Month: February 2021

A second look at Second Life

Since starting work on my master’s degree, I’ve found myself thinking more and more about Second Life, the online virtual world that once seemed to hold so much promise. Back in the day, I used to be a member, but eventually left because it was no longer this new, shiny, interesting thing. Last October, I…

Behaviorism

Over the past several decades, from the post-World War 2 era until now, three major theories or concepts have been applied to education. This week we’ll look at behaviorism, and we’ll look at the other theories in the coming weeks. As applied to education, behaviorism hit its stride with famed psychologist B.F. Skinner. In the…

Instructional development process

As the title says, this week’s readings covered the instructional development process, but I’m not sure if the phrase fully captures what was written. “Designing Instructional Systems” by Molenda, Pershing, and Reigeluth is a chapter from The ASTD Training and Development Handbook introduces the “Business Impact ISD model” which fills in some perceived gaps I’ll…

Muddying the waters

I had hoped to write this third R511 blog this past weekend, but life intervened. The heat went out in my house on Saturday, so I spent most of the day dealing with getting that fixed. Then while I was studying on Sunday, my mother called to say the apartment next to hers caught fire.…

Defining a field

It’s time for the second blog of the semester for EDUC-R511, and I guess I’m still getting into the swing of things. Last semester, when we had a bunch of readings, there were some questions posted for us to think about and answer in discussion forums on Canvas. For this class, however, I haven’t found…