Fall, 2001

E-learning: Using Computer-Based Learning Systems to Meet Students' Needs  
Ping Chen

     Not long ago, the change in the paradigm for learning was to a learner-centered approach (Newby, Stepich, Lehman, & Russell, 2000; Flynn, 1999). In fact, the ideas of "Child-Centered Education" and John Dewey 's learning through experience (or meaningful activities) have brought to people's attentions since long time ago. However, people never represent this stream of ideas for a change of school systems because of the lack of "technological infrastructure" in that time (Papert, 1998). Now, information and media technology is promising. The issue of using technology in education has begun to shift from knowledge as product to knowledge as process, where learners are no longer viewed as mere information "consumers," but as knowledge "producers." In an effort to provide learners with means for their knowledge construction, both constructionists and constructivists have introduced the concepts of "microworld" (Papert, 1988), "mindtools" (Jonassen, 1990), and "wetware" (Harris, 2000). For them, learning in the technological age is best conceived as a process of knowledge reconstruction.  

     To constructivists, "the constructivist view leads to an emphasis on learning rather than teaching, and on facilitative environments rather than instructional goals" (Collins, 1996, p.347). The purpose of education is "to help students construct their own understandings" (Collins, 1996). As Scardamalia, Bereiter, McLean, Swallow & Woodruff (1989) theorize that one great way to imply knowledge construction is to help students understand how they learn. The idea of helping children learn is that children learn well with the context of their own experiences and construct their own meaning (Jonassen, 1991). By connecting to both constructivist learning and information infrastructure, what we concern about helping children with e-learning may exhilarate ohn Dewey 's idea of learning through experience, engaging learners in learning experiences. Hence, the development of computer-based learning environments, as e-learning in this century, should stress the importance of techniques to enable learners to explore, experiment, and construct understanding through their experiences, rather than have learners experience rote learning of numerous facts. In this article, the important issues fall into two areas: constructivist learning and the design for e-learning.  

     Constructivist Learning: Current enthusiasm for e-learning rides on the notion that technology can provide a flexible, effective, nonlinear and authentic learning environment. With the high expectations on instructional technology, many learning systems, applications, instructional sources, and educators are making the most of e-learning. With e-learning, people are likely able to enhance learning and develop new ways of thinking, knowing, and problem solving. So, if we were concerning about e-learning, we should promote the ideas on how to use computer-based learning systems to meet students' needs, rather than how effective the computer-based instruction should be. It is the effects of learning "with" technology, rather than the effects "of" technology, that should be focused on (Salomon, Perkins, & Globerson, 1991).  

     Indeed, we should take account of learning contexts and all the human factors behind the technology. If we take a close look at the nature of learning with technology, we see that numerous instructional technologies emphasize on the constructivist view of "learning as a process of enculturation" (Sandberg and Wielinga, 1992, p. 129) and "situated knowledge" in authentic contexts (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989a). Rather than a self-contained substance, knowledge is "essentially situated" (Brown et al., 1989a) and can not be separated from its context. When considering the process of knowledge construction, constructionists and constructivists claim that learners interact with others and with their environment to make sense of what is happening. Learning is "distributed among the media, the learner, and the context" (Jonassen, Campbell, & Davidson, 1994, p.32). >From a constructivist point of view of e- learning, the emphasis is placed on the relationships among contexts, media, and individual minds as well as on the human-media interactions that support learner-centered knowledge construction. Since the learner-centered conception is originated from the context of learners' values and needs, the development of e-learning should be based on the consideration in supporting, not controlling the learning process (Jonassen et al., 1994).  

     The overall idea of constructivist learning is that constructivism provides a rationale for effective learning environments to all learners (Merrill, 1991). However, if the tenets of constructivism focus on knowledge construction and if each individual is responsible for knowledge construction, how can we determine effective learning environments to foster "constructivist learning?" (Jonassen, 1991). Dewey (1933) urged educators to concentrate on the active learning application to the solution of problems in a context relevant to the learners. As in Vosniadou's view of learning environments, there should be an "attention on the constructive and creative aspects of human cognition" to create the environments "that encourage metaconceptual awareness, representational growth, and cognitive flexibility."(Glaser, Ferguson, & Vosniadou, 1996, p. 2) Such constructivist learning environments place an emphasis on the learner's performance and engages learners in active, constructive, cumulative, goal-oriented, and reflective learning (Simons, 1993). With this notion, most salient learning theories and constructivist concerns include cognitive flexibility (Spiro & Jehng, 1990), cognitive apprenticeship, situated-cognitive learning, distributed learning, enculturation, project-based scenarios, and learning through exploration.  

     Cognitive flexibility: In constructivism, the learning activities are intentional, informal and interactive (Perkins, 1986). According to Spiro, Coulson, Feltovich, and Anderson (1988), learning activities should present multiple representations of content, instructional materials should support context-dependent knowledge, instruction should be case-based and emphasize knowledge construction, and knowledge sources should be interconnected. Such learning structures, accompanied with conceptual flexibility, allow learners to flexibly restructure their own learning and to deal with various new situations (Linn, 1992). Cognitive flexibility is a constructive process of using preexisting knowledge in a flexible form for both knowledge acquisition and knowledge representation. Specifically, cognitive flexibility theory focuses on the nature of learning in ill-structured and complex domains where learners cope with advanced knowledge acquisition (Spiro et al., 1988).  

     Cognitive flexibility results from knowledge construction in a variety of ways and contexts (Dick,1991). Spiro et al. (1988) pointed out that the traditional “pre-packaged” knowledge of traditional instructional design is constrained and inconsistent with the theory of cognitive flexibility. Jonassen suggests that modern instructional technologies should support the flexibility of knowledge construction. Cognitive flexibility plays a particularly important role in advanced knowledge acquisition (Spiro et al., 1988). Content, in this view, must be covered more than once "at different times, in rearranged contexts, for different purposes, and from different conceptual perspectives" (Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson, & Coulson, 1992, p.65).  

    Cognitive apprenticeship: A teaching method may aim at teaching primarily the processes that experts use. Such a method, referred to as cognitive apprenticeship, demonstrates an effective, experiential, and project-based or game-based instruction. To reflect the situated nature of knowledge, Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989b) proposed cognitive apprenticeship methods, which "enculturate students into authentic practices through activity and social interaction in a way similar to that evident--and evidently successful--in craft apprenticeship" (p.37). They explained that cognitive apprenticeship provides students with cognitive tools to engage in authentic learning activities (Brown et. al., 1989b).  

    Collins (1996) suggested modeling, coaching, articulation, and reflection as cognitive apprenticeship methods in the design of learning environments. In order to empower learners' cognitive and metacognitive skills, Collins, Brown, and Newman (1987) advocated that "teaching methods should be designed to give students the opportunity to observe, engage in, and invent or discover expert strategies in context" (p.12). According to Berryman (1991), the cognitive apprenticeship model should involve more situations where the focus of cognitive activities is on the learners rather than the discipline. The role of teachers is to mediate the learning by monitoring learning and providing an active environment to engage students in thinking. In examining the use of cognitive apprenticeship as a framework for instructional design, Casey (1996) described that implementing cognitive apprenticeship can "provide interventions that are responsive to the cognitive demands of a diverse set of learners operating within a diverse set of environmental factors" (p. 83).  

     Situated-cognition: The belief in Vygotsky's cultural-historical theory, as Moll (1991) described it, is that learning occurs when individual cognition is situated within social and cultural contexts. According to Brown et al. (1989b), learning takes place in the social acts and develops continuously through negotiations of meanings within situations. They stressed that learning is a process "resulting from acting in situations" (p.33). Since "learning and cognition are fundamentally situated," (p.32) knowledge is also "situated" and is developed within the activity, context, and culture (Brown et al., 1989b). Constructivist theorists stressed the importance of contextualized learning and situated knowledge in a real-world context (Collins et. al., 1987; Perkins & Salomon, 1989). That is, learning and thinking processes occur within a context and learning tasks cannot be separated from the context. The tasks should as much as possible reflect the experiential knowledge in real life (Collins, 1989; Brown et al., 1989; Perkins & Salomon, 1989). Therefore, it is argued that both context and content are sensitive to the nature of situational action and should influence the design of instructional software (Herrington & Oliver, 1995). And, instructional strategies should orient teachers or learners toward situated learning without prescribing the exact way of teaching and learning (Streibel, 1995).  

    Distributed learning: Rather than possessed in the mind alone, intelligence is an ongoing process of the reflection between mental structures and the intellectual tools in the real world (Pea, 1987). The human mind functions well within an authentic context. Cognition is a part of the context in the real world, not just within the individual (Savery & Duffy, 1995). Or we can say that we think with others and with the assistance of culturally provided tools and implements. As Norman (1993) puts it, "the world remembers things for us, just by being there." For example, Pea (1993) describes things (such as textbooks, rulers, the organization of desks, and bulletin boards) as "material distribution of intelligence." What Pea implies is that these hings are used as learning tools and seen as cultural artifacts for empowering human intelligence. As a matter of fact, learning is a process of "social practice" that takes place in a participation framework and distributed among co-participants (Lave and Wenger, 1991).  

    In the social constructivist point of view, human cognition is neither the property nor the product of an individual mind but is situated and distributed, involving more than one person in the construction activities (Salomon, 1994). Ehrmann (1988) defines distributed learning environments are "all the resources [are] within the learner's reach and all the means of reaching them" (p.255). On the basis of distributed cognition, computer learning programs should not aim at the finished product, rather they should emphasize the function of easy access.  

    Enculturation: According to a constructivist position of knowledge construction, we come to know our environment through interacting with individual and social experiences. Through social interaction and negotiation, we construct a negotiated mean-ing that provides a variety of experiences and interpretations to thinking and learning. Knowledge is constructed in a social context that is relevant and meaningful to the learners. In other words, knowledge is not individually constructed (Brown et. al. 1989a), but is built through a social process of making sense of experience (Lebow, 1993). Learning is not an individual invention but the active approach to participation in sociocultural interaction (Vygotsky, 1978; Lave, 1988; Saxe, 1990). The emphasis of a constructivist approach is placed on both learning as participation in the social world and the authentic view of social practice, rather than on the individual learner and the concept of individual cognitive process. The aim of instruction, therefore, is to acculturate students into ways of knowing that are embedded in social practice, and to reflect the way that knowledge is constructed and used in the real world (Brown et al., 1989a).  

    Project-based learning Project-based learning can situate learning in the real world. Rather than abstract and pre-determined instruction, constructivist approaches present authentic real-world tasks to encourage students learn with their purposes and engagements. These authentic tasks are in an "ill-structured" domain and may not have absolute answers (Spiro et al, 1991; Perkins, 1991). One study showed that when students know what and why they learn in project-based learning, students can develop higher level understanding (Barron, 1998). According to Barron, there are at least four design principles for project-based learning, including defining learning purposes, providing scaffolding strategies, ensuring revision and self-assessment opportunities, and developing social structures.  

    For project-based learning, learning activities may include problem-based learning (PBL), game-based activity, and goal-based scenarios (GBS). By posing problems that would be meaningful to students, the emphasis of PBL is on life-long learning and metacognitive activity (Jonassen, 1996). According to Jonassen (1996), PBL has "significantly affected educational practice," whereas GBS "provides story-based support" to solve the "smaller scale" problems. In the goal-based scenarios, the activities provide problem-solving challenges and opportunities to examine the problem-solving processes and to compare possible outcomes from different solutions.  

    The design principles of project-based learning should encourage the learners to think and enable them to find relevant information and make reliable decisions as they would act in the real world (Abdullah, 1998). For example, each adventure in The Jasper Woodbury Series (Cognition and Technology Group, 1990) involves learning activities, such as trip planning, generating mathematical exercises and a real-life solution, that can utilize learners' problem solving skills (Druin, 1996). In many cases, computer software is best used to support project-based learning and to enhance learners' problem-solving and thinking skills.  

    Learning through exploration In discovery learning, learners discover and construct meaning with their own experiences and cognitive structures (Idol & Jones, 1990). When learners explore and orient themselves to new or unfamiliar content, they normally do better in understanding content because they can take control over their own learning to "manipulate objects, deal with both questions and controversies, and perform experiments" (Ormrod, 1995, p.442). This approach also allows learners to interact with their environment and retrieve useful information in the context of the real-world, rather than in abstract predefined instruction. Heller (1990) reported that some studies have found that incidental learning empowers students to work on their own and the findings have indicated that discovery learning seems to have positive impact on students' attitudes and knowledge development. Some studies also have investigated the effectiveness of discovery learning on cognitive style and learning motivation. Both discovery learning and the approach of WIG constructivism (Without the Information Given) allow learners work through on their own learning without being told or guided. However, a constructivist learning does not have to be total discovery learning, or using the WIG approach. According to Perkins (1992), "education given over entirely to WIG instruction would prove grossly inefficient and ineffective, failing to pass on in straightforward ways the achievements of the past" (p.50). A constructivist approach can accept direct instruction with the emphasis on BIG (Beyond the Information Given) (Perkins, 1992). Whether to give any pre-described instruction or guideline, the considerations of learners' prerequisite knowledge and experiences must be taken into account while applying discovery learning (Roblyer, Edwards, & Havriluk, 1997).  

    The Design for e-Learning In the constructivist view of e-learning, the important issue is "how do we accommodate learners with different learning abilities and styles?" A fundamental shift is taking place because of the increasing use of computers and the profound changes in the dissemination and reorganization of information (Rieck and Wadsworth, 1998). Due to the changing beliefs about learning and the enthusiasm for engaging learners, the development of computer-based strategies for teaching and learning becomes more complex. Many of us, as teachers, as learners, or as we, find ourselves uncertain about the abilities and effective practices of using computer-based systems to support different types of learning in all kinds of interdisciplinary approaches. Technically, the basic obligation is to understand that any interactive learning system has specific strengths and weaknesses to either support or guide the learning processes or problem-solving skills (Larkin & Simon, 1987). It is a challenge to anticipate the sophisticated learning situations and provide more than just an efficient way of making learning happen. The problem is how we can design for the full range of human experience and what kinds of design criteria are acceptable and substantive in gathering learning, technology, and design together (Kapor, 1996). Not only that, another dilemma is that we have different visions of what design criteria are, especially when many systems have been developed by adopting both learning theories and learning styles through different learning activities. The fact that there are too many unsubstantiated opinions about what factors are effective and should be included makes it more difficult to determine what qualities and standards will be acceptable for measuring effective learning applications (Schaefermeyer, 1990). In addition, because many educators are beginning to adopt a constructivist point of view, the goal of teaching has now become one of ensuring that learners are able to construct their own knowledge. The theory of constructivist learning plays an ambiguous role for us, making it difficult to determine how to make it possible for many kinds of knowledge constructions to occur in the context of a single learning system.  

    The more we need to emphasize quality e-learning, the more we should advocate establishing design criteria from an educational standpoint, in which intelligent learners use computer technologies, rather than using computer technology to "tell the learner how to learn or what to do" (Chiou, 1995, p. 49). Our essential responsibility is to create a positive and pleasing learning climate based on coherent learning theories to enhance children's e-learn. The criteria for establishing an e-learning, including content, usability, and effective presentations (Roblyer, 1981), or visualization, goal orientation, motivation, and navigation structure (Jones, 1998), should be flexible enough to allow for individual variations and stringent enough to enable the incorporation of each component within materials.  

    Many research findings indicate that technology can foster interactive, self-directed learning and higher order thinking (Wellburn, 1996). With the assistance of computational tools, learners can explore and have more opportunities to construct their understanding rather than simply answering predefined questions (Wellburn, 1996). Pea (1991) suggests that the use of technology let learners to create their own works and communicate their understanding. Because the modern view of learning is "multimedia-oriented," "personalized," "experience-based," "environment-based," "tool-based," and "domain-specific" (Chiou, 1995), the assumption of e-learning is that learners, taking advantage of different capabilities of electronic gears, work through a multitude of paths in a real-world setting to interact with both hardware (electronic gears) and software (contents). One of the great challenges with e-learning technology is to use various mechanisms that allow learners to access any amount of sources and interact with learning easily at anywhere, at any time. In dynamic learning environments, an effective way for learning is to emphasize mutual interaction between the learning system and the learners. Shore (1993) believes that good interaction occurs when the learner negotiates control of the learning experience with the system, and the system responds intelligently to the needs of the learner.  

    A good quality of e-learning design is the degree of compromising various media attributes and contents as well as the level of addressing learners' prior knowledge for the construction of knowledge. In order to reflect four design principles: consistency, contrast, legibility and simplicity (Liu & Pedersen, 1998), the design components should be used carefully. Jonassen (1988) stressed the essential design components: the instructional models, the nature of the learner interaction, adaptation of instruction to the learner or content, level of intelligence exhibited by the application, and motivational aspects of design. In responding to those design components, each of following facets -- learner interaction, e-learning instruction, learning context, the use of learner control, and aesthetic agreements -- is considered as a critical characteristic that we should focus on.  

    Learner interaction: Learning is an important part of "encompassing creativity, problem solving, and decision making" (Kolb, 1984, p.182). Researchers have found that learner characteristics and cognitive styles may facilitate their thinking strategies and creative techniques to adjust to the learning environment (Davidson, Savenye, & Orr, 1992). According to Davidson et al. (1992), research on learning styles may provide information about how learners acquire knowledge from their interactions with environments. Such information plays an important role in helping designers to determine what type of learning strategy or environment is best for which type of learner (Davidson et. al., 1992).  

    Ausburn and Ausburn (1978) and Cosky (1980) stated that learning styles must be considered in the design, development, and evaluation of instruction. Especially when navigation is the key issue in a hypertext environment, the role of learning style is critical to how well the best quality of learning can occur (Brickell, 1993; Bartolome, 1993). It is suggested that using information about learners' cognitive styles in the design or development phases of computer-based learning production can "maximize the individualization" (Cosky, 1980). To that extent, we at least should be able to recognize types of learning characteristics in order to bring about effective learning applications for that learning to occur.  

    In the study of the relationship between learning style and computer skills, Davidson et al. (1992) laimed that research on learning styles could provide useful information to help designers in improving the design of computer applications. In Montgomery's (1995) study, both visual and active learners appreciate the interaction with movies as well as with the visual navigation schemes, kinesthetic (touch, feelings, taste, and smell) learners prefer additional reviews of abstract material, and global learners may enjoy learning the new material within a greater context. In constructivism, knowledge is constructed in the learners' minds. In that view of what and how to learn, the challenge for making an effective and responsive learning environment is to find ways of supporting diverse learning styles (Brickell, 1993).  

    In the study of the relationship between learning style and computer skills, Davidson e-Leanring instruction. In order to design instruction for a constructivist e-learning, a clear picture must aim at the best way of how content is organized. Importantly, the overall implication of the constructivist approach is that we should take learners' individual and social experiences into account. The technique of guiding or coaching is to provide learners with an authentic and resourceful environment where learners can develop their reasoning skills. This meaningful learning environment derives from an alternative set of instruction values, which emphasize the positive impact on both learners' individual and social experiences. In line with dynamic views of learning and learning theories, the values for instruction include collaboration, personal autonomy, generativity, reflectivity, active engagement, personal relevance, and pluralism (Lebow, 1993). Jonassen (1991) proposed the constructivist learning evaluation criteria, such as being context-driven, using authentic tasks, knowledge construction, multiple perspectives, and socially-constructed meaning. Roblyer et al. (1997) focused several instructional characteristics attributed to the constructivist purposes and designs (p.72):

1. Problem-oriented learning activities for a variety of skills and people working together. For specific goals, problems may be posed as "what if" or as open-ended questions.

    Learning content and context. Based on facts and procedures, learning contexts are categorized into several different structures, such as active or passive learning, incidental or direct learning, fun or serious learning, natural or efficient learning, and learner control or computer control. Collins et al. (1987) suggested three types of content, including problem solving strategies that come with experience, cognitive management strategies, and learning strategies. In addition to the emphasis on task-appropriate strategies, structured domain-specific knowledge, and social-moral issues, we should also consider: identifying prior knowledge, utilizing diverse intelligence, and enabling self-regulatory abilities (Glaser, 1997).  

    Since constructivist learning environments provide the motivation for learners to be actively involved in their own learning, learning styles play an important role in how well learning will occur. For matching the diverse of learning styles, courseware should be dynamic and able to provide any prominent access path for learners (Borsook, 1991). With a constructivist approach to learning, the context should emphasize learner control and information managing skills (Perkins, 1992).  

    Effective learning environments should provide learners with both intellectual tools and contexts that learners can use their cognition skills to observe, engage in, and discover strategies (Collins et. al., 1987). e-Learning should engage learners in using higher-order cognitive skills. e-Learning also should be able to accommodate any learning task and any learner, is to provide "macro-level" content for learners to synthesize meaning and "ill-defined" context for learners to construct their own meaning (Jonassen et. al., 1994).  

    Learner control. In a constructivist learning environment, learners are encouraged to explore information and make associative links to achieve their understanding. Since each individual learns differently with their own personal experiences and abilities, a learning environment should support learners to take responsibility for their own learning (Solomon, 1992). When learners are taking some control, they are given a sense of ownership and motivation to learn (Milheim and Martin, 1991). With ownership and motivation, learners are able to extend and enhance what they want to learn or produce.  

    However, not all learners can benefit from a high degree of learner control (Borsook, 1991). Merrill (1984) argued that while there should be some level of learner control in instructions, the challenge is how to help the learners "to use the learner control available." It is recommended that learners, especially inexperienced learners, must be advised about levels of difficulties and how to make productive decisions. It is also important to give options and recommendations that allow learners to make decisions on how much information, practice, or sequence to follow. Such a learner control with advisement, seems to be appropriate (Arnone & Grabowski, 1991; Mattoon, Klein, & Thurman, 1991).  

    The focus of supporting learning control should be on pacing, sequence, and content (Chung, 1992). The control of pacing allows learners to take as much time as necessary to learn or to control the speed of the presentation. The control of sequence allows learners to choose the sequence of the topics and the content to be learned. And, the control of content allows learners to select the topics and choose the material to learn during an instructional lesson (Milheim & Martin, 1991). In addition, display or strategy control allows learners to choose several displays or strategies in which the same concept is presented with different perspectives. Friend and Cole (1990) suggested that feedback control is another important feature. Feedback control allows learners to request feedback when necessary.  

    Aesthetic agreements: Effective artists use art to touch the hearts and minds of the audience (Hon, 1992). Perkins (1994) asserted that the function of art allows us to exercise our minds for improving and strengthening critical thinking skills. As Rudolf Arnheim (1967) mentioned in his book Art and Visual Perception, "All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention" (p. viii). Looking at art requires thinking. Perkins claimed that art must be "thought through." To him, the way of looking at art thoughtfully involves many kinds of cognition, such as visual processing, analytical thinking, examining hypotheses, and verbal reasoning. He emphasized that thoughtful looking at art can build an excellent setting for cultivating visual and verbal perceptions to develop better thinking skills. In his discussions, the point was that "thoughtful looking at art" raises the individual's conceptual tendency toward art. Such tendency is identified as "the art of intelligence" which can improve critical thinking skills as well as attitude and enthusiasm toward learning. With this disposition, human can mobilize appropriate mental power. In other words, according to Perkins, art is an especially "supportive context" connecting us to social, personal, and other dimensions of creativity. Also, Tufte (1983) defined graphical excellence as giving the viewer the complex ideas that communicate with clarity, precision, and efficiency. The process of seeing art reflects personal feelings, a sense of discovery, and social awareness (Csikszentmihalyi & Robinson, 1990).  

    Conclusions: From the constructivist view of learning and cognition, the important issue for e-learning is to support advanced knowledge acquisition that can create basic conditions for “a wide range of intellectual styles” and the diversity of “ways to make the best use of limited knowledge” (Papert, 1993). We face the challenge of providing learners with appropriate learning environments and thinking tools for knowledge construction based on learners' needs. The emphases of teaching and learning should be placed on providing learners with supportive contexts for higher order thinking skills, as well as considering the function of enculturation in which learners can apply their learning to real-life situations.