What are your beliefs about how people learn best? What is the purpose of learning theory in educational technology?

Learning is the process of drawing connections between what is already known, learned or understand and new information.  When learning occurs, people are encoding and storing information in memory, processing, categorizing, and clustering information that will be applied at the appropriate times and situations.  Using prior knowledge skills are very vital to the learning process, and in order for learning to occur, facts, concepts, and ideas must be stored, connected to other facts, concepts, and ideas must be built upon.   I believe people learn best when they are motivated to learn, have hands-on experiences, receive feedback, and are able to understand what they have been taught.  When children and adults are motivated to learn, they are more receptive to engage and participate in learning new concepts.   Motivating people to develop and use new skills tends to be easier if they want to learn the information.  People tend to focus more when they want to learn versus being forced to learn.  Hands-on experiences provide an opportunity for people to practice new skills by trial and error, making mistakes, and by be active involved in their learning experience.  People also learn from feedback whether it’s positive and/or negative.  The way other people view our ideas, actions, etc. plays a vital part in how we learn.  Often time people are judged by the actions and what they say which eventually effects how they learn new skills.  Lastly, in order for people to learn, they must understand/grasp what they are taught.   People must sort out what is important to memorize and retain, and differentiate between what is useful to build upon versus what is not important to store in our brains. 

The purpose of learning theory in educational technology is the study and practice of facilitating learning to improve an individual’s performance by using various technology resources such as software, wikis, blogs, internet, etc. to enhance and develop the human’s capabilities.

Reference

Hilgard, E.R. & Bowers, G.H.  (1975). Theories of learning.  Englewoods, Cliffs.  Prentice-Hall, Inc.


I posted to the following people's blogs: Tiffany Thompson @
http://thompson7105.blogspot.com/2012/09/module-1-assignment_16.html?showComment=1348426045001#c8380135381350926195 and

Karen Tino @ http://ktino1.wordpress.com.