Instructional Design is a collection of creative activities based on scientific foundations. In this section, we're going to look at learning theories as frameworks for us to understand the origins of those scientific foundations that support instructional design processes and decision-making. So, in terms of learning theory, in this section, we're going to cover, first of all, what is learning. Second, what is learning theory. Third, major camps learning theories. Fourth; what's the relationship between learning theories and instructional design. Finally, we're going to talk about in reality, what might be the value of learning theories for instructional designers. The purpose of Instructional Design is linking proven learning theories and instructional theories to achieve measurable and desired learning or performance outcomes. As shown in this illustration, instructional system design will connect input, means, and results together for effective learning or performance solutions. In terms of input, information such as learners characteristics, learner's prior learning experiences, those are good elements for us to understand which learning theories will be appropriate, which instructional theories will be feasible in order to develop solutions for learning and performance improvement. The result part is pretty straightforward, and mostly is relevant to the needs of the organizational learning or the expectation of your clients. So, what is learning? Learning is a process enacted by learners that enables them to attend measurable and persistent change of performance according to their modified knowledge, skills set, and abilities upon interacting with elements in various learning environments. There are a couple of keywords in this statement. First one is the persistent change of performance. Those performance also needs to be observable, therefore, we can measure them. The second sets of keywords will be; knowledge, skills, and abilities. Those are common categories for instructional designers to conceptualize the potential outcome of the instructional solutions. Finally, is the elements in learning environments. The elements when include peer learners, will include instructors, will include resources online, all those are eligible elements within learning environments. So, what is learning theory? Now, we have some understanding in terms of what learning is. Learning theories are positions to explain why and how learning happens across contexts, across populations, across cultures. Learning theories also will provide foundations to help us understand how human learning evolves through time, through major societal events. Finally, learning theories will provide conceptual and empirical frameworks for instructional design and it's adaptations and advancement. So, basically, you can see learning theories as a constantly evolving foundation in order to inform the best practice of instructional design. So, what are the components of learning theories? First one is the results. What are the changes in performance to be explained by the theory or the intended learning outcomes? The second component is the means or other processes that generate those results. What are the conditions that need to be met for generating those results? The third component is the input, what might trigger those processes to occur such as learners prior experiences, such as available resources within the learning environment. Learning theories have their philosophical roots, namely; constructivism, rationalism, and empiricism. Combining with systems thinking, cognitivism, behaviorism, and communications, we're able to devise instructional methods, instructional conditions therefore achieving intended learning and instructional outcomes. The philosophical roots of learning also helps us understand how knowledge could be acquired. From the perspective of constructivism, it is important to allow learners interact with others, with other elements within the learning environment. So, basically, the knowledge is constructed by learner himself or herself. So, learner has to be active, learner is all about meaning making, learning needs to be collaborative, learning has to include peer's input, and learning has to be situated in realistic settings. In terms of rationalism, the focus is inward. In particular, how individual learners reason, how individual learners rationalize during the learning process. So, the knowledge in this context will be acquired through reasoning and intuitive deduction. Interacting with others, interacting with other elements within the environment doesn't seem as important as the ones happened in a constructive learning environment. With regard to empiricism, the focus is on how learners experience the reality by themselves. Learners sensory experiences dominate the learning process. What they hear, what they see, what they touch, they are the important parts of the learning experience. Based on the philosophical roots of knowledge acquisition, there are three major camps of learning theories that are relevant to instructional design. First is the behaviorism, which emphasize the relationship between stimulus and response. Second is the cognitivism also known as the cognitive information processing. In this camp, focus is on what happens in learner's mental structure. Third is the constructivism. Similar to the philosophical perspective, constructivism is very interested in providing interactive and rich environments for learners to develop their own meaning towards the reality. In terms of behaviorism, there are several principles we would like to mention relevant to instructional design. First, learning is about strengthening the relationship between stimulus and response. Learning should be observable behaviors. Therefore, we can measure the performance improvement. Learning are guided by behavioral objectives, operant conditioning, program instruction, mastery learning, they are all viable strategies based on behavioral principles of learning theories. However, learning is considered passive and learning process needs to be directed all the time. Here is the first in-video question for you in this section. What area of the behavioral theory are most important to instructional design and why? In terms of cognitive principles, first, learning is knowledge acquisition. Although you cannot see them, the process happen within your mental structure. Second, the learning needs to be build on your prior or existing mental structure such as memories, such as schema. The cognitive learning process are not observable which is very different from the behavioral principles we touched on earlier. The focus is on individual learning or individual learners learning processes. Interacting with others might not be the most important part according to this particular cognitive principle. Learning should be mentally active and creative process and the design of the learning environments need to provide opportunities to allow learners to do so. Here's the second in-video question. What areas of cognitive theory are most important to instructional designed and why? This is a visual representation of cognitive information processing. In particular, we can see how information flows through our mental structure. Beginning with multimedia presentation of the information, words, sounds, pictures. Then our sensory memory will collect those information through our ears and eyes. Those information that enters our working memory which can only hold those information for a short period of time. Then eventually, the information, if needed, will go into our long-term memory structure which is consider our prior knowledge for the future learning task. In this illustration, we compare behaviorism with cognitive information processing. Within the behaviorism, we consider our mental structure as a black box. We don't really need to know how learners think based on behavioral principles. We are only interested in how learners respond upon receiving the stimuli we design. However, for the cognitive information processing, we are very interested in considering our mental structure as an active processor of information. So, how memory is structured, how memory is integrated from working memory, short-term memory to long-term memory. So, the comparison between the two for one will tell us how learning theories have evolved over time. The third kind of learning theory is the constructivist theory. In particular, we're going to touch on two perspectives relevant to initial design, one is based on Jean Piaget's work, the other one is based on Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory. According to Piaget, development precedes learning, which means that social interactions of learners is important in order to support effective learning outcome. Individual's readiness for learning is important. This goes into our emphasis on learner's prior experiences and the prerequisites of certain learning task. In particular, Piaget proposed developmental processes within cognitive stage of development; sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. What's important for insurance design is the implications of those stages and how we prepare the learning environments in order to accommodate those developmental stages. There are also three processes Piaget mentioned that's constantly happening in a constructivist learning environment. First, is the assimilation. When learners encounter new information, new ideas, new events, they are trying to incorporate those new occurrence to the existing cognitive structure. Second is the accommodation process. When the new information, new events are different or deviate from the current mental structure, their current ideas, their current thinking, their current understanding, then the accommodation process will happen trying to negotiate between new information and existing knowledge or prior knowledge. That's the second process. The third process is the equilibration, which is the combination of the assimilation and accommodation, is the constant ongoing negotiation between the two in order to stabilize, in order to finalize learner's mental structure given the new information. Vygotsky took a different approach to understand the importance of developmental stages when it comes to learning. He proposed the interactional theory of development which suggests that learning is optimal when preceding learner's developmental level. The zones of proximal development, ZPD, is the result of the thinking. A very important part of Vygotsky's work is the zones of proximal development, ZPD. So, what does that mean in terms of ZPD when we design instructions? Basically, what the Vygotsky is telling us is that when we design new learning task, the difficulty level or the developmental level of that new learning task should be a little bit higher than the learner's current developmental level. So, to provide some momentum for learners to be motivated to develop the new skill sets or the new knowledge base. So, that's the basic idea of ZPD. Instead of designing learning tasks that are 100 percent matched with learners current developmental stage, ZPD suggests that we should push the envelope a little bit so the learners can be more motivated, more driven to acquire or to complete their new learning task. So, the gap between the higher developmental stage and the learner's current development stage, Vygotsky suggests that we can use peers, we can use collaborations, we can use coaching, to help learners fill that gap. That has strong implications when it comes to instructional design. By allowing peers, by allowing other resources within the environment to help learners bridge the gap according to ZPD, we are therefore creating a constructivist learning environment. So, here are some constructivism principles. First, constructivism assumes knowledge is constructed solely by the learner interacting with elements in the learning environment. As I mentioned earlier, those elements could be peer learners, those elements could be instructors, could be resources within the learning environment even beyond the learning environment. Constructivism also assumes learning goals could include reasoning, critical thinking, understanding of the knowledge, cell regulation, and cell reflection. Those learning goals from the perspective of the constructivism are relatively complex. The implication of that would be, for instance, you might allow more time for learners to attain those goals within a constructivist learning environment. For constructivist learning to be effective, it is essential to design learning environments that are complex, that are relevant to learner's experience, they are meaningful to learner's experience, and that cover multiple perspectives to enrich the learning experience to facilitate the construction of reality by learners themselves. Now, we have touched down major camps of learning theories, the next step will be translating learning theories into feasible instructional interventions. Here is the list of question we should ask as instructional designers in order to associate learning theories with our instructional design practices. First, how does learning occur? What conditions need to be met for learning to happen? Which factors might influence learning? Which factors might inhibit learning? What is the role of memory, this touched down the cognitive principles of learning theories? How does transfer occur? Transfer from near term to long-term performance, transfer from this context to a different context, and what types of learning can be best explained by the theory? The next is, what are the basic assumptions of theories that are relevant to instructional design? In other words, what are the limitations of those learning theories in terms of their practical aspect of instructional design? Finally, how should instruction be structured to facilitate learning? So, this is the shortlist of a guiding questions we can ask ourselves in order to situate learning theories into instructional design context. In this illustration, we can see the relationships between learning theory, and instructional theory, and among instructional methods, required conditions, and outcome. Let me begin from the left side of the bar. So, let's say the outcome is learners being able to calculate averages, and the required conditions in order to attain that particular outcome is that learners will have to be motivated to do so, and learners will be able to recall certain component skills in order to calculate the averages mathematically. In order to reach the required conditions, we would devise certain instructional methods. The methods will be first one to stimulate learners motivation, using different strategies, we can also demonstrate basic rules to help learners startup the calculation process to help them recall certain skills, we can also provide examples or practices for learners to warm up to the intended learning outcome. If we look at the lines above the bar, it's very clear that instructional theories are different from learning theories. Learning theories will tell us the conditions to be met in order to attain certain learning outcome. But learning theories cannot tell us what methods or strategies we can use in order to develop certain conditions, therefore attaining learning outcomes. On the other hand, instructional theories are able to help us identify methods so we can again, the ultimate goal is to attend certain learning outcomes. So this is what the difference between instructional theories and learning theories. Both are very important to ensure that the design, but they do serve different purposes in order to develop effective instructional solutions. So, here's the reality check on learning theories. In other words, what's the practical value of learning theories when it comes to an instructional design? First, learning theories are changing all the time because we learn, the way we learn, the way we perceive learning, the way we measure learning, the way we understand learning also have been changing all the time. All theories have their limitations, so do learning theories. So, we cannot expect learning theories to explain everything we see in realistic instructional settings. We have to organize the limitations, therefore we can make better design choices. Learning theories will help instructional designers justify their design decisions. It is important, especially when you are explaining why you choose certain design approaches over others to your clients, and learning theories will help you make the case. The best instructional design practice is based on a well-balanced blend of learning theories in order to achieve the intended learning outcomes. Learning itself is complex, which makes sense that we use a collection of learning theories to understand its input is means and its results. Learning theories are the most valuable when they reflect on how people learn today and in the future. In other words, we need to constantly revisit the validity of certain learning theories in order to meet the instructional needs we have today. In this section, we have covered the basic of learning theories relevant to instructional design. It is important for instructional designers to have a solid grasp of learning theories, and that will go a long way for instructional design practice in the future. So, I want to encourage you to dive into learning theories if you have the opportunity, as it is a constantly evolving field. I believe understanding learning theories up today will be one of the most important asset for you to become successful instructional designers.
