Social Constructivist Learning Principles for Designing Online Learning Environment

Abstract

There are several challenges confronting educational institutions, including the Covid-19 pandemic, the transition from in-class teaching and learning to an online learning environment, and supporting, engaging, and motivating distant, remote, and isolated students in an online learning environment. Online learning systems may identify and collect students' real context of learning situations and interactions with the learning environment. The online learning environment can be supported using social constructivist learning for an active online learning engagement. However, there is a scarcity of a well-defined methodology for deriving social constructivist learning principles that can guide the design of an online learning environment for authentic learning experiences. This chapter explored the goal, principles, and framework of constructivist theory. After that, compared with the attributes of social constructivist learning to develop the learning principles. These thematic learning principles are multi-perspectives, collaborative, contextual, and reflective and can support active and authentic learning experiences in an online learning environment. These learning principles are useful for learning designers and those supporting students' active learning process in an online environment for personalized and inclusive learning experiences.