A Psychological Perspective on the Temporal Dimensions of E-Learning

Abstract

Psychological perspectives have long been reflected in educational theory and practice. Therefore, we expect psychology to contribute to our understanding of the impact of technology on the temporal aspects of teaching and learning in this digital age. Understanding how we learn, and how learning and teaching can be facilitated, are key to understanding the temporal dimension of e-learning. In this article the authors review the research literature with the purpose of developing a psychologically informed understanding of the temporal aspects, challenges and skills required for successful digital mediated learning. They consider how time has previously been addressed in educational theories and evaluate whether these theories retain their psychological validity in the context of e-learning. How is time perceived and experienced? How do such perceptions and expectations impact on e-learning? What skills will learners require? The authors' consideration of these and other issues leads them firstly to advance five psychologically informed challenges associated with the temporal aspects of e-learning. Secondly they identify three categories of psychological skills that support the ability to manage these temporal challenges and illustrate how they function as psychological enablers to e-learning. Psychological insights will not only deepen our understanding of the temporal aspects of e-learning, they will also inform the design of educational materials and the deployment of technology to support their effective use.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs): Insights and challenges from a psychological perspective

“…The increasing use of mobile technology for learning has raised awareness of where learning takes place. However, less attention has been paid to the temporal aspects of learning contexts, especially the experiential aspects of time (Barbera & Clara, ; Terras & Ramsay, ). Awareness of the temporal context is particularly important if productive and collaborative activities such as wikis, which by their very nature have content that changes over time, are embedded within MOOCs.…”

“…Thankfully, learners possess, to a greater or lesser extent, psychological resources that enable them to address these challenges, most importantly, the ability to perceive and monitor time and allocate it appropriately to the learning, with such abilities being supported by executive functioning and manifest via meta‐cognitive awareness (see Terras & Ramsay, for a detailed discussion of the psychological challenges of monitoring time in online contexts). This self‐initiated and self‐directed monitoring must be applied not only to the external spatio‐temporal environment but also internally to monitor and regulate attention and learning.…”

“…We note earlier, when discussing the challenges presented by anytime/anywhere access, that it is essential for learners to have an awareness of the temporal aspects of their learning environment, specifically the ability to track the time course and source of information concerning feedback and collaboratively generated content (Terras & Ramsay, ). MOOCs allow learners greater control of their learning routes, and this flexibility should be accounted for and supported within MOOCs by the provision of multiple routes of equivalent quality through the presented material.…”

The pendulum swing of user instruction and interaction

“…Learning locations and learning times were determined by organisations and by teachers, now they are (co-) determined by learners. The psychological implications in particular of learning across time and space has been explored by Terras and Ramsay (2014) who outlined the importance of considering both the physical and experiential aspects of time, and how information is sequenced over time as these factors are key to capturing the temporal dimension of mobile learning. Furthermore they highlight the need to recognise that temporal changes are often accompanied by locational change.…”

“…These challenges include the importance of executive functioning, metacognition and self-regulation in order to deploy the limited pool of cognitive resources to meet the demands of mobile learning. Given that attention and executive functioning play a major explanatory role in traditional theoretical explanations of time, most notably the Attentional Gate Model (Zakay, 2000), it is likely that these mechanisms also support the ability to monitor and make temporal judgements in virtual contexts (Terras and Ramsay, 2014).…”