The following is an excerpt from the paper by Said Hadijerrouit, “Learner-Centered Web-Based Instruction in Software Engineering”, IEEE Transactions on Education, Vol. 48, No. 1, Feb 2005. It reminds me about the most basic instructional principles that the constructivist paradigm suggests for the design of learning environments. My thank goes to the author of this paper.
- Knowledge must be actively constructed by learners, not passively transmitted by teachers.
- Students’s prior knowledge must be taken into account by the construction of new knowledge.
- In order to be useful for problem solving, knowledge components must be related to each other. The process of constructing inter-related knowledge requires higher order thinking skills, such as analysis and design skills.
- To get students actively involved in knowledge construction, learning activities should focus around a set of intrinsically motivating problems that are situated in real-world tasks.
- Learning should take place in a collaborative environment that involves social interaction and negotiation.
- Assessment procedures should be embedded in the learning process, focus on authentic tasks, and consider learners’ individual orientations.
- Teachers serve primarily as guides and facilitators of learning, not as transmitters of knowledge.
“Constructivism is a theory of learning that regards learning not so much as the product of passive transmission but as a process of active construction. Constructivism is learner-centered, assuming that learners learn better if they construct knowledge for themselves, rather than having it dictated by an instructor.”