Since there is so little discussion happening in this class, I’m going to record it here for easier reference and for further reflection:
Online discussion topic 1
We have talked about and questioned “What is learning?” during our class discussions, but I am sure that you have had more insightful thoughts after the class discussions were over and that you want to share these with others. How do you describe your own philosophy of knowledge and learning? Take a position of objectivism, interpretivism, both, or neither on the issue of knowledge and learning. State your understanding and interpretation of knowledge and learning, give explanations, rationale, evidence, or examples to support your claims. Be ready to defend your position. Respond to your fellow students’ postings with meaningful and insightful comments. Remember, there is no right or wrong answer.
My response:
My definition of learning was “information that is stored in Long Term Memory which can be retrieved and demonstrated when needed.” That is a distinctly cognitivist perspective (with a little behaviorism thrown in there – thank you Gagne).
After pondering our discussion and my own responses to it, I realized that I must have said, “depends on your definition of….whatever the word was….reality, truth, knowledge” several times…. I’m trying to decide if this makes me wishy-washy or wise ….lol. I do, however, think it implies something about my position on this discussion…the answer to the question of where I fit on the continuum is ..it depends.
Another conclusion that I’ve come to is that I think a key to this discussion is context – just like instructional design. We analyze the environment, the learner and the content. Why? To establish context. Without context we would be driving blind.
This is how I see things:
The truth (or reality) is like the Earth. When we look at it from space we see only one side of it (as in Interpretivism which says reality is internal, relative to a frame of reference p. 14). But it exists, in its entirety, whether we see it all or not (as in Objectivism which says reality is external, objective). We have to go on faith that it is all there. As the world turns (ok, i couldn’t resist), or as we move, we see other portions of the Earth (reality or truth) and therefore it depends upon our perspective what portion of the whole we see (Intepretivism again).
As I mentioned in class, I also believe that as humans we are subject to certain limitations. We are born entirely egocentric and as we develop our mental and emotional world expands to include others. But how we interact with those others depends greatly upon our environments – we do not live in a vacuum – our thoughts feelings and experiences are influenced by others (as in Pragamatism which says that knowledge is negotiated from experience and reason). For me, this demonstrates that I subscribe to a more holistic approach to this puzzle – each epistemology holds merit and can be used to help us more fully understand ….well…everything.
Back to context – Context grounds us and gives a place to begin. Context, sometimes in the form of objectives, gives an idea of where we want to end (the performance gap). So, although it IS important to understand our own beliefs with regard to the three epistemological traditions, we must also be keenly aware that our learners may hold a different paradigm and be able to design instruction that includes each.
OK, since people are nudging me, I must add that I don’t think virtual reality changes any of this – including Second Life. Truth is truth, reality is reality, and experience is experience no matter whether in RL or via a network of computers. 
Virutal reality just allows people to see things from a different perspective and experiment with presenting different perspectives..imho.
