learning theories

From what I understand, behaviourist is all about reinforcements, rewards and punishments. The assumption is that human are selfish beings that only do things when there is a reward and stop doing things when they know there are punishments for those actions. It does sound a lot like our national educational system’s approach. Although this method has always attracted harsh criticism, I think it is simple and effective in some ways. Of course, as a child I was not impressed by this method, where we are forced to learn something without giving any chance to think about it. People always blamed my generation for not having the ability to think, but what’s to think about? It is not like our education really encourages creative thinking. And of course we do want to avoid punishment and driven to pursue rewards. However, when I look back, can understand the difficulty of teaching 30 or even 50 students in a class where teacher are forced to showed some progress in the children. Plus, children are really kind of scatterbrain; it would be lots of work if we teach them using cognitive or sociocultural method. I am not sure if it would be effective. However, this method may contain an oversimplistic view on human nature. We can see from life and history that sometimes people would keep on doing unacceptable things despite being trained or punished, that is students with bad discipline cannot be expected to be “punished” into good behaviours. It is unfair to say that this learning method is totally ineffective, however, it could not be the ultimate answer to help a human being learns. For cognitive approach, the basic assumption is that people do intrinsically have the motivation to learn, until the interest are destroyed by forceful learning. The problem is, kids may have interest to learn something, but it is not necessary that they would like to learn everything. That is why we say every kid has different talents and different interest. It is fine if we just want them to learn something, whatever it is. But if we want the learners to acquire some necessary knowledge, cognitive method are simply not enough. Sometimes we do have to give some restrictions on what we want the learners to do, so that the kid does learn the thing we want them to learn. I think cognitive method should be applied when the students have the basic ability to express themselves and this would be good for self expression. However, I think in terms of E-learning, sociocultural could be quite effective. The good thing about internet is that it has the space to accommodate every kind of opinion and information, instead of the mainstream ideas only. It is also a great platform of gaining new tools and resources to learn with. Reflection after tutorial Overall, i think all three learning theories can be applied to E-learning, as well as other learning activities. The behaviorism would be useful to acquiring the basic skills to handle the technology in E-learning, whereas cognitivism helps us to think and reconstruct our own reality. It is useful in the world of Internet today as even within the same platform or same topic, different people can have their own interpretation and own learning process even within the same exposure. However, sociocultural appriach would ve compatible to the conceot of web 2.0 where everyone can be the content designer and everyone can be the receiver of the information. Hence, there is an collaboration and interactivity involve in the learning process and everyone is educated. Hence, we are all learning together.  

E-learning

Since in our primary school, I guess the introduction of E-learning has already begun. We used to have special computer sessions that suppose to be a modern and useful learning session, but I think back then all we do is play computer games in the end. I understand why E-learning is such a fashion in our world nowadays, but I still feel the standard does not meet to the public’s expectations. People can argue to me why it is so important and why it is so essential, I still find learning through computer or Internet kind of dull. True, we do gather lots of information from the Internet and so on, but I feel I am acquiring knowledge and bits of information only. My process of learning is never really done through E-learning, rather I am applying my skills to the Internet to get things done. Maybe it is because I have not really known the real meaning of E-learning, or maybe its fullest potential has not been utilized yet. I have not really experienced all types of E-learning as stated in the readings, but I remained unconvinced for now that E-learning is better than traditional learning methods. Well. Maybe I am old-fashioned.