Applying Learning Theories

Week 3

Applying Learning Theories

I am using a combination of learning theories in my lesson.  One of the cognitivist teaching approaches is to “organize the material by chunking it into meaningful parts.”  I will begin the class by showing a slide which indicates what we will be doing during the class and how that mimics major parts of the research process.  Then, the first activity the students will make a concept map about their research topic in order to define their research question.  This will activate prior knowledge (another cognitivist teaching approach) because they will note what they already know about their topics. 

Asking students to design their database searches using keywords and proper notation is a more behaviorist approach, though being able to identify the most important concepts in their research questions demands some reflection, a more constructivist activity.  Asking students to reflect on two of the articles they find to determine whether they meet students’ information needs is also a constructivist activity.  Sharing their reflections in pairs would strengthen this activitiy.

The final two activities are more behaviorist activities: identifying APA citation elements and mapping citations.  However, students could reflect on what they learn about scholarly conversations from the citation mapping which again would strengthen this activity by providing a constructivist element.