Post#1: Learning, Motivation, and Theory.

Share a story about your best learning experience (could be a formal course or something more personal). Why did you enjoy it?

My best learning experience was when I was taking a course called “business technology” at Camosun College, my professor used both behaviorism and constructivism. In the beginning, he would teach us about the course materials and information we need to learn, and then, he would give us some substantive problems and assignments to finish in class. There were more than 40 people in the class, but he would check and ask everyone if they had any questions. Moreover, after the questions and assignments, he would let us discover more tools on business technologies like ” Word” and ” Excel”. If we find anything that interested us but hasn’t learned yet, he would still help us and introduce the way of using those tools. In my point of view, I really enjoyed the way he taught him, I learned not only from course materials but also from other tools that I discovered on business technologies, so I enjoyed the way he taught me and found it very interesting.

Based on your reading, would you consider your current instruction style more behavioralist, cognitivist, or constructivist? Elaborate with your specific mindset and examples.

Based on my reading of learning theories, I consider my current instruction style more constructivist. As far as I can see, if a student only learns knowledge from books and classes, then the knowledge will not be fully used, it will only be used to the maximum extent in the exam. Constructivists, however, allow me to try to extend what I already learned to further problems, it helps me not only to strengthen the foundation of what I have already learned but also to find out what subject really interests me. As I mentioned in the previous prompt, I enjoyed the way how the professor of business technology taught me because I got to discovered more tolls on those technologies and if I got stuck by them, the professor would explain the questions to me. Therefore, if I’m an instructor, I would define my instruction style as more constructivist.

In Aneka’s post, her professor put the difficult question into the real scene in the form of a story. I think this is a very friendly teaching method, and students can better understand how the question is structured and solved.