Learning how humans learn is a great opportunity especially for an education student like me. It is important the teachers and even instructional designers know the Ws and H of learning.
What. What great thing to note about is that human learning ability varies. There are a lot of ways how a human learns. There may be conditioned into learning something or through observation. These I think are common with a growing child. In fact, this answers my thoughts on how a baby learns. Also, some may learn through socialization, accommodation, assimilations, building of schemas and a lot more ways to learn. What important is that you should have at least a common background on how a human learns. This will lead you into knowing the WHEN.
When. When to use a theory or combined theories? Knowing the behaviorism, social learning, cognitive, and constructivism is a great knowledge base for you to come up with a proper timing of teaching practices. For instance, knowing that a child can learn to talk by conditioning and merely talking to them could enhance your teaching practices. You would surely know when to give reinforcement or punishment. You would surely know when to talk and when to observe. And you should know when to scaffold the learning and when to not. The timing is important in learning. And the foundation of that is to know the human learning theories. Moreover, it is also crucial to know where to have learning experiences.
Where. Where does human learn? The answer is everywhere. This is a thing that I firmly believe even I am not taking this course. I believe that humans do not only learn in the four walls and corners of a classroom. Learning is everywhere. I think this belief was strengthened by this knowledge of how humans learn. Conditioning could happen in homes, park, CR, as in everywhere. Socialization could, in fact, happen through social media, phones, homes, and park. With the advancement of technology, every theory provided could be enhanced. It is just worth noting that a teacher should know where to strengthen this learning opportunity and where should not. Of course, there is the idea of promoting higher attention span in learning, there is the idea of providing authentic experiences and there is the idea of connecting the prior learning into the new knowledge. The teacher should just know where to access learning and why.
Why. Why it is important to know how a human learns? Knowing that humans learn everywhere, it is also important that you know why they learn from there and that. Why? Because if you know the theory behind the learning, there is a great chance of repetition, duplication, and strengthening of learning opportunity and experiences. There are a lot of reasons why a human learns from a certain experience and knowing the reasons would provide you the principles which will then strengthen your teaching practices. And lastly, knowing the reasons why would give you the HOW.
How. How you will use the learning theories to support and scaffold your teaching practices would provide you success. A teacher who is grounded from learning theories would have a wide perspective and ideas on teaching practices. This is an important knowledge base and certainly would guide a teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge base. For instance, if you know how to use reinforcement or punishment, you will not fall into giving rewards and drastic punishments for nothing. You will effectively use varied practices to support the learning of your students and not hinder the learning experience.
Thus, I conclude that this knowledge made T. Malou an effective online facilitator of learning. She knows the Ws and H of learning and thus provided us with great learning experiences. Actually, there are a lot of Ws and H of learning and I just have provided a few of the obvious questions we could encounter when teaching. All we have to do is to continuously think and create ways of facilitating the learning experiences of the students. Again, you could not do this without having an ample knowledge on how humans learn.
Online Life-Long Learning 