--- title: "Organizing Content for Constructivist Learning [Organizing Content #28]" date: 2010-09-27 description: "Findability / organizing content 1.0 New Series: Organizing Content [Organizing Content 1] 1.2 Introducing Project..." canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2010/09/27/organizing-content-for-constructivist-learning-organizing-content-28/ --- # Organizing Content for Constructivist Learning [Organizing Content #28] What's the best way to organize content for learning? In comments on a previous post, [Eddie Van Arsdall](https://idratherbewriting.com/2010/09/22/whence-rhetoric/), an experienced technical writer and trainer on the east coast, [commented](https://idratherbewriting.com/2010/09/16/observations-about-instructional-design-versus-technical-communication/comment-page-1/#comment-161383), > I consider classroom teaching to be the best experience for understanding how people learn. I recommend that technical communicators aspiring to focus on training development and elearning spend some time teaching, tutoring, and mentoring. You're a born teacher, Tom, as is evident by your posts. I taught writing for about four years -- two years as a graduate instructor at Columbia University in New York and two years as a full-time instructor at the American University in Cairo. I did better at Columbia than in Cairo. As a graduate instructor at Columbia, we were trained to teach in a specific way. Rather than lecturing to students about writing principles, we asked them constant questions. About all we did was ask questions. When a student responded, we tried to get other students to respond to the student's response, directing the conversation from student to student rather than from teacher to student. If no one answered a question right away, we waited (sometimes a minute or more) until someone offered a response. The idea was that asking questions in a Socratic method could increase critical thinking and reasoning more than explaining and lecturing. We also gave them weekly essay assignments that required them to reason out answers and determine the best way to organize their thoughts and arguments. I didn't know it at the time, but this method of teaching derives from a constructivist learning theory. In constructivist learning, you don't transfer knowledge from teacher to student in a hierarchical way. Instead, students construct their own learning through their own experiences. Students don't learn merely from reading a textbook or listening to a lecture, but by acting and experiencing, by teaching and assessing, by exploring the topic on their own. Their experiences and what they make of those experiences is how they learn. [![Traditional learning versus constructivism](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/constructivismv2.png)](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/2010/09/constructivismv2.png) Teachnology, a site dedicated to teaching and technology, provides a good explanation of constructivist learning theory: > The constructivist learning theory argues that people produce knowledge and form meaning based upon their experiences. ... Instead of giving a lecture the teachers in this theory function as facilitators whose role is to aid the student when it comes to their own understanding. This takes away focus from the teacher and lecture and puts it upon the student and their learning. The resources and lesson plans that must be initiated for this learning theory take a very different approach toward traditional learning as well. Instead of telling, the teacher must begin asking. Instead of answering questions that only align with their curriculum, the facilitator in this case must make it so that the student comes to the conclusions on their own instead of being told. > ... Instead of having the students relying on someone else's information and accepting it as truth, the constructivist learning theory supports that students should be exposed to data, primary sources, and the ability to interact with other students so that they can learn from the incorporation of their experiences. ([constructivist learning Theory](http://www.teach-nology.com/currenttrends/constructivism/)) In other words, the teacher is the facilitator to a learning environment, but the teacher doesn't transfer the knowledge. The student constructs the knowledge through his or her own through experiences, associations, connections, perspectives, and other insights that he or she formulates while in the learning environment. ### The Example of Conferences This learning theory rings true for the way I learn. Every conference I attend is an example of it. I'm always excited to go to conferences, to interact with other professionals in my field, to read the program and see all the topics and issues for discussion. But then I go to the presentations -- all day. And then the next day. At some point, usually early on, I start to tire of going to presentations. Am I really learning something, I start to wonder? Something that I couldn't just get from a book that I read on my own? That's how all conferences go for me. The problem is in the assumption that learning takes places through lectures and presentations. Superficial learning may take place like this, sitting and listening and taking notes to incorporate what the presenter says. But the real learning, the *aha!* moments and genuine epiphanies that make the conference worth it, aren't anything a presenter might say. For me, it's an insight that bubbles up on its own, through various experiences and reflections while I'm immersed in the conference learning environment. The conference provides the catalyst for the learning, but it doesn't provide the learning itself.