Barbara’s thoughts…

Module 3 – Assignment 2 (2008)

E-Learning Design Recommendations

AIM:

This report will outline the application of learning theories and multimedia principles to Conflict Management. The report will also include further recommendations and the justification of the integration of specific technologies to Conflict Management.

CONTEXT:

Conflict Management is a major factor which an organization needs to deal with. Managers are supposed to have the assumed knowledge of how to manage any sort of conflict that may arise with a team/organization. This ability is considered a core competency and is required of managers who want to grow and advance. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most difficult skills a manager can develop.

The objective of this e-learning course is to illustrate team conflict symptoms and causes; to determine how to address team conflict using specific tools, skills, and processes; and to improve the ability of managers to build teams that can deal effectively with both healthy and unhealthy conflict.

Although this course was specifically designed to address managers, supervisors, or team leaders; team members or individual contributors can certainly benefit from undertaking this e-learning course.

INCORPORATED LEARNING THEORIES:

Behaviorism

Behaviourists attempted to study behaviour and learning from a scientific approach – only observable and measurable behaviours are reliable.   They explain human behaviour in terms of cause and effect – therefore learning is a modification of behaviour by application of stimuli, shaping of responses and the provision of reinforcement.

Principles emphasised by Behaviourist theory: 

• The learner must be able to respond actively 
• Frequency of repetition of responses is important in acquiring skill 
• Reinforcement is vital to obtain repetition of required or correct behaviour  
• Generalisation suggests the importance of practice in varied situations 
• Immediate feedback of results is strongly motivating 
• Shaping behaviour by the reinforcement of approximate responses is essential in learning new skills

Constructivism

Bruner’s Constructivist Theory:
Bruner (1966) based his theory on learning by discovery – information should be organised in a spiral manner that allows the learner to re-arrange and re-assemble content to create new insights.  According to Bruner, discovery and meaningful learning enhances recall and transfer of learning. The main objective is to build upon knowledge the learner already has.  “By creating learning environments that foster the self-development of learners as they explore a situation or problem, teachers can enable learners to arrange, rearrange, and transform evidence so they can gain new insights and experience a sense of achievement in making their own discoveries.  The problem–solving strategies they develop are more transferable, as they have personal meaning and value in terms of the learner’s own purposes and intentions.”

Applying principles of Bruner’s theory: 

• Instruction must be concerned with the experiences and context that make the learner willing and able to learn (readiness) 
• Instruction must be structured so that it can be easily grasped by the learner (spiral organisation) 
• Instruction should be designed to facilitate extrapolation and/or fill in the gaps (going beyond the information given) 

Both of these theories were chosen because of the basis of the theories. That learner had to have gained some experience or in Conflict Management’s case, an example/scenario of a situation, once something involving conflict amongst members has occurred; then by implementing these learning theories into the Conflict Management E-Learning course; the individual will be able to understand and to be able to grasp the situation at hand.

E-LEARNING DESIGN:

http://www.gliffy.com/publish/1443586/

INTEGRATION OF TECHNOLOGIES:

Podcasting/Video: with the introduction of these technologies, we are now able to direct conference with one another without actually having to be face-to-face with each other. In reference to this e-learning course it’s very effective in exchanging information from either other team members or other organisations so the exchange of information is constant and this will lessen the effects of conflict that may arise.

Wiki: this sharing of a wiki and being able to edit any kind of information is very relevant to this course, as people want to address some issues they may have and it’ll be seen and read by other team members. The structure of this wiki is to allow individual to voice issues.

Blogs: these are online personal journals that can and will only be read by superiors. This allows leaders of a team to know first-hand the issues that are going around and causing problems. Therefore, problems will be solved and conflict shall not occur.