Cognitive Learning Theory and Instructional Strategies

As Dr. Orey explains in the video the connections between language, the senses, and the role of the elaboration process in the development of memories, it becomes very clear to me the reason that advance organizers are such powerful tools for student learning. When I have used video, images, songs, and other media to prepare students for reading a new text, not only are they more open to exploring the text, they are making connections between earlier memories and experiences and the text.

Virtual Field Trips take this concept many steps further by offering students the possibility of experiencing  learning holistically and through making a rich tapestry of connections between experience and subject matter, rather than through merely listening or reading. This accords with the situated learning principles of Lave and Wegner, that "Knowledge needs to be presented in an authentic context" and that "Learning requires social interaction and collaboration." Wikis also follow these principles, since their are many contributors to the learning, who are creating experiences and new knowledge together.

Concept mapping can be used either individually or collaboratively; the technology in programs like C-maps, Inspiration or its online version, Webspiration that permits links, images, sound files and video to become a part of the map, also corresponds to Paivio's dual coding hypothesis explained by Orey as  information being stored as  images and text.

I never knew about the tracked changes and auto-summarizing tools in Microsoft Word, however I am definitely going to provide my students with the opportunity of learning how to summarize information through this tool. I wish I had known about it this year, because it would have helped me to avoid a couple of instances of plagiarization during research projects.

In my student blogs, I have been the one to set up the questions primarily, but I think the idea of students summarizing information and then prompting the discussion with questions would be highly successful, because according to Piaget, students think differently from adults and so the questions they pose would be more relevant to how they are processing the information; although my questions do strike a chord fairly often, I would like to experiment with the response rate that student questions would stimulate.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. Baltimore: Author.


Lever-Duffy, J. & McDonald, J. (2008). Theoretical Foundations (Laureate Education, Inc., custom ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Situated learning Overview. Retrieved from http://tip.psychology.org/lave.html on May 19, 2010.