Brian's Technology Teaching Philosophy

 Brian "Michael" Moran's Technology Teaching Philosophy

Hi, I am a spiritually based Nondenominational Chaplain with core Catholic roots that define my standards for self, family, friends, and professional peers. I love people, family, sports, learning, teaching, coaching, serving, and advocating for people with disabilities, Veterans, and the Elderly. My ministry as the Chaplain of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, mental health advocate, and trainer is to coach people with disabilities, Veterans, and the elderly on how to take a whole health approach to spiritual, mental, emotional, and social issues. I am an expert at many of the human resource management functions to include leadership and organizational development, training and development, planning, operations management, budget management, mental health peer support, whole health recovery management, and spiritual care. In addition, I am currently learning the foundational skills to be an instructional designer so I can develop content for people with disabilities, training material for Veteran families, and wellness content for the elderly. Furthermore, I would like these skills to supplement my journey to completing my Doctorate in Whole Health Leadership Transformation that will support my journey of supporting my love for people, learning, and teaching. All of this is a good introduction to this exciting time in my life where I have transformed my priorities, invested time, and vision for the future that is aligned with my spiritual values, ministry, and professional skillsets. I plan to use all those components to care for myself, my family, my community, and country with the intent of serving God, modeling the way of Jesus, and serving the Body of Christ.

My philosophy for using technology in learning is in its initial stages as I develop a sense of the new learning theories, frameworks, and processes that have been developed over the past 100 years. These theories and frameworks address the issues of how to best inform, educate, and facilitate learning with technology for teachers and students. Furthermore, we will get familiar with the various learning theories to include Constructivism, Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Meyers theory of multimedia. We will also review Moore’s theory on interaction and the Bates SECTION process to further inform my philosophy that will define my beliefs about using technology for teaching and learning in the classroom.

There are several learning theories about technology, content, and the interaction that is required to best facilitate learning with technology. These were summarized in, A History of Instructional media, Instructional Design, and Theories An, Y. (2021), as Behaviorism, Constructivism, and Cognitivism. I also included Meyer’s theory of multimedia as a theory to inform my teaching philosophy on selecting technology because he establishes 12 principles that inform the graphic design on your content that really enhance learning for every mind which is so critical with all the diverse minds we have in this world with the Autism, learning disability, and mental health crisis we have going on in this country. Constructivism focuses on prior understanding, learning from experiences, and defining things through their interaction with their environment, reflection, and active exploration of the measurable outcomes that defined the use of the theory (An, Y (2021). This theory is best used on group projects where collaboration is key to the success of the project. Next, Behaviorism focuses on reinforcement, repetition, and positive emotions from those changes that can assist people with making a behavior change (An, Y (2021). A terrific way to implement training for onboarding new personnel with new procedures, guidelines, and regulations. In addition, we have Cognitivism that emphasizes attention, memory, and problem solving. This learning theory is good for introducing new concepts to existing knowledge, facilitating a deeper understanding, and supports a higher level of thinking for teachers and learners in the field of instructional design (An, Y. (2021). Finally, Mayer’s 12 principles of multimedia learning discuss the importance of combining the text with visual displays to enhance learning. Mayer’s principles are designed to limit distractions, emphasize critical information, and present the material in the form that the brain processes the information most effectively. The 12 principles all have a purpose that includes enhancing the learning environment, products, and education of our teachers and students. Upon reflecting on these theories, Cognitivism is the learning theory that I am most aligned with but is not a silver bullet for me. Of note, I appreciate the theories with the intent which is to understand how the learner’s brains organize and process information. This is so critical because everyone’s brain does this differently so having the knowledge of how those learners organize and process information is a foundational requirement for selecting the right technology or multimedia. In addition, the theory seems to attempt to simplify the information so the learner can organize information, retain more information, process the information. Finally, Cognitivism supports long term learning, a higher level of thinking, and emphasizes problem solving which are all great learning objectives for any teacher or learner.

In closing, selecting Cognitivism as the learning theory that I am most aligned with will impact me as an instructional designer in the following ways. First, it will be important for me to understand the target audience’s prior knowledge. Second, the organization of the knowledge is critical so I will need to simplify the information, present it in a concise manner, and emphasize the active learning that is required to support this learning theory. Finally, the learner focused principle is what aligned me the most. We all have different minds and being able to tailor our content to different minds is critical to the learner’s ability to take in, process, and retain the information presented to them. Being aligned most with Cognitivism gives you a macro level view of the roots of my own teaching philosophy for technology. Michael Moore’s. Transactional Distance Theory describes how interaction with your peers and the content is important to how that person learns the material. He defined three types of interaction that included Learner-Content interaction (Reading Text), Learner-Instructor interaction (asking questions), and learner-learner interaction (Group Projects). As we learn more about the macro level environment of our target audience, leaders, and organizations we can use that to implement the microlevel process of selecting the right technology or multimedia by using the Bates SECTIONS process which uses eight criteria that includes students, ease of use, cost, teaching functions, interactivity, organizational issues, networking, and security to inform the selection of the right technology for your specific project. Choosing the right type of technology depends on many factors to include the learning objectives, project requirements, target audience, organizational constraints, and the instructional designers’ level of expertise. Instructional Designers use various tools to facilitate learning for teachers and students. These tools include content authoring platforms, audio, visual, graphic design, interactive learning, learning management systems, project management collaboration, and others. These tools come in many forms to include books, text, audio, visual, animation, and graphics that supplement the words on the product for learning. These tools combined with using the Bates SECTIONs process model to select the right course of action for technology all inform an instructional designer’s decision to select a technology and/or multimedia that best facilitates the learning for that target audience and customer.

In summary, I mostly align with the Cognitivism learning theory but will integrate concepts from the other learning theories like Constructivism and Behaviorism as I use the Bates process to select the right technology for the teachers and students. Instructional Designers have a robust set of tools they can use that include books, power point, e-learning tools, learning management systems, video and multimedia, graphic design, project management, data analytics, gamification, and assessments. The tools I would most integrate into my selection of technology would be the use of books, Power Point, video and multimedia, project management, and assessments after conducting a Bates model assessment on my skills, organizational constraints, and target populations. Furthermore, I will continue to expand my information, knowledge, and experience in the growth areas for me that would include some of the more formal sets of technology that I may not have as much experience working with thus far. I believe by implementing the Cognitivism learning theory you are catering to every learner because this theory appreciates the beauty and differences of every learner’s mind and not just the ones that can excel in a traditional academic environment. Leading with Cognitivism, supplementing with Constructivism and Behaviorism, and implementing the Bates model process are all information and processes that will best inform my ability to understand my target populations, organizational issues, and impacts on technology.  Leading with Cognitivism, supplementing with Constructivism and Behaviorism, and implementing the Bates model process are all information and processes that will best inform my ability to understand my target populations, organizational issues, and impacts on technology. This all needs to be understood to best inform the decision to select the right type of technology that meets the learning objectives for the target populations that you are serving.

An, Y. (2021). A history of instructional media, instructional design, and theories. International Journal of https://doi.org/10.46328/ijte.35

Moore, M. G. (1989) Editorial: Three types of interaction. American Journal of Distance Education, 3(2), 1-7. Retrieved from http://aris.teluq.uquebec.ca/ portals/598/t3_moore1989.pdf