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| What is Constructivism? |
| Students develop new knowledge through a process of active construction. Not only do they receive input from the teacher or educational material, they also incorporate the new knowledge into what they already know--their knowledge base--to create new knowledge and make it their own. In the constructivist paradigm, this is exactly what instructors want students to do because, unless students build representations between old knowledge and new learning, they will not retain the new and be able to recall it later without difficulty. |
| Constructivists believe that the process of actively engaging in building new knowledge structures is how new knowledge is created. Constructivist theory holds the belief that learning is a process in which individuals construct their own knowledge through meaningful interactions with the world (Rieber, n.d.). It is the learner’s individual perception and interpretation of the world that causes different meanings to arise, and it is this concept that underlies the foundation of constructivist theory. |
| Finally, constructivism relies upon the assumption that the nature of reality is multiple, constructed, holistic, and asymmetric. Generalizations are not possible or desirable (Rodwell and Woody). It is for this reason, therefore, that curriculum designers, when working under the constructivist theory, must keep in mind that constructivism relies upon a much different set of assumptions -- assumptions that impact both learners and educators -- than do traditional systems. |
| For one thing, the learning environment must support knowledge construction and multiple perspectives. Whereas traditional systems, such as the one espoused by objectivists, hold that the world is real, constructivists believe that no one world is any more real than any other (Jonassen, 1992). Students must feel empowered to explore the multiple pathways open to them within the constructivist framework, just as instructors must be flexible in evaluating the different student outcomes and products likely to be present in a constructivist classroom, whether in a traditional classroom or a distance education setting. |
| The first part of this chapter will discuss the criteria that curriculum designers and instructors use when they want to assess the results of constructivist-based education. The second part of this chapter will address whether distance education settings readily support the constructive approach to knowledge construction and learning. As computer-based education becomes more popular, the quest is to discover not only what criteria curriculum designers and instructors should use in developing their assessment instruments, but also how these can be adapted to distance education. |
| What is Evaluation? |
| In the 1960s, Harvard psychologist Jerome Bruner outlined the major theoretical framework that learning is an active process. According to his theory, the task of the instructor is to translate information into a format appropriate to the learner’s current state of understanding. Basically, not all students are at the same level at the same time nor should they be treated that way. Bruner (as reported in Kearsley, 1998) felt that instructors should take into account four major aspects: |
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| It is the last point, in terms of evaluation and assessment, on which this chapter is focused. |
| Evaluation, according to Michael Scriven (1981), is the process of determining the merit or worth or value of something. It is a judgmental process. Evaluation, in the hands of the instructor, judges the students’ progress toward the goals and objectives of the course. Because the curriculum is designed around these goals and objectives, the evaluation process should also take these factors into consideration. |
| In the past, instructors used traditional methods of evaluation, such as the measurement of the learners’ mastery of facts and the testing of their intelligence against "certain stated objectives" to describe learners’ strengths and weaknesses and to judge them against pre-set standards they had developed (DCAD, WWW, 1998). Evaluation took the form of standardized tests, which resulted in norm-referenced and criterion-referenced data that did not give a true picture of students higher order thinking capabilities (Norton & Wiburg, 1998). With the advent of constructivism on the instructional scene, however, it has been necessary to shift evaluation toward a more encompassing approach, a fourth generation of evaluation, "whose key dynamic is negotiation" (Guba & Lincoln, 1989). |
| According to constructivist theory, because learners interpret the world individually, learning outcomes will differ for each student. Therefore, the objectives set for each student will differ and should be used as a guide for the students rather than as a prescription (Jonassen, 1996). A common misinterpretation of constructivism that arises in this situation is that all of these differing perspectives will result in chaos. This idea is based on the belief that, if all learners interpret information individually and construct their own meaning of reality, then they will be unable to share enough knowledge to communicate (Jonassen, 1996). |
| It is true that everyone’s conception of the world, and the knowledge within it, is unique, based on their personal sets of experiences. However, even though different images are evoked when the word "car" is seen or heard, the basic idea of what the semantic symbol "car" represents is still communicated among those familiar with the concept. Obviously, if time travelers from the past or people from remote regions of the Earth heard the word "car" or saw a real car (or a pictorial representation of one), they would be unable to relate to this concept until they formed their own knowledge base about the concept. In a like manner, constructivists argue that learners build their own knowledge based on their personal observations of the world around them, as governed by mutually negotiated terms of communication. |
| Evolution of Constructivist Evaluation Tools |
| A new learning and teaching paradigm suggests a new paradigm for evaluation as well. Jonassen (1992) suggests that "if constructivistic environments are created to engage learners in relevant and meaningful knowledge construction, then as designers we are obligated to implement alternative methods for evaluating learning from them. Objectivistic evaluation methods, like criterion-referencing, are not appropriate for evaluating learning and are likely too insensitive to perceive the types of learning that constructivistic environments are designed to support." |
| Given the definition of constructivism, as well as the medium of telecommunications, it is clear that entirely new evaluation and assessment tools must be used by instructors involved in these emerging fields. Because the constructivist paradigm perceives learners as interpreting what they learn individually and their learning outcomes being different from one another, instructors must learn to implement alternative evaluation methods with their students. Jonassen (1992) suggests ten criteria of constructivist learning that should be part constructivist evaluation (Table 1). These methods include such concepts as goal-free evaluation; authentic assessment; judgments based on knowledge, experience, and context; multiple and multimodal perspectives; and socially constructed meaning. |
| Rather than relating evaluation to goals previously set by the instructor, constructivists recommend that the instructor first administer a needs assessment instrument to determine what the learners desire as their actual outcomes. Verified needs provide the most objective standards by which to evaluate outcomes of any process. |
| "If specific goals are known before the learning process begins, the learning process as well as the evaluation will be biased. Providing criteria for referencing evaluation results in criterion-referenced instruction. That is, the goals of the learning drive the instruction, which in turn controls the student’s learning activities. Criterion-referenced instruction and evaluation are prototypic objectivistic constructs and therefore not appropriate evaluation methodologies for constructivistic environments." (Jonassen, 1996) |
| A goal assumes that someone else’s meaning is more important. However, in the constructivist paradigm, for learning to be meaningful, learners must set their own goals and construct their own meanings. Thus, if the overall goal is merely to learn, whatever meaning students derive from an activity should be significant and relevant to their success. Within the parameters of a telecommunications class, where the learners come from a wide variety of backgrounds, it is even more important to allow students to set their own goals because they all differ so widely from each other. The students will determine how well they have achieved these goals through feedback from their instructor as well as their peers and the use of instructor-guided self-assessment. |
| Furthermore, for learning to be meaningful, constructivists state that instruction must reside in authentic tasks, "those that have real-world relevance and utility, that integrate those tasks across the curriculum, that provide appropriate levels of complexity, and that allow students to select appropriate levels of difficulty or involvement" (Jonassen, 1996, p. 271). Thus, learners should be asked to do things that they would do in the real world rather than perform artificial tasks that the instructor has developed for the sake of performing an exercise. In other words, few people take multiple choice tests at their jobs every day, so why should students practice this "skill"? Instead, instructors should permit students to develop student-centered activities relevant to their interests and needs. This is particularly true in adult telecommunications courses, where the students all have different sets of needs that they want to fulfill and that they should be able to relate to their real-life needs. |
| Therefore, instructors must develop a flexible framework within which they can evaluate the actual types of knowledge that their students make in telecommunications courses. This knowledge construction can include the critical thinking skills that learners develop during the course, the actual experiences of the learners as they progress during the course, and the context in which their learning takes place. "Garrison notes that while the teacher must be aware of the external aspects of learning, those related to the technology, it is the internal cognitive aspects of the learning experience that remain in the hands of the teacher" (Garrison, 1989, as quoted in McIsaac & Gunawardena, 1996). |
| In this regard, the role of the telecommunications instructor is essential as a "facilitator and bridge between student and the learning source (i.e., computer, television)" (Beaudoin, 1990, as quoted in McIsaac & Gunawardena, 1996). Instructors must become more concerned that their students are indeed learning -- and demonstrating that learning through authentic products -- than with what they are learning. Guba and Lincoln acknowledge that the constructivist approach "'will sooner or later prove to be inadequate' as further refinement and change leads to further reconstruction of its nature. Indeed, as technologically-mediated learning environments become more pervasive, the nature of evaluation is being reconsidered and redefined (Guba & Lincoln, 1989, as quoted in Deakin Centre for Academic Development, 1998). |
| Constructivist Evaluation Tools in Practice |
| With regard to measuring student achievement along a sliding scale, rubrics in particular are a handy tool for distance educators to use in evaluating their students. Rubrics permit instructors to judge their students by means of "an established and written set of criteria for scoring student performance on tests, portfolios, writing samples, presentations, products or other performance tasks" (Norton & Wiburg, 1998, p. 235). |
| "Criteria are necessary because they assist in the process of judging complex human performance in a reliable, fair, and valid manner. Criteria guide judgments and make public to students, parents, and others the basis for these judgments. Unlike traditional assessments of right or wrong, alternative assessments invite a wide range of responses, and assessing the quality of the product and sometimes the validity of the process of this range of responses depends on clear and visible standards. Developing rubrics is a way to make such judgments explicit." (Norton & Wiburg, 1998, p. 235) |
| Because constructivism allows for different interpretations of knowledge and meaning, it is important for instructors to evaluate their students in a way that will "reflect and accept those multiple perspectives in the evaluation process" (Jonassen, 1996). To achieve an even more objective measure of a student’s progress, it may be necessary to employ a panel of reviewers to evaluate the student. This will provide an evaluation more in line with the constructivist paradigm, which contends that there is more than one perspective from which to view an issue and that more than one solution to a problem may be possible. |
| As another example, portfolios of student products provide more meaningful views of the process of student learning. Portfolios are collections of student work that have been put together to provide actual documentation of a student’s "motivation, academic growth, and level of achievement" (Norton & Wiburg, 1998, p. 237). With the advent of technological developments, instructors are now able to compile much richer student portfolios by including videotapes, audiotapes, photographs, computer disks containing student products, and other forms of electronic media. |
| In a web-based telecommunications class, for example, students can demonstrate mastery of many forms of electronic communication, including the following: |
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| Many of the constructivist evaluation methods used in traditional classrooms can also be used in a telecommunications class. Table 2 presents the criteria necessary for constructivist evaluation to take place, and Table 3 contains general and concrete examples of the kinds of constructivist evaluation available. These include a number of paper-based methods that should adapt well to a telecommunications environment, as well as native online applications, such as virtual reality (VR), would be easy for a teacher in a telecommunications class to use to evaluate a student's work. Some traditional methods would first have to be adapted to an online format before they could be used. Oral debates could be accomplished in chat programs only if strict rules are enforced with regard to when people were allowed to "talk." |
| Teaching methods that require a "performer/student" and an "audience/teacher" in real-time would be difficult to accomplish and, therefore, would not be recommended as evaluation methods in a telecommunications course. As technology improves, however, these methods should reevaluated for future adaptibility and contextual appropriateness. Finally, as an evaluative method, experiments often involve real-world problem sets; therefore, the time and effort required to simulate these for an online environment would render them unsuitable for evaluation in a telecommunications environment. |
| Conclusion |
| For constructivist-based courses to function effectively, all of the participants must agree on the definitions for certain objects, events, and ideas (i.e., socially constructed meaning); otherwise, chaos will ensue. Even though individual nuances may exist, for the most part, experts in a particular field of study "share enough meaning to communicate, to argue, to hypothesize, and so on" (Jonassen, Mayes, & McAleese, n.d.). At the beginning of a telecommunications course, the students should determine what it is that they want to learn, and the instructor must be allowed to provide input to their goals. Together, they should determine the path the course will take on a continuing basis by means of formative evaluations and continuous feedback. Only in this way will everyone come away satisfied with the learning experience. |
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