Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

The primary focus of any instruction should be to focus on the learning outcomes or capabilities you are trying to achieve. Bloom (1956, 1964) identified three types of learning outcomes: cognitive (knowledge), affective (attitudes, emotions, and values), and psychomotor (skills). For each outcome, instructors should also consider the level of outcome they are trying to achieve. So, if you are teaching cognitive skills, such as mathematics or language, you should determine if you need your students to remember (level 1), understand (level 2), apply (level 3), analyze (level 4), evaluate (level 5), or create (level 6) (Krathwohl, 2002). Once you have determined the level(s) of outcome, you should align your assignments to those levels. A multiple-choice exam can assess level 1 and possibly level 2 outcomes, but it will not assess students’ abilities to apply, analyze, evaluate, or create. Consequently, you will need to devise more challenging assignments to elicit higher levels of performance from students, using essays, problem-based learning assignments, and case studies, for example.

In Daniel Christian’s recent article, “Specialists Central to High-Quality, Engaging Online Programming,” the author names two challenges to his own recommendations for embedding instructional designers (aka learning designers or LDs) in course teams for the production of excellent online courses. First, he suggests that course teams can often be unwieldy and inefficient, becoming “a bottleneck to the organization.”[1] Second, he wonders whether faculty members will accept the contributions of LDs (or others) in the creation of learning experiences.

For many eLearning professionals, the ADDIE model is the most popular of all. Definition, principles, benefits of using ADDIE model in your eLearning course design and all you need to know in an extensive list of eLearning articles, written by our top authors worldwide.

This article aims to compare and clarify 2 of the major learning theories, Constructivism and Behaviorism as well as to find out how they can contribute to designing online learning programs.