The FPG Notepad

The Learning Circuit’s April Big Question is about the effect various changes have on   instructor-led training and off-the-shelf content vendors. First of all, thanks to everyone for providing wonderful insight. I greatly appreciate your knowledge and willingness to share. Although I agree with many, I ask these questions.

• Won’t the organizations continuing to use ineffective training still need suppliers?
• Since many trainers and learners are firmly entrenched in the outdated Industrial Age education model, can the model be displaced?
• Will learners adapt to a learning culture and accept responsibility for their learning?
• With downsizing giving remaining workers more to do, will these workers participate in informal learning?

Constructivism is a theory of how people learn. We constructivists believe the learner constructs knowledge when internalizing outside information.

Learners enter any learning situation with 3 groups of knowledge: what they know, what they don’t know, and what they think they know. Constructivist instructional designers design the learning situation so the learner is able to gain knowledge, reinforce know information, and replace inaccuracies with more accurate information.

Constructivist instructional designers use the learner’s prior knowledge to creating a learning situation that will cause the learner to think, thus integrate new information into their already-known information. These experiences allow the learner to interact with the learning situation and work the with 3 knowledge groups.

Many people believe blood in veins is blue. A knowing person may tell them that oxygenated blood is bright red and low-oxygenated blood is dark red. Although a knowing person told them, the learner may continue to believe what is not true. Constructivist instructional designers design a learning situation to engage learners so they internalize the new-and-correct information and then displace the incorrect.

Constructivist instruction is as simple as ABC: activities before concepts. In others words, engage the learner before providing content. Some refer to this as teaching backwards because traditional instruction provides use activities to reinforce the previously-delivered content.

Click here for a site containing many readings about constructivism.