Designing content e-learning: what theories of learning we can find?

Abstract

This research paper describes the results of a research project whose main objective is to identify the main theories of teaching and learning, namely those that form the basis and development of e-Learning contents at Portuguese institutions. Moreover, the project addresses two types of research (i.e. qualitative and quantitative), by concentrating on specific case studies. The mechanisms used for data collation are semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The analyses of the results point to the existence of a lack of cohesion between teaching and learning theories. In terms of the production of e-contents, there is a lack of explicit learning theories or models that are formally adopted at Portuguese institutions. We examine various theoretical frameworks within the same institution, such as behaviorist, cognitive or constructivist models. The majority of the institutions reported that they had adopted constructivist, instructional design, learning style theory or learning objective models to produce and organize e-contents.

Keywords

• e-Learning, conteúdos, teorias de ensino e de aprendizagem.