Theories about learning may be overt or implicit when faculty design a course or lesson. A learning theory is a set of principles that describe how people learn, which in turn shapes how one designs instruction and conducts teaching. For example, if you believe that memorisation and recall are essential to learning a particular subject, you will want to find ways for students to demonstrate basic comprehension of the facts and information. If you think that it is important for students to be able to apply a lesson to the real world, you might ask them to analyse, research, or create something new. Depending on your view about how students learn, you may arrange for students to spend a lot of time exchanging and sharing knowledge or you might take a more didactic and directive approach. Our point is to develop a sense of greater awareness about the approaches you are using in designing your course and the implications that the structuring has for learning. In an online course, the role of the instructor, and the activities of students all need to be built into the course—they will not necessarily emerge in some spontaneous fashion once the course begins.
It is important to note that while the underlying theories remain largely consistent, the pedagogic approaches are continually evolving. In today’s digital era, contemporary forms of teaching, learning, and assessment are made popular by interactive and digital teaching environments.
A course might be comprised of more than one approach and vary with the desired learning outcomes. To read further on learning theories, we recommend two readings from open textbooks available on the Web (see references below): chapter 1 in “Foundations of Educational Theory for Online Learning” from the Theory and Practice of Online Learning (2nd edition), by Mohamed Ally; or chapter 2, “The Nature of Knowledge and the Implications for Teaching” in Teaching in a Digital Age (1st edition) by Tony Bates.

However, as an introduction to this course, a few principles from the Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon about student learning (http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/principles/learning.html), drawn from both theory and research, may be worth considering as you embark upon course design:

• How students organise knowledge influences how they learn and apply what they know.
• To develop mastery, students must acquire component skills, practice integrating them, and know when to apply what they have learned.
• Goal-directed practice coupled with targeted feedback enhances the quality of students’ learning.

The Eberly Center has also derived some teaching principles based on the student learning principles, all of which have particular relevance for this course:

• Effective teaching involves acquiring relevant knowledge about students and using that knowledge to inform our course design and classroom teaching.
• Effective teaching involves aligning the three major components of instruction: learning objectives, assessments, and instructional activities.
• Effective teaching involves articulating explicit expectations regarding learning objectives and policies.
• Effective teaching involves prioritising the knowledge and skills we choose to focus on.
• Effective teaching involves recognising and overcoming our expert blind spots.
• Effective teaching involves adopting appropriate teaching roles to support our learning goals.
• Effective teaching involves progressively refining our courses based on reflection and feedback.

Learning theories [Watchtime: 14.29 mins]

In Minds Online, Michelle D. Miller draws on findings from cognitive science in discussing how to design for “cognitive optimisation” in an online class. Her book offers many detailed explanations and examples. For the purposes of this course, we would like to summarise some important principles related to course design that are instrumental to a successful online course that exemplifies such optimisation:

• Identify and find ways to reinforce the course learning objectives and skills
• Ensure that course activities enable students to be able to transfer and apply concepts and knowledge
• Use repeated practice and quizzes for skills that require some degree of automatic recall or retention of content as underpinning for subsequent lessons
• Provide lessons that can capture and hold attention, keeping distractions, or extraneous information to a minimum
• Assist student recall by spacing out and increasing the frequency of learning activities
• Selectively use activities that stimulate emotion to help increase retention of content
• Use small stakes assignments and feedback to build motivation
• Provide frequent feedback, clear expectations, and regular updates to help students keep current with the course