REFLECTION

As I furthered my knowledge about how people learn, what I found surprising was that the ways in which we learn does not change. If one is a visual learner, they remain a visual learner therefore always processing information in the same ways since their learning began. As with audio visual or tactile learners, the way a person hears, sees, or touches something is processed in that way. I do understand that people can have multiple learning styles which put them at an advantage when storing information into memory. I analyzed myself as a learner throughout the readings and found that I have always studied and processed information the exact same way as long as I can remember regardless of subject matter. My sense of self was deepened and has allowed me to become comfortable with how I learn because I had found myself trying out different learning strategies and they weren’t compatible with how I normally do things or learn things.

In regard to the connection between the learning theories, learning styles, educational technology, and motivation, I understand that there’s relativity amongst them all through positive and negative reinforcement and feedback. In the learning theories, there had to be an action taken in order for a consequence to occur whether it was negative or positive but it reinforced learner or unlearned behavior. The way in which a learner responds to reinforcement dictates their learning style. Educational technology is an extension of the learning styles because of the vast amount of applications, software, and devices to enhance the way we learn, instructional designers can tailor-make a course for an individual if need be. That ability to address individual learning styles through theory and technology makes the flow in regard to motivation more approachable, it takes the guesswork out of it for the instructional designer. There are so many options with these factors together as a whole that the learning experience is enhanced a great deal. My learning thus far will help me to appreciate the many differences in learning I may come across in the field of Instructional design. I will put myself in a position to learn from those who learn differently and use their knowledge to foster knowledge in others as I build instruction to cover their main objectives of learning.