LDT581:

LDT 581 Theoretical Foundations of Learning, Design, and Technology is an analysis of theoretical foundations of the instructional systems (systems and cybernetics, communications, cognitive psychology, sociological, constructivist, ecological) for doctoral and masters students.

Overview

In this course we will read, discuss, and develop our notions of how people learn. We will be looking at contemporary empirical and theoretical work that tries to elucidate the complex issues surrounding learning—what it might look like, how it happens, and how might we design or evaluate it. The manuscripts that we will be reading present accounts of learning from various contexts (formal and informal) and for various populations (children to adults), and we will try to articulate the individual, social, and cultural aspects of learning as we go through the semester.

Course Objectives

Here are the course goals for LDT 581:

• Identify various theoretical positions on how people learn.
• Analyze different views of learning to understand how they articulate and theorize human behavior.
• Develop and articulate your view of learning.

Required Course Materials

All course materials are accessible within the course. There is no required textbook for LDT 581.

E-Reserves

This course requires that you access Penn State library materials specifically reserved for this course. You can access these materials by selecting Library Resources in your course navigation, or by accessing the Library E-Reserves Search and search for your instructor's last name.

Library Resources

Many of the University Libraries resources can be utilized from a distance. Through the Libraries website, you can

• access magazine, journal, and newspaper articles online using library databases;
• borrow materials and have them delivered to your doorstep—or even your desktop;
• get research help via email, chat, or phone using the Ask a Librarian service; and
• much more. 

You must have an active Penn State Access Account to take full advantage of the Libraries' resources and service.  The Off-Campus Users page has additional information about these free services.

Technical Requirements

Student Education Experience Questionnaire (SEEQ)

During the semester you will receive information for completing the Student Education Experience Questionnaire (SEEQ). Your participation is an opportunity to provide anonymous feedback on your learning experience. Your feedback is important because it allows us to understand your experience in this course and make changes to improve the learning experiences of future students. Please monitor email and course communications for links and availability dates.

If you need technical assistance at any point during the course, please contact the Service Desk.

For registration, advising, disability services, help with materials, exams, general problem solving, visit World Campus Student Services!

Course Requirements and Grading

Requirements

A Note about Course Pathways

This course is designed to provide as much agency as possible. As a result, there are two pathways to choose from in terms of how you go about this course—individually or dialogically/collaboratively. Pathways give you more agency to choose the kind of learning experience you need at this stage of your academic and professional career.

The individual pathway provides you with the opportunity to read, write, and submit required assignments in a way that empowers you individually as a learner. That is, there is less interaction with your instructor or classmates and more focus on your unique needs, particularly in terms of balancing other aspects of your student–professional life. You are graded by pre-established rubrics, which also act as forms of feedback for your next paper or project.

The dialogic pathway demands interaction and collaboration. It is dialogic in the sense that your learning emerges through dialog with your instructor and peers as co-learners. As such, your instructor is positioned less as an external evaluator and more as learning companion. This is a critical shift. Assignments center on interaction, guiding you to engage with your instructor through self-assessment letters and with your peers through discussion. There are no rubrics because so-called assignments will be tailored to your individual needs and goals as the semester progresses. Your final "grade" stems from ongoing self-assessment.

The dialogic pathway is the default for the course. You are encouraged to reflect on the kind of experience you would like from this course and then let your instructor know how you would like to proceed by the end of the first week.

Checkpoints

Personal Learning History (Living Document)

Inspired by the Rose reading in the second week, you will describe your own history of learning something (or, learning to be someone), whether it is to be a waiter or waitress, like in the reading, or a teacher, skateboarder, ornithologist, or something else. The goal here, again following Rose, is to begin to examine deeply your own learning over time, across settings, by didactic teaching, informal digital learning, and so on. This document (ideally housed in a Google Doc) will be alive for us—that is, we will return to it as we encounter new readings (dates in syllabus), annotating our old writing with comments informed by our current moment in the course. To begin, you should aim for about 750–1,000 words.

Process Letter/Artifact

This self-assessment (process) letter is a chance for you to describe your own learning, interests, thoughts, and reflections as the course progresses. While these are, by nature, open-ended, they should serve as an opportunity for you to work through the material, synthesizing key ideas that stand out to you (not all will!). Again, the dialogic nature of these letters means that there is not necessarily a "right way" to do this, or that your instructor has an "ideal version" in mind—everyone's will look different based on their own perspectives on the relevant reading and interactions they have had with classmates and the instructor. These are likely around 500 words and can be less formal than other writing assignments.

One example of this kind of letter would be a Google Doc with embedded commentary. The letter itself might synthesize key ideas from the reading, passages that you find intriguing or challenging, or ideas that connect or disconnect with previous reading. Using the comment function in Google Docs, you might leave more “informal” thoughts that invite dialog with your instructor or others.

You are also invited and encouraged to test out other forms of media (e.g., Adobe Spark).

Here is an example process letter if you're looking for a starting point.

Important note: These are not reading summaries. Reading summaries are a particular genre of writing for courses and have their benefits and drawbacks. In this course, we'll work to synthesize ideas, over time, not necessarily summarize them. This is not a way to prove you have read everything in-depth: that's simply an expectation. Here, we focus on what YOU care most about, the lines and passages that resonate or inspire you, that let you make connections with (or run counter to!) other readings and experiences you have had.

Weekly Engagement

Every week, we will be discussing the articles we have read in Slack, although we may shift our discussions to other media (Flipgrid, Twitter, etc.) depending on the needs of the class. Please be prepared for this engagement to occur every week and be sure to read the detailed activity list presented for each week. You should plan for the engagement to occur between Saturday and Tuesday of the week, although some might span longer periods of time.

Some weeks, engagement is stimulated by critical questions, videos, or artifacts arising from and related to the readings; some weeks, it's stimulated by your reading of peers' self-assessments. Throughout the semester, certain weeks will focus on dialogs based on question prompts. The goal of these dialogs is not necessarily that you answer the question, but that you engage in discussion with group members about areas of inquiry that are important to you. Thus, the guiding questions really are mere prompts with the hope that further examination of ideas from the texts leads to new questions and responses among group members.

Please note that the weekly engagement includes your own posts in Slack as well as responses to peers, which are specified in each week's discussion requirement.

Slack tends to work best when there's some back-and-forth among everyone. So don't feel pressured to write long missives in response to prompts or readings; instead, focus on the key ideas that you want to generate discussion around, or questions that you're hoping to hear others' perspectives on. It's more like letting a seed grow over time rather than planting a fully-bloomed plant.

Finally, some weeks you might be really busy, or tired, or have family commitments, or any number of things. It's okay to give yourself a break. Let your group know what you'll jump into discussions when you can, or that you'll return the following week. That is absolutely fine!

Infographic (Collaborative)

In this collaborative project, you and your group members will create (lesson 3) and revise (lesson 7) an infographic that summarizes the key learning theories covered to that point in the course. Piktochart is one tool that enables you to do this easily, although it is asynchronous, so feel free to use any others that you are familiar with. Here are examples of some of the supposed best infographics that might serve as inspiration.

Learning Community Analysis (Collaborative)

Early in the semester, your group will choose one learning community (likely an online community) to analyze based on the theories you encounter (and have encountered) throughout the semester. For instance, your group might choose to follow a specific YouTube channel to examine the learning principles at play on it. Or you might choose to follow a Twitter hashtag (like #literacies) over time to see how people engage with one another. Or you might choose to play an online game together and immerse yourself in the world over time. At the end of the semester, you'll submit a collaboratively written document (likely a Google Doc) that reports some of your findings in relation to our readings.

Final Paper and Meta-Reflection/Self-Assessment

The final paper has two options—one is more application-oriented, while the second is more research-oriented. In consultation with your instructor, you can decide which is best suited for your specific interests and professional goals. For example, if your future or immediate career goals are focused on design, you may be better served by choosing Option 1, whereas Option 2 would serve you better if you plan to conduct research. Whichever option you choose, the paper should be written for a formal academic audience, should adhere to APA style, and should range in length from 5 to 7 double-spaced pages (excluding title and references).

Option 1. Learning Theory and Design White Paper

This white paper enables you to synthesize material from this semester and direct it toward the potential design or revitalization of a specific context that is meaningful to you. The Connected Learning white paper can serve as an example. Click the blue "Free Download" button on the page to download the eBook at no cost. Your white paper should focus on how learning theory applies to design, so make sure to address the following items:

• Provide a succinct definition of learning based on what you have read in this course. How do you define learning, and how does it occur? Make sure to cite materials and papers from the course clearly and show how you draw upon them to formulate your definition. Also clarify the role of the individual and the social and cultural context of learning within your definition.
• Identify a specific context within which you would like to design, implement, and evaluate learning—for example, a face-to-face classroom in a K–12 context, an informal (face-to-face or online) group for adults to explore their interests on a hobby or other leisure topic, a formal online classroom for higher education, or something else. Describe the context in terms of the environment, the learners, and the experts.
• Identify a possible learning goal that you would like to pursue within your context.
• Explore at least one design scenario to reach the proposed learning goal. The design should be based on learning theory, especially the definition you have proposed. Specifically address how you plan to design or modify the learning context/environment and what learners and instructors/experts will be doing, and explain how that is aligned with learning theory.
• Explain how you could examine whether and how learning is occurring in your context. What are the processes or interactions that will occur in your context that might signify learning? How might you assess whether these processes contribute to learning of the content or other important related skills?

Option 2. Framework for Research on Learning Paper

This second paper is geared toward PhD students, those interested in research, or those who would prefer to primarily synthesize ideas from the course. This paper should focus on a theoretical and conceptual explication of learning and how it applies to research on learning, and it should address the following items:

• Provide a succinct definition of learning based on what you have read in this course. How do you define learning, and how does it occur? Make sure to cite materials and papers from the course clearly and show how you draw upon them to formulate your definition. Also clarify the role of the individual and the social and cultural context of learning within your definition.
• Identify a specific research context within which you want to examine and research learning. This may be a face-to-face K–12 classroom, a summer camp or after-school program for kids/youth, a formal online course for adults, or something else. Describe the context and its participants, both learners and experts. Identify your specific research interest in this context.
• Based on the texts you have read in this course as well as any additional resources you have accessed, describe a theoretical and conceptual framework for examining learning in your context. What is a possible theoretical lens you could apply to this context? Is it primarily cognitive, behavioral, sociocultural, or something else? Why is that an appropriate lens?
• Based on the theoretical framework identified, describe how you might assess the processes and outcomes within your context. For example, if you are using a primarily sociocultural lens to examine your context, you might focus on the roles of novices and experts and how they interact and change over time. Also describe how your assessment is consistent with the specific theoretical and conceptual bases you have drawn upon.

Meta-Reflection on Learning and Self-Assessment

Toward "Ungrading"

The pathways for this course and their subsequent assessments are, in part, inspired by recent calls to "ungrade" education. These calls challenge the methods that have been accepted—and expected—in terms of how learning is evaluated. You can learn more on the following website about steps others have taken toward "ungrading." Because this is a course on learning theory, the intention is that we are reflective on all aspects of our own learning in this course—from individual to collaborative assignments, to the dynamics of group discussion, to the role of a so-called instructor, and, as evidenced here, on evaluations of learning.

Rather than operating by letter grade (as much as possible), "assessment" on the dialogic pathway stems from your ongoing self-assessment letters as well as your dialogs with your instructor and peers. Those dialogs should collaboratively illuminate areas in which you are excelling as well as areas in which you can continue to improve. The dialogic pathways assume that you will complete the work as best as you can (or as best as you want to) and that you will reflect on that work in a way that pushes your own thinking forward for future assignments (as well as future courses, or future career opportunities, or more). You can use the following framework as a general guidepost. In the end, while your instructor reserves the right to give a final grade, the choice is up to you. Following Stommel (2017), this course operates under the belief "that asking students to give themselves a grade also makes the why and how of grades a valuable subject of the conversations we have—valuable because they will go on to be graded in other courses and thinking critically about how and why grading happens helps that become more productive for them."