Learning & Development

UNIT-1
Introduction to learning
 Concepts of learning

The concepts of learning involves in-

➢ Learning is growth
➢ Learning is adjustment
➢ Learning is purposeful
➢ Learning is experience
➢ Learning is intelligent
➢ Learning is active
➢ Learning is both individual and social
 Phases in learning
 Aware- The first step of learning is to help people become
aware of the topic at hand, giving them general
exposure to the topic or task.
Ex: A boy is exposed to others riding a bike. He is simply
watching people ride by and observes what they are
doing.
 Understand- Understanding allows them to really dig in,
ask questions, and have time to think about the topic or
task.
Ex: He then begins asking questions to understand more.
How does the bike stay up? How do the wheels move?
What are people wearing on their heads?
 Accept- Acceptance means you have their buy-in. They
get it. They understand the why, how, and what. But, the
are not quite ready to actually act on it.
 Ex:When he feels like his questions have been
answered, he begins to really internalize that
riding a bike may be something he too can
do.
 Apply- In this phase, they are trying it out.
They may not be super competent, but they
are practicing it. It can often feel mechanical
rather than natural during this phase.
Ex: He sits on the bike and rides with someone
holding the back of the seat. He is wobbly,
but making progress.
 Integrate- The topic or task becomes routine,
adopted, and natural.
Ex: After some time in the clunky application
phase, the boy has finally made it to where
he can ride a bike smoothly.
 Learning Theories
 Learning is a change and modification in
behavior. The acquisition of knowledge
skills, values and attitudes.
There are many 3 main perspectives of
learning theories
1. Behaviorism
2. Cognitivism
3. Constructivism
REINFORCEMENT THEORY
 Positive Reinforcement:
This implies giving a positive response when
an individual shows positive and required
behaviour.
For example - Immediately praising an
employee for coming early for job. This will
increase probability of outstanding
behaviour occurring again. Reward is a
positive reinforce, but not necessarily. If
and only if the employees’ behaviour
improves, reward can said to be a positive
reinforce. Positive reinforcement stimulates
occurrence of a behaviour. It must be
noted that more spontaneous is the giving
of reward, the greater reinforcement value
it has.
 Negative Reinforcement −
This implies rewarding an employee by
removing negative / undesirable
consequences. Both positive and
negative reinforcement can be used for
increasing desirable / required
behaviour.
 Punishment − It implies removing positive
consequences so as to lower the
probability of repeating undesirable
behaviour in future. In other words,
punishment means applying undesirable
consequence for showing undesirable
behaviour. For instance - Suspending an
employee for breaking the
organizational rules. Punishment can be
equalized by positive reinforcement from
alternative source.
 Extinction- It implies absence of
reinforcements. In other words, extinction
implies lowering the probability of
undesired behaviour by removing
reward for that kind of behaviour. For
instance - if an employee no longer
receives praise and admiration for his
good work, he may feel that his
behaviour is generating no fruitful
consequence. Extinction may
unintentionally lower desirable behaviour
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
 Attention-Social Cognitive Theory implies that
you must pay attention for you to learn. If you
want to learn from the behaviour of the model
(the person that demonstrates the behaviour),
then you should eliminate anything that catches
your attention other than him. Also, the more
interesting the model is, the more likely you are to
pay full attention to him and learn.

 Retention-of the newly learned behaviour is

necessary. Without it, learning of the behaviour
would not be established, and you might need
to get back to observing the model again since
you were not able to store information about the
behaviour.
 Reproduction-When you are successful in
paying attention and retaining relevant
information, this step requires you to
demonstrate the behaviour. In this phase,
practice of the behaviour by repeatedly
doing it is important for improvement.

 Motivation- Feeling motivated to repeat

the behaviour is what you need in order to
keep on performing it. This is where
reinforcement and punishment come in.
You can be rewarded by demonstrating
the behaviour properly, and punished by
displaying it inappropriately.
 GOAL THEORY
Locke and Latham’s five principles of effective goal setting:

 Clarity: A goal must be specific and clear.

 Challenge: An easy or tedious goal is demotivating. But keep a

realistic balance: don’t expect anyone on your team to spin
straw into gold.

 Commitment: Your employees have to understand and buy in to

the goal from the outset.

 Feedback: Provide regular feedback throughout the whole

process. This helps to keep the goal on track.

 Task complexity: Think about realistic timescales, and break

down the process into sub-goals with regular reviews.
 NEED THEORY
 ACHIEVEMENT:
• Has a strong need to set and accomplish
challenging goals.
• Takes calculated risks to accomplish their
goals.
• Likes to receive regular feedback on their
progress and achievements.
• Often likes to work alone.

 AFFILIATION:
• Wants to belong to the group.
• Wants to be liked, and will often go along with
whatever the rest of the group wants to do.
• Favours collaboration over competition.
• Doesn't like high risk or uncertainty.
 POWER:
• Wants to control and influence others.
• Likes to win arguments.
• Enjoys competition and winning.
• Enjoys status and recognition
EXPECTANCY THEORY
1.Valence- Refers to the emotional orientations
which people hold with respect to outcomes
[rewards]. The depth of the want of an
employee for extrinsic [money, promotion, free
time, benefits] or intrinsic [satisfaction] rewards.
Management must discover what employees
appreciate.
2.Expectancy- Employees have different
expectations and levels of confidence about
what they are capable of doing. Management
must discover what resources, training, or
supervision the employees need.
3.Instrumentality- The perception of employees
whether they will actually receive what they
desire, even if it has been promised by a
manager. Management must ensure that
promises of rewards are fulfilled and that
employees are aware of that.

EXPECTANCY THEORY FORMULA

Motivation = valence x Expectancy
(instrumentality).
 ADULT LEARNING THEORY
1. Need for Knowledge: Adults need to know “why”
they should learn.

2. Motivation: Adults are driven by internal motives.

They will learn if they want to learn. For instance, a
compelling answer to the “what’s-in-it-for-me”
question is a powerful internal motivation.

3. Willingness: For adults, the willingness or readiness

to learn comes from perceiving the relevance of
the knowledge. They want to know how learning
will help them better their lives, and they learn best
when they know that the knowledge has
immediate value for them.
4. Foundation or Experience: Adults bring with them rich
reserves of experiences that form the foundation of their
learning. They analyze, rationalize, synthesize, and develop
new ideas or tweak old ones through the filter of their
experiences. As an instructional designer, you should tap
into their well of experiences to help them make
connections, perceive relevance, and derive inspiration.

5. Self-Direction: Adults are self-directed individuals who want

to take charge of the learning journey. They are
independent beings who want to feel in control.

6. Orientation to Learning: Adults learn best when they “do.”

They find relevance in task-oriented learning, which they
can align with their workplace realities. Besides, task-
oriented learning exercises their problem-solving ability that
in turn, gives them the confidence that they can conquer
their challenges with their newly-acquired knowledge.
Information Processing Theory
 Information processing is a theory of
learning that explains how stimuli that enter
our memory systems are selected and
organized for storage and retrieved from
memory.
❖ Structure of the Information processing
theory:
➢ Sensory memory
➢ Short Term Memory
➢ Long Term Memory
 Sensory Memory
Information is received through a person's senses, it
comes from the environment around you. Sensory
Memory holds information associated with the
senses (e.g., vision, hearing) just long enough for
the information to be processed further (mere
seconds).
Sensory Register
➢detects visual, auditory, haptic (touch), smell,
taste, temperature, pain, body position
information
➢ filters out much of the world's potential
information
➢ limited capacity
➢ seconds before decay
➢ unconscious
Working Memory
▪ STM functions as a temporary working memory,
whereby further processing is carried out to
make information ready for long-term storage or
for a response.
▪ Working memory holds information for a limited
amount of time and holds a limited amount of
information.
▪ Where information is processed and
"problem solving" occurs; the working
memory usually only processes things for a
short period of time.
▪ The working memory will process information for
longer periods of time if the person is actively
concentrating on it.
 Working memory
❖ Encoding: recasts sensory information into
meaningful representations suitable for
manipulation, using strategies like
o rehearsal
o organization
o elaboration
❖ Limited in capacity
❑ Encoding/Learning Strategies
➢ Rehearsal – attempting to learn something by
repeating it over and over; repetition
➢ Organization – attempting to learn something
by identifying relationships among pieces of
information as a way of categorizing them
➢ Elaboration – embellishing on new information
based on what you already know (using prior
knowledge)
❑ Environmental factors, e.g., culture,
affect the kinds of strategies that
children develop
✓ Children are more likely to use
effective learning strategies when
teachers and other adults encourage
their use, or when it is culturally
meaningful.
Long Term Memory
o where the information remembered over time is
kept; there are many ways that information is
moved from working memory into long term
memory
o represents our permanent storehouse of
information, capable of retaining an unlimited
Long-term Memory
o The ability to remember information in LTM appears
very early and improves with age
o Children increasingly have conscious awareness of
the past
▪ Infantile amnesia – general inability to recall
past events during the early years of life
o The amount of knowledge stored in LTM increases
many times over
▪ Knowledge base – one’s knowledge about
specific topics and the world in general
❖ Children’s knowledge about the world
becomes increasingly integrated
▪ Schemas – tightly integrated set of ideas
about a specific object or situation
▪ Scripts – schema that involves a predictable
sequence of events related to a common
activity.

❖ Children’s growing knowledge base

facilitates learning
Divisions of Long Term Memory
❖ Explicit Memory (declarative memory)
• Episodic Memory
• Semantic Memory
• Autobiographical Memory
❖ Implicit Memory (Procedural memory)
• Priming Divisions
 Explicit Memory
includes all of the memories that are available
in consciousness.
These are encoded by the hippocampus,
entorhinal cortex, and perirhinal cortex, but
consolidated and stored elsewhere.
 Episodic memory
Episodic memory refers to memory for
specific events in time, as well as supporting
their formation and retrieval. Some
examples of episodic memory would be
remembering someone's name and what
happened at your last interaction with
each other.
 Semantic Memory
Semantic memory refers to knowledge
about factual information, such as the
meaning of words. Semantic memory is
independent information such as
information remembered for a test
Semantic Memory-- facts and generalized information (concepts, principles,
rules; problem-solving strategies; learning strategies)
• Schema / Schemata -- networks of connected ideas or relationships; data
structures or procedures for organizing the parts of a specific experience
into a meaningful system (like a standard or stereotype)
• Proposition -- interconnected set of concepts and relationships; if/then
statements (smallest unit of information that can be judged true or false)
• Script -- "declarative knowledge structure that captures general
information about a routine series of events or a recurrent type of social
event, such as eating in a restaurant or visiting the doctor" (Stillings et al.,
1987)
• Frame -- complex organization including concepts and visualizations that
provide a reference within which stimuli and actions are judged (also
called "Frame of Reference")
• Scheme -- an organization of concepts, principles, rules, etc. that define a
perspective and presents specific action patterns to follow
• Program -- set of rules that define what to do in a particular situation
Paradigm -- the basic way of perceiving, thinking, valuing, and doing
associated with a particular vision of reality (Harman, 1970)
• Model -- a set of propositions or equations describing in simplified form
some aspects of our experience. Every model is based upon a theory or
paradigm, but the theory or paradigm may not be stated in concise form.
 Autobiographical Memory

Autobiographical memory refers to

knowledge about events and personal
experiences from an individual's own life
 Implicit Memory (Procedural memory)
Procedural memory involves memories of
body movement and how to use objects in
the environment. How to drive a car or use
a computer are examples of procedural
memories Implicit Memory (Procedural
Memory)
 Processes that keep information
“alive” or help transfer it from one
memory stage to next:
 Attention;
 Rehearsal;
 Chunking;
 Encoding;
 Retrieval.
 Attention
Selective attention refers to the learner's
ability to select and process certain
information while simultaneously ignoring
other information.
Several factors influence attention:
•The meaning that the task or information
holds for the individual
•Similarity between competing tasks or
sources of information
Rehearsal
Rehearsal is the process where information is kept in
short-term memory by mentally repeating it.
When the information is repeated each time, that
information is reentered into the short-term memory,
thus keeping that information for another 15 to 20
seconds (the average storage time for short-term
memory).
Chunking
Chunking is the process by which one can expand
his/her ability to remember things in the short term.
Chunking is also a process by which a person
organizes material into meaningful groups.
Encoding
It refers to the process of relating incoming information to
concepts and ideas already in memory in such a way that
the new material is more memorable. Various encoding
schemes include:
•Organization, e.g.:
-grouping information into categories
-outlines
-hierarchies
-concept trees
•Mnemonics
• Imagery
Retrieval
Retrieval of Information from Long-Term Memory The
process of retrieval from LTM involves bringing to mind
previously learned information, to either (a) understand
some new input or (b) make a response. Making a
response may involve either recall or recognition.
THE LEARNING PROCESS
Kolb’s model (based on experiential learning
theory) identifies four modes in the learning
process:
➢Concrete Experimentation
➢Reflection
➢Abstract Conceptualization
➢Active Experimentation.
Basically, this is a fancy way of saying that we
learn by:
❑Doing something (Concrete Experimentation)
❑Thinking about it (Reflection)
❑Doing some research
❑Talking with others and applying what we already
know to the situation (Abstract Conceptualization)
❑Doing something new or doing the same thing in a
more sophisticated way based on our
learning (Active Experimentation).
 THE LEARNING CYCLE:
Effective learning is seen when a person
progresses through a cycle of four
stages: of
1. having a concrete experience followed by
2. observation of and reflection on that
experience which leads to
3. the formation of abstract concepts
(analysis) and generalizations (conclusions)
which are then
4. used to test a hypothesis in future situations,
resulting in new experiences.
Kolb (1974) views learning as an integrated
process with each stage being mutually
supportive of and feeding into the next. It is
possible to enter the cycle at any stage and
follow it through its logical sequence.
However, effective learning only occurs when a
learner can execute all four stages of the model.
Therefore, no one stage of the cycle is effective
as a learning procedure on its own.
Instructional emphasis for learning
outcomes:
 Internal conditions: Processes within the
learner that must be present for learning
to occur
• Processes include how information is
registered, stored in memory, and
recalled
 External conditions: Processes in the
learning environment that facilitate
learning
• Include the physical learning
environment
Table: Internal and externals conditions necessary
for learning outcomes