Schemas for categorizing the use of pedagogies, learning theories, and technologies. For example, Table 1 maps learning theories (behaviorism, cognitive constructivism, social constructivism, and situated learning) against types of technologies. Online communication tools offer more potential for social constructivist interaction and joint construction of knowledge.
This article also suggests a way to map tool use along three dimensions:
- Individual - Social
- Information - Experience
- Passive - Active This isn't a simple framework where a single tool always is used the same way. Blogs can be more social or more based on individual reflection, and could be at different places in that framework depending on the actual learning activities.
The author argues that constructivist learning environments where multiple perspectives are respected and there is no single "right "answer" are better for encouraging diversity. The ideas for instructional design for diversity are more theory-based than practice-based, but this has some interesting concepts.
"The major advantage of this learning model is that one of its key design goals is to encourage students to bring multiple perspectives to questions/cases/problems/issues and projects as part of their learning. This approach to learning views diversity as a strength to be exploited rather than a problem to be solved."