E-Learning And Constructivism Essay

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1. Introduction
Nowadays, teaching is no longer restricted to face-to-face interaction between the students and the teachers. (Yueh & Hsu, 2008). The usage of learning management systems in the classroom and in the workplace continues to play an important role in helping instructors, trainers and educators in meeting their pedagogical as well as their organizational goals (see Argyris, 1977; Beatty & Ulasewicz, 2006; Liu, Li & Carlsson, 2010; Shrivastava, 1983; Ong, Lai & Wang, 2004). Becoming ubiquitous since the 80’s and 90’s, learning management systems (LMS) are one of the means of e-learning—a learning situation where instructors and learners are separated by distance, time, or both (Raab, Ellis, & Abdon, 2002) as well as m-learning (mobile …show more content…

Individuals are assumed to learn better when they discover things by themselves and when they control the pace of learning (Leidner & Jarvenpaa, 1995). Therefore, it is natural to expect that self-directed, interactive learning would improve learning outcome.

Jerome Bruner, a constructivist, suggested three stages of cognitive growth. One of them is the iconic stage. He stated that when new information is presented, it is useful to provide a visual image and this can be true at any age. Learners will grasp complicated concepts more easily if they have an illustration. That’s why it is important to have diagrams and pictures when giving instructions. In his philosophy of constructivism, he emphasized that children learn first through experience and through physical interaction with concepts. Teachers need to provide experiences in contexts that motivate the child to learn. This is referred to as readiness. All instruction needs to be structured in such a way that the child can grasp it easily. Bruner calls this spiral organization. And, instruction needs to be designed so that it fills in the gaps in the child’s knowledge or so that the child can extrapolate from it. Bruner refers to this as going beyond the information given (Kearsley,

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