Instructional Design Essentials (IDE) Blog Post Week 3

In Week 3 of IDE we discussed learning theories.  Here is this week's assignment:

Discuss which theory/ies might be most applicable to your instruction and outline a specific activity/assignment/exercise that would facilitate learning according to that theory.

I think that cognitivism and constructivist theories are the types of learning theories that appeal to me most.  The activities I use when teaching about keyword searching facilitate learning according to the cognitivist theory.  According to the video we were to watch on cognitivism, and the Learning Theory for Librarians article, cognitivism draws on prior knowledge, breaks down new concepts into parts, and often gives some sort of visual representation or models to show how these parts work together in the concept.  The activities I use for keyword searching follow this pattern.  I activate students prior knowledge by explaining that they all use keywords in google and wikipedia and I explain how searching in a database is similar to what they have already done.  I then explain how it is different and have them brainstorm keywords which are visually represented on a whiteboard with similar keywords or synonyms lumped together.  We then talk about how to form an actual search and I visually draw the searches for them (Boolean).  Finally, students use a bit of constructivism (constructivism video) by getting into groups and practicing what they have learned and presenting their searches, and the reasoning behind their searches, to each other. 

Next, consider what you learned from Small's article on motivation and address how you are going to motivate your learners/students

According to the Small article on motivation, "motivation is inextricably linked to the motivational quality of the instruction they receive."  I found this idea to quite scary.  It seems like many of our students are unmotivated to do research and certainly seem hesitant to become more information literate.  Does that mean it is all the instructor/librarian's fault?  I don't believe the article meant to imply this but certainly it is tied to our instruction techniques.  In the past I believe I have relied heavily on the "achievement motivation" discussed in the article.  I explain that they will need this information to do well on their paper and on their future school work.  After, reading this article I would like to try to add in more motivational factors, in particular "inquiry arousal" and curiosity.  I know that I have in the past had success in using topics like "tattooing" to find scholarly research.  Students usually doubt that there are scholarly articles and books and such on the topic and thus the class is a bit more interesting to them.  I think I will try and find more topics like this or use interesting facts or things that have been in the news.  Another librarian on our campus always opens up instruction with discussing the time Jeremy Renner was a velociraptor.   

This usually gets a good response from students who are generally just told not to use Wikipedia because it could be wrong and never given an example. They seem to be more motivated to use other forms of sources after seeing this.  Although, if I am going to try this technique I'd rather use this:

I will certainly have to think more about how I can motivate students to want to become information literate individuals.