Article Critique

     The article “Online Learning Propelled by Constructivism” summarizes the revival of constructivism in teaching and learning, its integration with rapidly evolving technological advancements, and its relationship to future developments in online pedagogy. The exponential development of science and technology has made vast quantities of knowledge available to virtually millions of people around the world, enhancing connectivity in and among those in the academic, corporate, and military communities. A growing concern for the democratization of the learning process has accompanied this explosion of awareness, with constructivism driving much of the educational agenda, especially in online distance education. The main concern of this article talks about how would the online teaching be more constructivism and how to use the approach to change our way of teaching.

     According to constructivism, learners may construct their own interpretation and understanding from learning materials and circumstances in constructivist learning environments. So, Learners acquire new knowledge on their own and use it to build on previous knowledge and experiences. The learner is the center of attention, and teachers serve as facilitators or guides, monitoring, providing relevant and enriching materials and inspiring online learning atmosphere, as well as a mentor, providing each student with the necessary skills and information. When compared to traditional education, online learning has several distinct advantages, such as the ability to transcend geographic barriers and the ability for students to access the virtual classroom at any time and from any location if they have Internet access.

      As a conclusion, the emergence of online digital education has fundamentally altered the distance learning model in terms of distribution methods, community building, knowledge development, and learning. The use of 21st-century technology is rapidly closing the gap in communication immediacy, which is critical in creating knowledge-building communities of practice. These emerging technologies promote and actively help constructivist pedagogy in the distance education model with their open-source networks. Most importantly, distance education has the technological capacity to meet any learner who wishes to engage in the knowledge-building process through its constructivist pedagogy and contemporary technologies. As a result, there could be a new level of democratization of education, allowing for power and control changes across societies.

       On the other hand, by discussing this article in my group, we focused on three rounds. Starting with the things that we agreed with in the text, it emphasizes hands- on problem solving. Educators focus on making connections between fact and fostering new understanding in students. So, the knowledge network is being constructed continuously and every one can construct and the author called it open source. Also, the instructors tailor their teaching strategies to student responses and encourage students to analyze, interpret, and predict information. Teachers also rely on open-ended questions and promote extensive dialogue among students. Thus, student’s role changes from passive of information to active participant in the knowledge making process. However, we argued about the role of the students that are given autonomy and control to work on their own. Although, the students develop an understanding that makes sense to them, but sometimes they need a teacher to help them explain unfamiliar issues. Whereas regarding the things that should be implemented in the classroom or teaching, there should be an interaction between the content, peers and the teacher and the big focus must be on quality not quantity. Also, we can make lessons enjoyable by the usage of pictures that plays a big role in the understanding process by making it easier. In addition, we would keep learners actively involved, autonomous and controlling of what they learn because constructivist lessons are intrinsically motivating because they simulate curiosity that increases motivation.