LIB 4900 – Social Informatics – Fall 2015

MLA Citation:

Ouyang, John Ronghua, and Nile Stanley. “Theories And Research In Educational Technology And Distance Learning Instruction Through Blackboard.”
Universal Journal Of Educational Research 2.2 (2014): 161-172. ERIC. Web. 15 Oct. 2015.

Research Question:
This presentation is reviewing various
educational technology related theories, exploring and
discussing up-to-date theoretical research and applications.

Methodology used:
A review and discussion of various theories in education. This paper reviews educational technology related theories. Learning theories discussed in the research and later applied to an evaluation of Blackboard’s distance learning environment platform. Theories discussed are: Constructivist theory, a brief description of the multiple intelligence theory, anchored instruction theory, cognitive flexibility theory, theory of diffusion of innovations, distribution cognition theory, dual-coding theory, experiential learning theory, script theory, situated cognition theory, and symbol system theory. At the end of the article Blackboard is discussed in the context of the stated theories.

Extent of social informatics approach to the research study:
According to the Berkshire Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction “Social informatics (SI) is a theoretical and empirical approach to the study of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in society.” The authors Ouyang John Ronghua, and Nile Stanley explore the popular theories of education and then review the Blackboard platform in the context of those theories. This paper definitely applies to social informatics methods of studying ICT systems.