Learning Sciences
Hoadley (2018) defines the learning sciences (LS) as “a field that studies how people learn and how to support learning” and situated himself as one who views it as “empirical, interdisciplinary, contextualized, and action-oriented” (p. 11).
Christopher Hoadley
Hoadley, C. (2018). A Short History of the Learning Sciences. In F. Fischer, C. E. Hmelo-Silver, S. R. Goldman, & P. Reimann (Eds.), International Handbook of the Learning Sciences (1st ed., pp. 11–23). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315617572-2
Sawyer (2023) expands on this, describing LS as “an interdisciplinary field that studies teaching and learning. . . [in] a variety of settings. . . to better understand the cognitive and social processes that result in the most effective learning and to use this knowledge to redesign classrooms and other learning environments so that people learn more deeply and effectively” (p. 1).
I appreciate the simplicity, flexibility and fluidity of Sawyer’s definition and the action-oriented emphasis of Hoadley’s.
Keith Sawyer
Sawyer, K. R. (2023). An Introduction to the learning sciences. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, (3rd ed., pp. 1-23). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108888295.012
Ethic of Care
Nel Noddings (1988) situates caring as a relational ethic, focused on people and their connections to each other. Her care model includes modeling, dialogue, practice and confirmation in learning experiences.
Nel Noddings
Noddings, Nel. (1988). “An ethic of caring and its implications for instructional arrangements.” American Journal of Education, 96(2), 215–30.
Open Education Terminology
Open education
Cronin (2019) notes that the definitions of “openness and open education remain multiple and contested” (p. 151). However, she includes the following initiatives in open education: open access (OA), massive open online courses (MOOCs), open educational resources (OER), and open educational practices [which all] aim to utilize the affordances of open digital networks to improve educational access, effectiveness, and equality” (p. 150).
Catherine Cronin
Cronin, C. (2019). Open Education: Design and Policy Considerations. In Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age (3rd ed.). Routledge.
open access
Open access refers to a policy whereby higher education institutions have open admission policies and few, if any, prerequisites for courses or even programs.
open educational resource
BCcampus defines OER as “teaching, learning, and research resources that, through permissions granted by their creator, allow others to use, distribute, keep, or make changes to them.”
BCcampus
What is Open Education? – BCcampus OpenEd Resources. (n.d.). Retrieved July 21, 2024, from https://open.bccampus.ca/what-is-open-education/
open pedagogy
Maultsaud and Harrison (2023) define open pedagogy (OP) “an ideal practice where care, trust and inclusion can be realized. OP is characterized as a democratic and collaborative pedagogical practice, in which students and teachers work to co-create learning and knowledge
Dierdre Maultsaud and Michelle Harrison
Maultsaid, D. and Harrison, M., “Can open pedagogy encourage care? Student perspectives.” International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning 24(3), pp. 77-98.
Modality Terminology
Online Learning
Online learning is “fundamentally a human endeavour, with technology available to support the agreed-upon principles and goals, not vice-versa” (p. 140). I subscribe to this rather open-ended, human-centred view which does not prioritize the means over the goal.
Terry Anderson
The Theory and Practice of Online Learning. (n.d.). Athabasca University Press. Retrieved July 21, 2024, from https://www.aupress.ca/books/120146-the-theory-and-practice-of-online-learning/
syncrhonous & ASYNCHRONOUS ONLINE LEARNING
Asynchronous online learning “means that the instructor and the students in the course all engage with the course content at different times (and from different locations).”
University of WaterlooSynchronous online learning “means that the instructor and the students in the course engage with the course content and each other at the same time, but from different locations.”
paced cohort
Students move through the course together as a group.
self-paced (independent) study
Students can move through the course with others but they are also welcome to study at their own pace.
Design-Based Research (DBR)
Barab (2022) defines DBR as:
used to study learning in environments that are designed and systematically changed by the researcher . . . [as well as] a collection of approaches that involve a commitment to studying activity in naturalistic settings, with the goal of advancing theory while at the same time directly impacting practice (177).
Barab, S. (2022). Design-based research: A methodological toolkit for engineering change. In The Cambridge Handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 177–195). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108888295.012
For a more thorough description of DBR, especially as it relates to my research interests, ready this precis of Barab’s chapter.
Easterday et al. (2018) define educational design research as:
a meta-methodology conducted by education researchers to create practical interventions and theoretical design models through a design process of focusing, understanding, defining, conceiving, building, testing and presenting, that recursively nests other research processes to iteratively search for empirical solutions to practical problems of human learning.
Easterday, M. W., Rees Lewis, D. G., & Gerber, E. M. (2018). The logic of design research. Learning: Research and Practice, 4(2), 131–160. https://doi.org/10.1080/23735082.2017.1286367
Principled Practical Knowledge (PPK)
Principled practical knowledge (PPK) is “Know-how combined with ‘know-why’” and more specifically as “explanatorily coherent practical knowledge” (p. 5). It combines both procedural and declarative knowledge.
While reading this article, I found myself connecting a lot with the notion of PPK, as instructional design combines both procedural and declarative knowledge but we don’t always make this knowledge explicit. I feel like DBR and PPK are strategies through which I may be able to make my tacit knowledge explicit to other instructional designers.
Carl Bereiter
Bereiter, C. (2014). Principled Practical Knowledge: Not a Bridge but a Ladder. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 23(1), 4–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2013.812533