 In each of us we inherit a way of thinking about learning and behavior, and we model in some respects the history of psychology. So we can start with behaviorism historically that way, and with that framework we get really it's all about stimulus and response. And as an instructor then I'm really looking at presenting information and looking at reinforcing and shaping behavior. I shape behavior through reinforcement. So I don't really care about the student's existing knowledge. In fact, mental models are not something that was even in a behaviorist perspective. The student comes in essentially a blank slate, and my job is to fill their head and reinforce certain kinds of behavior. So I'm more interested in the content and reinforcement schedules, whether that be positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, or even punishment, to shape behavior. Now, the big problem with that is that we ignore mental states. And out of that grew a cognitive perspective, where of course mental states are very important. That really, we have to know what existing knowledge is there. We have to understand that students are analyzing and thinking and putting things together. They're assimilating and accommodating information into their existing models. And so the cognitive model takes a whole different approach and is a more process model. Now the only addition to that in some respects in the constructivist model is that there's an emphasis on that all of us are always constructing our understanding of the world around us. And so the emphasis gets even stronger on so what pre-existing knowledge are you bringing into this? And then a lot more focus on problem solving. Because it's through that problem solving that you encounter new information and you assimilate and accommodate that new information. So you can see how the constructivist model in its simplest form, this is a very brief summary, built on the cognitive model. Now it doesn't mean that each of those isn't important to our classrooms. We're going to use them all in our classrooms and in particular in online learning. In online learning you're going to be concerned about for example even how quickly you give feedback and how you're reinforcing. So if you look at children playing an online game, my wife often jokes that soon we're going to have to have online games for our taxes because our kids are growing up thinking everything needs to be fun including these online tax forms. But you want to be reinforced and my kids will be doing online learning and they'll show me all the stars they've earned. So that's very behaviorist. But at the same time if you look at their online learning through games for example, they're constructing or co-constructing reality. So there's mental processing going on, there's a discovery process going on. So all of those things are interacting and how we would construct an effective online environment. Behaviorism can't work for me because it puts too much power in the hands of the instructor who manages the entire space and manages in the entire learning experience without in my opinion regard for the individuals that make up the whole. Okay, cognitivism of course. The thinking process is going to have to be part of this learning and that what we learn comes out of reflection and so on. But let's put that together. Let's put it together and I think we get constructivism and within that social setting that Weygotsky talks about, I think we can have some real success with our students. Be it online or be it in class. I have a bit of a negative bias towards behaviorism, I'll own it. I'm proud of it actually. Although a number of my students seem to work well with sanctions. I'm not happy about that but they do. So therefore I have to revise my own biases because it's more important for my learners to work in ways that help them than it is for me to be ideologically pure in the creation of my course. So I do have some learners that are definitely reward-focused, grade-focused, outcome-focused and goal-focused. They're highly technocentric. And if I don't build in processes that allow them to fulfill those ways of strategizing around what counts as a success for them, then they're not going to be successful in the course. So I build that in even though ideologically I have some issues with it. Cognitivism is basically the idea that we are active learners and that we have these cognitive systems that need to be stimulated in order for learning to progress. It's sort of, I think, has a slightly different viewpoint than the behaviorism school of learning where you are assuming more of a passive kind of learning and behaviorism. And usually the idea is that in cognitivism that you would have a more active approach like having students engage in activities where they would do things and things like that. It's a bit, again, more challenging to do some of these things in an online version of a course. In the versions of courses that I've taught that have had an online component, really I guess the only way that I've tried to deal with this is by getting students to, I repeatedly test people and so they get a lot of feedback and so they know how they're doing as they're going through the course. And it's not really, I guess, a cognitive approach, but it's reasonably close, I guess, in terms of that kind of a context. I want to believe the most effective, or I do believe the most effective, is the constructivist approach where we're discovering knowledge and we're doing it more problem-based. So I believe the most ideal online environment is one where students are actively finding information and bringing it together to solve a problem where the role of the instructor is to find the right problems and point students in the direction of the right materials or help them winnow out the materials that they don't need. But behaviourist principles are there too because we'll have an instructional segment in an online course, for example, that may be a lecture, the traditional sage on the stage. Well, you're going to be doing a delivery of content and that has more, in terms of a behaviourist principle than necessarily a constructivist or cognitivist. All three are going to be alive and well, but I think the key thing is that we're aware of our assumptions, that when we're designing some materials, we're aware of, am I focused right now on a reinforcement schedule or the type of reinforcer I'm using or am I setting a problem or am I trying to get students all in the same place cognitively so that we all have the same background knowledge or that I'm taking into account background knowledge. So that allows us to see what is we're actually doing or we can articulate the assumptions from which we're doing our design.