What is Learning ?

Wikipedia defines learning as

“Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. “

According to Jonassen [1] "learning is biochemical activity in the brain; a relatively permanent change in behavior; information processing; awakening, remembering and recalling; social negotiation; critical thinking; knowledge construction; conceptual change; meaning making; activity; turning perceptions to environmental affordances; and learning is chaos."

All are descriptions of different aspects of learning. What all of these conceptions assume is that learning is an activity which creates unity of learning, doing and thinking. Learning, especially meaningful learning, engages activity[1]. There are various types of learning, such as learning through observation, rote learning, formal learning, informal learning, etc.

Let us focus on formal learning or from an educational perspective. Typically the process of acquiring knowledge in an educational context involves two key elements: one (teacher) who actively imparts knowledge and two (student or the learner) who actively gains knowledge. Each of these elements is equally essential for learning to be successful. The success is earned mutually for both the teacher giving the knowledge and the student gaining the knowledge. In teaching students one hopes to engage their minds and passions. The teacher must consider what he has to give and hopes to increase the student’s knowledge. The student not only gains new information but also weaves this information into his/her life. For the student, the key is how they acquire information and what he/she might do to make this information part of his/her experience.

So, the vital question is, how do we present the information so that the student acquires the information easily and secondly can make it part of his/her experience. I argue that by bring in activity based methods into learning will address both the 2 key questions.

References

[1] Jonassen, D. and Churchill, D. (2003). Where is the learning in learning objects? To appear in the International Journal of E-learning.

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