E-Learning Theories and Its Emphasis - Literature review Example

Student Name: Tutor: Title: E-learning Course: E-learning theories and its emphasis Introduction Learning theories are usually portrayed as being optional accounts of the same phenomena as opposed to being perfectly compatible accounts of very different phenomena. As the understanding of e-learning matures, the appreciation of importance of theory becomes deeper. Theory points out direction in the educational outcomes. Learners in groups or communities as well as individually have to be motivated to take responsibility for the attainment of their respective learning outcomes. While e-learning tools grow to be powerful in capability, and global in regard to scope, it becomes feasible to redesign the educational enterprise as a way of empowering learners to be in charge reflectively of their learning. De Laat and Lally (2003) reiterates that positioning of learners who are empowered at the core of the process of e-learning will have a clear impact on the position of the educator but the evolvement of the position is not clear yet. It is clear that practice and theory have to be aligned within a workable and coherent educational model. Whether collective or individualized in form, reflexivity in the social world is part of the stream comprising e-learning flows. Situative perspective The social perspective in regard to learning has been enhanced from the re-conceptualization of all learning as being ‘situated’. In this perspective, a learner will usually be exposed to influences from social and cultural setting in which learning takes place which has an impact on the outcome of learning. This concept of learning looks at the distribution of knowledge socially. If knowledge is observed as situated in practices of the communities, then learning outcomes entails the abilities of individuals to take part in the very practices comfortably. Beetham and Sharpe (2007) argue that emphasis is put on the successful practice patterns rather than components of subtasks analysis. This is an important connection to the theories of learning whereby cognitive and behavioral levels of analysis had been disjointed from the social. In both constructivist perspective and situated learning the main assumption is that learning has to be personally meaningful and this is not defined with the informational characteristic of the environment of learning. Learning, motivation, and activity are all connected to a need for a positive sense of identity that is shaped by social forces. Situated learning has been divided further into two perspectives. Socio-psychological view centers on the significance of learning that is context-dependent in informal settings and results into design of constructivist tasks where every effort is made to ensure the learning activity is authentic to the social setting where the knowledge or skills are normally engraved. The major design emphasizes the connection between the nature of learning tasks in training or educational environments, and its features when situated in real application. The second perspective regards the concept of a community of practice that emphasizes the relationship of the individual with a group of people as opposed to the relationship of an activity to the wider practice (Ravenscroft, 2001). The role of theory even in e-learning is very important since it makes the situation real by drawing onto practical examples. Associationist perspective This perspective presents learning as the gradual building of skill and associations components. Learning happens via the process of connecting behavioral units or elementary mental, by sequences of actions followed by feedback. This perspective entails the research traditions of connectionism, behaviorism, and associationism. The theory of associationist requires the subject matter should be analyzed as particular associations, presented as behavioral objectives. The analysis was developed by Gagne (1985) into a system that is elaborate of instructional task analysis concerning discrimination, response, and classification sequences. Tasks of learning are arranged in sequences according to their relative complexity following a task analysis, with simpler components coming before complex components. Neutral network theory can be referred to as adhering to associationist tradition in the manner that it designs knowledge states as activation patterns in elementary units’ network. Finegold and Cooke (2006) emphasize that the approach has not been commonly used to educational issues, but is vitally significant. It presents knowledge analysis in terms of attunement to activities’ patterns as opposed to task components as required by traditional task analysis. The instructional approach referred to as Instructional System Design (ISD) is importantly recursive decomposition of skill and knowledge. A lot of what is termed as e-learning is still found in training departments of many organizations in a training philosophy which is traditional ISD (Thorpe, 2002). The intellectual foundation of this comprises of principles that are largely accepted in the culture of the organization training that derive significantly from associationism. Basic principles of Instructional System Design is that competence is complex and advanced tasks is built step by step beginning from simpler units of skill or knowledge, eventually adding coordination to the entire structure. Instruction that is successful relies on placing constraints or limits on the amount of new structure that has to be added at any given stage. The analysis of complex tasks into subsequent Gagne’s learning hierarchies, known as the decomposition hypothesis, entails the assumption that skill and knowledge has to be taught from the bottom up. This kind of assumption has been a subject of controversy, but is still widely used in e-learning. Conole and Oliver (2007) explain that combining this perspective with immediate feedback as well as individualizing of instruction; by permitting multiple paths to successful performance whereby every student is offered with the next problem contingent on his response to the previous one; resulted in programmed instruction development. This perspective, ideally appropriate to automation using simple technology, came to be prevalently discredited together with the excesses of behavioral modification in an old-fashioned use of behaviorist theory to education (Idrus, 2000). Behaviorism was majorly concerned with emphasizing active learning-by-doing alongside immediate feedback on success, learning outcomes’ careful analysis, and importantly, the alignment of objectives for learning, instructional methods and strategies applied in the assessment of learning outcomes. Cognitive perspective Computer-Supported Collaborative learning (CSCL) has gained popularity and it is being approached from different perspectives. It includes traditional ones which focus on cognition which is the mental process of thought. Perspectives that are emerging concerning CSCL encourage other stakeholders and educators to manage and explore a variety of other dimensions of involved learning process (Barros-Castro & Cordoba-Pachon, 2011). Traditional learning is practices focus on classroom in place, content, time, and the application of computers and collaboration is occasional. CSCL is centered in computer and collaboration, its goal is to support classroom content whereby there are different people in different place and likely at the same time. CSCL revolves around how collaborated learning is supported by technology to encourage work in groups and peer-interaction, and how technology and collaboration facilitate distributing and sharing of expertise and knowledge among members of the community. Vygotsky and Piaget observe that thought and language play a significant role in cognition, that is, how a child assimilates and apprehends things and hence prepares himself to face events in future. Both theorists embody social and constructivist views of learning. Learners have to play an active role in the construction of their own knowledge. Learning is regarded as a social process whereby interactions assist individuals to generate for performing a task and gaining understanding (Barros-Castro & Cordoba-Pachon, 2011). Theory by Piaget focuses largely on individual aspects in cognitive development. The approach is known as socio-constructivist approach and it is portrayed through enhancing the goal of interactions between an individual and others, as opposed to the role of action. Socio-cultural approach emphasizes social activity that enhances individual mental functioning whereas the socio-constructivist approaches revolve on individual development in the setting of social interaction. Despite the general change in theoretical positioning in psychology witnessed in 1960s, learning together with thinking, perception, reasoning and language were viewed as the outcome of individual’s memory, attention, and concept formation process. According to Beetham and Sharpe (2007), the approach offered a foundation for analyzing procedures and concepts of subject matter curricula with regard to information structure, and resulted to new approaches pedagogy. In this wide perspective, particular sub-sections of cognitive research can be highlighted as being influential such as schema theory, levels of reasoning in memory, information processing theories of reasoning and problem solving, mental models, meta-cognitive processes, and general competence for thinking (Watson, 2001). The basic theme for learning is modeling processes of constructing meaning and interpreting, and special emphasis was directed on the instantiation of knowledge acquisition model in form of programs of computer. Acquisition of knowledge was seen as the result of interaction between the structures and new experiences for understanding which has been already been constructed. This line of thinking contrasted sharply with the learning model as the strengthening of associations. The cognitive perspective viewed acquisition of knowledge as emanating from a declarative form to a compiled, procedural form. While performance becomes more fluent and expert-like, the component skill is automated. Therefore, conscious attention is longer needed in the monitoring the low-level aspects of cognitive resources present and performance for levels of processing that are more strategic. Suther (2006) points out that Mainstream cognitive approach to teaching and learning have put emphasis on the assumption of constructivism which holds that understanding is gained via an active process of constructing new forms of understanding through activity and active process of hypothesis creation. Concepts have to be considered as tools that can be understood through application as opposed to entities that are self-contained to be delivered through instruction. This is the foundation of constructivist approach where the search for meaning by the learner is very important. However, it will be naïve to simply argue that constructivism has emanated directly from the cognitive approach. For instance, its emphasis on the significance of feedback and learning-by-doing is inclined partly to the behaviorist tradition (Khan, 2005). The coming up of situated cognition was partly dependent on the impact of mainstream cognitive theory of socio-anthropological work by Lave. Constructivism pedagogy is still influenced by the significance of social interaction for higher cognitive functions’ development. A challenge in the designing of curricula in further and higher education persist to be the unresolved theme in pedagogy. Research has demonstrated that the abilities of the students to comprehend something new depend of what is already known to them. Educators are unable to build on the foundation of the frameworks already existing through feedback and problem-solving activity. Constructing understanding’s activities have two main aspects; interactions in which learners deliberate on their developing competence and understanding as well as interactions with concepts and material systems in the domain. The emphasizing of reflection and task-based learning can be viewed as a reaction to the quick development in hypermedia and multimedia in the early 1990 and the 80s. Beetham and Sharpe (2007) agree that this is when an inclination towards technological-based practice to revive approaches of traditional instructionist was prevalent. The key focus was on the material delivery whereby information can be transmitted more effectively by teachers and subsequently understood by students. For sometime, in 1990s, the trends were working in opposite direction; the research community was revolving around some major ideas of learning that focused on the significance of the social context and task-based, whereas the policy makers were involved on the potential of e-learning to generate efficiencies by powerful information delivery methods (Tam, 2000). There are indications that there is no longer opposition although perfect congruence has not been achieved. Following the Web development, both have converged on communication as a major construct that is enabling. Different technologies that used in the delivery of e-learning There are many technologies which are used in the delivery of e-learning. The technologies depend on the cost and the location of both the learner and the instructor and the type of information to be transmitted. Some of these technologies include: Internet Multimedia Multimedia incorporates texts, audio media (usually with animations and video), and graphics and combines them by use of a computer. Most of the personal computer can deliver multimedia presentations for education, advertising, or entertainment. Edutainment involves applications that integrate multimedia educational objectives and entertainment. Streaming multimedia enables large files to be delivered (Laurillard, 2002). This is an internet data transfer method which facilitates the transfer of video and audio files from a computer to another in a ‘stream’. Streaming audio is being applied as a supplement to online and classroom-based course delivery. Data channels and Push Technologies Pushed content channels are a source of media-rich and dynamic content online. Channels are often communication paths that are customized between computers, and can be compared to “Favorites” or “Bookmarks” in a browser but have added interactivity and features. Standard Web sites dictates that the user has to browse the site to view any changes or developments; nevertheless, Web content which is formatted for the purpose of channel-based delivery is pushed directly to the desktop of the end-user. Graham (2002) offers that channels can be modified, created from scratch, or chosen. They monitor new content from sites that are relevant and navigate sites which the channel holder regards as interesting. A user can create his or her channel that connects to various sites pertaining to a particular subject of interest. Push technologies are used to feed, timely and inexpensive weather, sports, and news or any information from sites that are relevant to a classroom for use in current events, reports, and essays in classes. Voice over Internet Protocol and Audio Chat Text chat is popular feature on the Internet. In the recent times, audio chat has also grown in popularity. Online services offer free internet-based long-distance service where individuals can connect through calling via a personal computer to a public telephone system. Regardless of the inferior quality of Voice over Internet Protocol or internet phone calls compared to dial-up long-distance telephone, consumers are increasingly becoming attracted to the internet telephony owing to the lure of extremely cheap and free calls. E-mail pen pal programs that are classroom-based have been used for quite a period of time as a means of making intercultural connections between schools. Hiltzt and Turoff (2002) point out that Internet telephony gives an opportunity to students to speak to one another in the group regardless of their location in the world. Different cultural groups can communicate. Student and teacher communication is greatly improved by the chance to speak to one another in order to discuss difficult concept or assignment without involving long-distance tolls which are expensive. Voice over Internet Protocol together with an electronic blackboard can be used for synchronous teaching. This is referred to as audio-teleconferencing. Web White-boarding This is a form of graphic conferencing that combines Voice over Internet Protocol as one tool in general Web application which support time collaboration. It emulates drawing or writing on a blackboard. Both learners and teachers can manipulate, create, update and review graphical information online in real time while at the same time taking part in a discussion or a lecture using a whiteboard. It allows classroom lessons emulations (Pagani, 2005). Students from various locations can participate collaboratively and actively with other students and the teacher in the adaptation and creation of graphical information. Conclusion Learning theories are very significant even in e-learning. Different theories have been applied when it comes to acquisition of knowledge within or outside a classroom. The ability of the learned to interpret and comprehend knowledge depends on various theories of learning that are being applied. The importance of participation of the tutor or the teacher and the students are emphasizes in all theories. E-learning involves interaction of the learner and the teacher electronically using theories of learning. There are many technologies which are used in the delivery of e-learning. Others are still being discovered while others are ever improving. The cost of e-learning has reduced due to development of these technologies. The choice of technological tools depends on the amount of information being disseminated and the interaction that exist between the tutor and the student. References Barros-Castro, R., & Cordoba-Pachon, J. 2011. 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