So how well supported does my personal learning theory feel? For the most part, I think that most research will indicate that your learning design is more important than your tool. Of course, a lot may depend on how much research has gone into investigating a misunderstanding of the Clark/Kozma debate. I seem to remembering a few studies that were written by researchers that were convinced that the debate meant that Clark was saying that technology does not effect learning and that Kozma was saying that it does, so if a lot of people went to “prove” their misunderstanding of Kozma’s side, I might run into some extreme resistance to my theory of learning. As far as the social constructivism side, I do feel that there will be significant support for that part of my theory. Of course, there will be the resistance from the behaviorist and empirical side of the research, but that will mostly be due to differing world views of the researcher than actual lack of support (I can say that since I’m a constructivist, right?).

What research could I do to support my theory? I would probably want to look at actual results from instruction. I’m not a huge fan of standardized tests, but for now you really can’t get away from those kinds of tests. I would probably look at finding instructors who would be willing to try a social constructivist instructional design, and then compare the results from several sections of the same class (if I can find a topic with several sections). If some of the sections could be taught with a more traditional behaviorist approach and others with the constructivist approach, I could possibly compare the two sides. Of course, it may be difficult to construct an evaluation method that can equally compare such diverse design methods. Ultimately I would want to collect qualitative data that investigates perceived learning, satisfaction with learning, and other factors along those lines. The quantitative data from pre/post test or assignment scores would have some value, but I really want to know what people are thinking and feeling while learning (well, at least to the best of their ability to communicate that with me).

Lately I have been considering how I would like to change online learning to take full advantage of being online and not just being a digitized version of the F2F class. I wish there was a way to send students out on the web to read blogs and articles and Tweets about the topic of the class and then comment and discuss with people from around the world. If there was a way to collect those conversations and comments and responses and blog posts from around the web into a cohesive, branching document that allows you to follow the application and growth of the student’s thinking over time, that would be an awesome evaluation tool. I know you can copy and paste, but there should be something that collects that and puts it together into a slick, Prezi-like interface. That is my dream, at least.