Pedagogy and the New Literacies in Higher Education

Use Of Digital Resources And Constructivist Learning Experiences

Constructivist learning is well known to educators as a paradigm in which the learner uses prior knowledge to support the acquisition of new skills and understanding (Abbott & Ryan, 1999). According to John Abbott, former director of 21^st Century Learning Initiative (Abbott, 2008), all knowledge is embedded into an idea, image, or emotion experienced prior to the new learning. Because of the distinctiveness of each individual learner, no two people will acquire the same conceptual understanding as any other person. Thus flexibility in methods, varied instructional resources, and open-ended outcomes lead to individually constructed knowledge. Constructivist environments are supported by several instructional methods employing a variety of tools, activities and resources. For 21^st century learners, many of the resources are digital in format, requiring special skills for adapting resources to the learning experiences (Beetham, & Sharpe, 2013; Gill, 2013). This chapter begins with a discussion on generative learning strategies which are reported useful for enhancing reading comprehension (Wittrock, 1989).