Jemerson Boncaros' EDCI 335 Blog

Driven by Passion, Fueled by Success

Author: edtech

image showing person walking in pre-painted footprints
Photo by Flickr user jfchenier under CC license: BY-NC 2.0

Welcome and Introduction

May 2, 2021 /

Before proceeding with this first blog post, we expect you to consider your privacy preferences carefully and that you have considered the following options:

  1. Do you want to be online vs. offline?
  2. Do you want to use your name (or part thereof) vs. a pseudonym (e.g., West Coast Teacher)?
  3. Do you want to have your blog public vs. private? (Note, you can set individual blog posts private or password protected or have an entire blog set to private)
  4. Have you considered whether you are posting within or outside of Canada? This blog on opened.ca is hosted within Canada. That said, any public blog posts can have its content aggregated/curated onto social networks outside of Canada.

First tasks you might explore with your new blog:

  • Go into its admin panel found by adding /wp-admin at the end of your blog’s URL
  • Add new category or tags to organize your blog posts – found under “Posts” (but do not remove the pre-existing “edci335” category).
  • See if your blog posts are appearing on the course website (you must have the the edci335 category assigned to a post first and have provided your instructor with your blog URL)
  • Add pages, if you like.
  • Include hyperlinks in your posts (select text and click on the link icon in the post toolbar)
  • Embed images or set featured images and embed video in blog posts and pages (can be your own media or that found on the internet, but consider free or creative commons licensed works). To embed a YouTube video, simply paste the URL on its own line.
  • Under Dashboard/Appearance,
    • Select your preferred website theme and customize to your preferences (New title, new header image, etc.)
    • Customize menus & navigation
    • Use widgets to customize blog content and features
  • Delete this starter post (or switch it to draft status if you want to keep it for reference)

Do consider creating categories for each course that you take should you wish to document your learning (or from professional learning activities outside of formal courses). Keep note, however, that you may wish to rename the label of the course category in menus (e.g., as we did where it shows “Learning Design” as the label for the “edci335” category menu.  This will enable readers not familiar with university course numbers to understand what to expect in the contents.

Lastly, as always, be aware of the FIPPA as it relates to privacy and share only those names/images that you have consent to use or are otherwise public figures. When in doubt, ask us.

Please also review the resources from our course website for getting started with blogging:

University of Victoria
Photo by Flickr user serdarkaya under CC license: BY-NC-ND 2.0

Learning Design Blog #1

May 2, 2020 /

The article “Exploring Learning Theories: Comparing Critical Features of Cognitivism, Behaviourism, and Constructivism,” By Eertmer, P.A., and Newby, P (2013) examines the key concepts between three learning theories and its instructional design. Cognitivism, a learning theory that emphasizes the understanding of how people think, solve problems, and process information. Secondly, Constructivism, a learning theory where an individual’s experience is utilized to create meaning and learn from the situation, nowadays it is often called “lesson learned,” but precisely constructs their own understanding from personal experiences. Lastly, Behaviourism, a learning theory in which an individual learns in a certain way through actions, which stimulates the individuals thinking and mostly focuses on their observations rather than their thoughts. (Ertmer and Newby, 2013).

A personal example about the best learning experience is being taught how to ride a motorcycle. When I bought my first motorcycle, I rode it with no riding experience other than relying on my experience on balancing a bicycle and my experience from driving a manual car. Since British Columbia has the strictest law in terms of riding and driving, I booked myself a motorcycle training course, where they teach beginner riders the basics such as braking, countersteering, engine braking, and more. Instructors also taught us how to ride safely and gave us tips to pass the road test. During that time I utilized all three learning theories.

Based on the reading, I would consider my current learning style behaviourism. I am a visual learner, I like to observe everything and analyze steps or methods to deepen my understanding. For example, when I took STAT 252, I focused on looking at the examples and recalculating them to learn and understand the concept before working on practice questions.

To conclude, the article helped me understand the three learning theories in depth and myself on a deeper level. These learning theories also resulted in getting to know myself better. I love to learn as much as I can because “learning is changing your mind about something” (EDCI 335, 2025).



References

Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (2013). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43-71. https://doi.org/10.1002/piq.21143 


Why is learning hard? – EDCI 335. (2013). https://edtechuvic.ca/edci335/why-is-learning-hard/

Attributions

Image Attributions

© 2025 Jemerson Boncaros' EDCI 335 Blog

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑