The courses we create need to make use of the spaces in which they’re taught.

In The Theory and Practice of Online Learning, the volume’s editor - Terry Anderson - contributes a chapter: “Towards a Theory of Online Learning.” Originally published in 2003 with a second edition in 2008, it is a bit behind the times; Instagram had yet to appear and TikTok was just a glimmer in a developer’s eye. But Anderson’s chapter helps us to organize our thinking around the learner in the internet and digital age, and there is a lot to be gained from giving it a closer look.

One of the most helpful sections of Anderson’s chapter is when he relies on Bransford, Brown and Cocking (1999) and their work in framing learning environments with the help of four attributes or “lenses”: learner-centred, knowledge-centred, assessment-centred, and community-centred. Anderson argues that the first would be better named learning-centred to avoid any suggestion that a learner-centred environment is one that caters to every whim and whinny of the learner. It’s really about bringing learning theories to bear on the learner. The knowledge-centred attribute looks at both the content of disciplines and the opportunity learners have to develop their own take on knowledge. The assessment-centred lens goes beyond summative assessment strategies to encompass a whole range of approaches to measuring learning, including the role of reflection, though Anderson notes anecdotally that most assessment comes in the form of tests that fail to measure the competenices outlined by Baxter, Elder, and Glaser (1996): “competent students should be able to provide coherent explanations; generate plans for problem solution; implement solution strategies; and monitor and adjust their activities.” The fourth attitude, community-centred learning, was of particular interest in the early 2000s as distance education - which was often a very lonely affair for the learner - started becoming less individualistic as online teaching and learning became better able to provide learner-to-learner and learner-to-instructor interaction.

Anderson moves on from this simple model to look at all manner of things. This is harder to follow, and I’m skeptical about whether Anderson’s diagrams, such as this one, provide much assistance:

What I think he’s trying to get at here in a roundabout way is how the learner will come into contact with knowledge. This can be a direct relationship between learner and content, but it can also be mediated by the teacher, or by any number of online tools, or by either of the delivery modes (synchronous or asynchronous).

Where Anderson regains his footing is when he makes this point towards the end of the chapter: “The challenge for teachers and course developers working in an online learning context, therefore, is to construct a learning environment that is simultaneously learner-centred, content-centred, community-centred, and assessment-centred.” You could say that about any kind of designed learning environment, be it face-to-face, online, or a mixture of the two, and you could also quibble about whether each of the four attributes needs to be there, whether they need to be balanced one against the other, and so on. But as a simple framework for understanding how you might go about designing a course, it has its uses.

That brings us to a point that Anderson seems to be hinting at, but which perhaps deserves a more explicit airing. When we design a learning environment - when we design a course - we need to make the best use possible of the space in which the course will take place. In higher education we have two main spaces: the classroom environment and the online environment. If we use the space in such a way that its strengths are put in the service of the course, Bransford, Brown and Cocking’s four lenses will be able to bring the goals of our course design into sharper focus.

For Fall Term 2020 this blog will be exploring issues informing education during a pandemic. It is appearing as part of a graduate seminar on online teaching and learning. You can read more about the seminar or see the other posts.

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