Download Intro to Learning and Learning Theories

Warm up March 2nd
Take all your results from the activity on
Monday and consolidate them. How do
you learn best? What are your areas of
weakness. Were the results to the tests
consistent?
 Now answer this - What is learning?

Learning tests
Active – Reflective
 Sensing – Intuitive
 Visual – verbal
 Sequential – Global
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Intro to Learning and Learning
Theories
Learning is
Relatively permanent change in behaviour
that results from practice or experience.
 Involves a stimulus and a response

Stimulus is action that produces an activity
 Response is reaction to the stimulus

Pavlov
Developed classical conditioning –
learning though association of a stimulus
and a response
 Experimented with dogs
 Natural response or unconditioned
response [UCR] is involuntary
 Elements that produce UCR are
unconditioned stimuli [UCS].

Pavlov
Conditioned response [CR]
 Conditioned stimulus [CS]

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Try this: Walk around campus and high
five someone. See how many times you
can high five them during your
conversation. Don’t be too obvious.
Skinner
Respondent behavior – like operant
conditioning is involuntary
 Operant conditioning

Any response that is followed by a
reinforcing stimulus tends to be repeated
 Rewards and Punishment

Piaget
Concept of the schema
 Assimilation

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Understanding something new in terms of
existing schemas
Accommodation

When something isn’t explained by existing
schemas, we are forced to adapt
Kolb
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Experiential learning theory (ELT), and learning styles inventory
(LSI).
4 distinct learning styles (or preferences), based on a fourstage learning cycle.
Way to understand individual people's different learning
styles, and also an explanation of a cycle of experiential
learning that applies to us all.
Kolb includes this 'cycle of learning' as a central principle in his
experiential learning theory.

immediate or concrete experiences' provide a basis for
'observations and reflections'. These 'observations and reflections'
are assimilated and distilled into 'abstract concepts' producing new
implications for action which can be 'actively tested' in turn creating
new experiences.
Miller
Cognitive psychologist
 TOTE model

Test
 Operate
 Test
 Exit

Bandura
Social or observational learning
 What we learn from watching others is
as important as what we learn from
doing.
 Processes include

Attention
 Retention
 Motor reproduction Processes
 Motivation

Gregorc

Gregorc based his learning styles on brain
hemisphere research.
 Learning styles measured by the Gregorc
Style Delineator fall on a continuum rather
than being polar extremes.

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Perceptual preference
* abstract (reason and intuition)
* concrete (the senses)
Ordering preference
* sequential (linear)
* random
Combining them leads to four types of learners