutcracker tool. But since Tommy doesn’t have opposable thumbs he adapted what he knew already about the power of his own jaws as a nutcracker tool. He also taught Tuppence to crack and eat hazelnuts. 9

Psychology of Learning/Educational Psychology Perspectives: What is Teaching? What is Learning? is the grandparent of, and makes use of all of these perspectives. Constructivist perspective is individual (or group of individuals) learner centered and includes the individual learner's entry behaviors and learner characteristics as a practical starting point for creating teaching and learning. 10

The Importance of Instructional Design for Online Teaching and Learning Instructional design theories and process outlines vary in specific details but, the essential Instructional design process is: learner centered. analyzing the content/skills/or combination of content and skills to be taught within the context of the specific learners. planning the instruction for specific learners. creating or otherwise preparing instructional materials /delivery mechanisms/supporting tools, etc. evaluating the instruction (not just evaluating learner success but whether the instruction succeeded). facilitates designing effective instruction that meets the needs of an identified group of learners. You probably already do instructional design. But, not necessarily in a formal structured way. The instructional design process can be more or less complicated and include other factors that the teachers, managers, or instructional designers think are important. There are several versions of instructional design process for each type of training, teaching, educational goal or learning domain. These tend to be detailed to specific kinds of learning domains, e.g., managerial or sales training, literacy skills, vocational/craft skills training, etc. Formal instructional design is analogous to how computer programmers work. New programmers begin by using flow charts to guide the coding of algorithms. Then, as they become more facile with their work they leave out the flow charts and do the algorithm organization in their heads as they code.  I'm reminded at this point that real programmers in real organizations must learn to document their coding in any case, so they can share what they've done with other programmers, and members of the organization who need to be able to understand, edit, and improve on their work.  In the Web-based training environment, as trainers, we are not yet facile. I believe that a formal instructional design process is necessary to get properly started with training design. Furthermore, many of us need to create a formal instructional design plan to apply for funding to support projects, convince administrators and managers that the training is a good use of time and funding, and to more effectively work in a team environment where more than a single individual contributes to the project. 11

How we all feel after a long productive session of teaching and learning. 4 month old Tuppence, after her weekly hour long Puppy Class. A 3 month old Rottweiler puppy named Moose was her best buddy. They learned well together: come, sit, down, up, go… 12