Constructivist Learning Environment

Mini Lecture from week  5 indicates that-‘If students are primarily adults, they are likely to be enrolled in the course for career reasons, and will probably be highly self-reliant and highly goal-oriented. They will probably also approach the course with a good deal of prior learning (in-school and out-of-school learning) as well as preconceived ideas.’

That  sounds true because  at a level of maturity, the learners tend to have some ideas and thoughts they truly believe in. There may be certain prejudices also. Thus, designing a course for comparatively older learners can be a challenge because the material has to be chosen very carefully and there should be strong arguments and facts supporting the reading material and the views of the instructor. Sometimes these pre-conceived ideas create some kind of hindrance in the learning process because the mind is pre-occupied with the notion one already believes in.

The other thing is ‘Effective online curriculum generally adopts and builds in a more "facilitative" model of teaching in which the function of the faculty member (or trainer) is to lead discussions that are carefully crafted in order to elicit the ideas of students with respect to key concepts in the subject matter. As an example, the facilitator might ask a question regarding how selected concepts apply to the learners' work environments, and to share this with their online colleagues from THEIR perspectives.

This concept was very beautifully taken care of by Anne in Discussion forums for week 5. For example , Forum: 5:1 Anonymous Threads - Thoughts about Groups, which  says, you have worked with different group members on various tasks through exchange of emails, synchronous communication, threads, exchange of files. Briefly and anonymously comment on this experience. You may respond to other posts. What are the "lessons learned"? What went well? What surprised you? What will you do differently next time? This forum is not graded. (I don't know who you are!)

Similarly,  threads 5.3 ask learners  following –

You have kept a journal throughout this course. In this thread, please do the following:

1) Write a couple of sentences about the journal process, including pluses, minuses, procedures and changes you would make in the future

2) Pick a quote from your journal that may be meaningful to others and/or representative of a significant part of the course learning/experience

3) Please respond to others

4) Anonymity in this post is a choice

These kind of discussions/reflections at the end of the course help learners to  find the usefulness of a particular activity/learning strategy. For me writing these two threads made a whole of sense of whatever I did in last 5 weeks.