Theory has both been celebrated and condemned in educational practice and research. Many proponents have argued that theory allows—even forces—us to see the “big picture” and makes it possible for us to view our practice and our research from a broader perspective than that envisioned from the murky trenches of our practice. This broader perspective helps us to make connections with the work of others, facilitates coherent frameworks and deeper understanding of our actions, and perhaps most importantly allows us to transfer the experience gained in one context to new experiences and contexts. Critics of theory (Wilson, 1999) have argued that too strict an adherence to any particular theoretical viewpoint often filters our perceptions and blinds us to important lessons of reality. The intent of this chapter is to look at learning theory generally, and then focus on those attributes of the online learning context that allow us to develop deeper and more useful theories of online learning.

理论在教育研究与实践视域下，其作用是有争议的，争议点如下所述：

1. 一种观点是理论能够以一个广泛的视角指导我们的实践；

2. 对理论坚守的教条主义，会削弱我们全面看待事物的能力。

本章节主要目标：

1. 对“在线学习”概念有一个初步的了解；

2. 掌握“在线学习”的四个属性（这一目标是后续学习的关键）

Wilson (1997) has described three functions of a good educational theory. First, it helps us to envision new worlds. Few of us need help envisioning new worlds in the midst of the hype and exuberance of online learning proponents that flood the popular press, but we do need theory to help us envision how education can best take advantage of the enhanced communication, information retrieval, and management capability provided by the Net. It is all too easy to consider new innovations in a “horseless carriage” manner, and to attempt to develop new actions based on old adaptations to obsolete contexts.

Second, a good theory helps us to make things. We need theories of online learning that help us to invest our time and limited resources most effectively. There are many opportunities, but always a critical shortage of resources, a situation which demands that we maximize the efficiency of our development and delivery efforts. This book contains a number of chapters with particular recommendations and suggestions for online course development and teaching. It is hoped that this chapter provides a theoretical “big picture” that will help make sense of these specific recommendations.

Third, Wilson argues that a good theory keeps us honest. Good theory builds upon what is already known, and helps us to interpret and plan for the unknown. It also forces us to look beyond day-to-day contingencies and to ensure that our knowledge and practice of online learning is robust, considered, and ever expanding.

优秀教育理论的三个功能：

（1）激发学习者的创新思维，能够利用良好的沟通能力、信息检索能力和管理能力来创造性地优化教育。

（2）能够帮助学习者高效率地获取学习资源、完成学习任务。

（3）是对学习者已有知识经验、规律的总结，并在此基础上帮助我们更有信心地解释和处理未知情况。

This chapter begins with a general assessment of how people learn that is based on Bransford, Brown, and Cocking’s (1999) work. It then assesses the unique characteristics of the Web that enable it to enhance these generalized learning contexts; that is, the Web’s “affordances.” The chapter next discusses the six forms of interaction and their critical role in engaging and supporting both learners and teachers. It then presents a model of e-learning, a first step toward a theory in which the two predominant forms of elearning—the collaborative and independent study modes—are presented, with a brief discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each. The chapter ends with a discussion of the emerging tools of the “Semantic Web” and the way they will affect future developments of the theory and practice of online learning

本章主要讨论的知识点：

（1）基于已有研究对“人们如何学习的”进行总体评价，并对“Web”这个技术工具支持“在线学习”的独特性进行评估，使其能够增强这些广义学习环境。

（2）讨论了六种互动形式及其在吸引和支持学习者和教师方面的关键作用；

（3）提出了e-Learning模型及其两种子模型：协作学习模式和独立学习模式，并简要讨论了每种形式的利弊。

（4）讨论了“语义网”这个新工具，以及这个工具将如何影响在线学习理论和实践的未来发展。

As many theorists have argued (Garrison & Shale, 1990), and as practitioners experience for themselves, online learning is a subset of learning in general; thus, we can expect issues relevant to how adults learn generally to be relevant to how they learn in an online context. In an insightful book on the “new science of learning,” Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (1999) provide evidence that effective learning environments are framed within the convergence of four overlapping lenses. They argue that effective learning is learner centered, knowledge centered, assessment centered, and community centered. Discussing each of these lenses helps us to define learning in a general sense, before we apply this analytical framework to the unique characteristics of online learning.

学习属性的主要内容：

1. “在线学习”是“学习”的从属概念，这使得“成年人是如何学习的”与“成年人如何在在线环境中学习”这两个问题相关联；

2. 有相关文献证明：有效的学习环境由4种特征融合形成，这4种特征分别是：以学习者为中心的学习环境、以知识为中心的学习环境、以评估为中心的学习环境、以社区为中心的学习环境。

A learner-centered context is not one in which the whims and peculiarities of each individual learner are uniquely catered to. In fact, we must be careful to recognize that learner-centered contexts must also meet the needs of the teacher, of the institution, of the larger society that provides support for the student and the institution, and often of a group or class of students. For this reason, I have argued elsewhere (Anderson, in press) that this attribute might more accurately be labeled “learning centered,” than “learner centered.”

Learner-centered learning, according to Bransford et al., includes awareness of the unique cognitive structures and understandings that the learners bring to the learning context. Thus, a teacher makes efforts to gain an understanding of students’ pre-existing knowledge, including any misconceptions that the learner starts with in their construction of new knowledge. Further, the learning environment respects and accommodates the particular cultural attributes, especially the language and particular forms of expression, that the learner uses to interpret and build knowledge. Learner-centered activities make extensive use of diagnostic tools and activities, so that these pre-existing knowledge structures are made visible to both the teacher and the student.

这一部分主要介绍关于以学习者为中心的两个学者的观点。 其中第一个学者认为以学习者为中心不仅仅要考虑到每个学生的个性，也要考虑到老师和学生群体，因此第一个学者认为，学习者为中心的含义应该更侧重于以学习为中心。 第二个学者认为以学习者为中心应该是要考虑到学习环境对学习者的影响，以学习者为中心的学习所获取的知识不是孤立于环境而存在的，基于环境所交付于学习者的知识带有一定的学习环境所附加的文化属性和结构特性。

Online learning can present challenges to educators, because the tools and opportunities for discovering students’ preconceptions and cultural perspectives are often limited by bandwidth constraints that limit the view of body language and paralinguistic clues. Some researchers have argued that these restrictions negatively affect the efficacy of communication (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976). Others have argued that the unique characteristics that define online learning (most commonly asynchronous textbased interaction) can actually lead to enhanced or hyper communications (Walther, 1996).（首先在线教育中网络传播媒介的形式限制了交互的形式和内容，比如肢体语言、面部语言等其他要素的交互都很难体现）

We have found evidence of significant social presence in computer conferencing contexts (Rourke, Anderson, Archer, & Garrison, 2002; Rourke & Anderson, 2002). Nonetheless, it is fair to say that the challenges of assessing student preconditions and cultural prerequisites are often more difficult in an online learning context, because teachers are less able to interact transparently with students—especially in the critical early stages of the formation of a learning community. It is for this reason that experienced online learning teachers make time at the commencement of their learning interactions to provide incentive and opportunity for students to share their understandings, their culture, and unique aspects of themselves. This sharing can be done formally, through electronically administered surveys and questionnaires, but is often accomplished more effectively by virtual icebreakers, and by the provision of an opportunity for students to introduce themselves and to express any issues or concerns to the teacher and the class.（在线教育环境下学习者的先验认知水平和文化水平难以评估，因此需要学习者在在线学习环境中更多表现和分享自己的理解，教师需要通过电子问卷以及调查询问等特殊手段来全面的了解学生的水平。）

The online learning environment is also a unique cultural context in itself. Benedikt (1992) has argued that cyberspace “has a geography, a physics, a nature and a rule of human law” (p. 123). Many students will be new to this context, but increasingly, students will come to online learning with preconceptions gathered from both formal and informal experience in virtual environments. They will exercise their mastery of communication norms and tools, some of which will not be appropriate to an educational online context. Researchers have attempted to quantify this proficiency and comfort with online environments through the use of survey instruments that measure a learner’s internet efficacy (Eastin & LaRose, 2000). They have argued that it is not Internet skill alone that determines competency; rather, a strong sense of Internet efficacy allows users to adapt effectively to the requirements of working in this environment. Thus, the effective online learning teacher is constantly probing for learner comfort and competence with the intervening technology, and providing safe environments for them to increase their sense of Internet efficacy. Learner-centered online-learning contexts thus are sensitive to the cultural overlay acquired in offline contexts, and the ways in which it interacts with the Web’s affordances.

这部分主要内容讲的是“学习者在网络学习环境中的学习能力不仅仅受限于学习者的网络技能，更依赖于学习者的网络效能感，而网络效能感又取决于网络学习环境的安全和舒适，即学习者对网络学习平台的感知易用性（对网站的文化和功能设计是否与学习者的先验知识相近）”。

Effective learning does not happen in a content vacuum. McPeck (1990) and other theorists of critical thinking have argued that teaching generalized thinking skills and techniques is useless outside of a particular knowledge domain in which they can be grounded. Similarly, Bransford et al. argue that effective learning is both defined and bounded by the epistemology, language, and context of disciplinary thought. Each discipline or field of study contains a world view that provides often unique ways of understanding and talking about knowledge. Students need opportunities to experience this discourse, as well as the knowledge structures that undergraduate teaching affords. They also need opportunities to reflect upon their own thinking: automacy is a useful and necessary skill for expert thinking, but without reflective capacity, it greatly limits one’s ability to transfer knowledge to an unfamiliar context or to develop new knowledge structures.

In comparison to campus-based learning, online learning neither advantages nor disadvantages knowledge-centered learning. As I discuss below, the Net provides expanded opportunities for students to plunge ever deeper into knowledge resources, thus affording a near limitless means for students to grow their knowledge, to find their own way around the knowledge of the discipline, and to benefit from its expression in thousands of formats and contexts. However, this provision of resources can be overwhelming, and the skillful e-teacher needs to provide the “big picture” scaffolding on which students can grow their own knowledge and discipline-centered discoveries.

核心观点：

1.有效学习无法在缺乏基础知识的前提下产生。

2.网络学习资源为学习者提供丰富的学习资源，但其资源过多反而让学习者难以处理

McPeck (1990)和一些批判思想家认为：在特定知识领域之外教授一般的思维技能和技巧是无用的。同样，Bransford等人认为，有效的学习既受到认识论、语言和学科思维情境的限制。每个研究领域都包含自己的world view，这种world view提供了改领域理解和认识相关知识的独特方式。学习者需要机会，同时借助自己已有的知识框架知识基础来学习体验其他领域的思维研究方式。同时他们还需要具备自主反思能力：这是专家进行思考的必备技能。如果不具备这种能力，就会极大的限制一个人对知识进行迁移转化，同时拓展个人知识结构的能力。

在以知识为中心的学习下，网络学习与传统学习相比优劣相当。网络为学习者提供了更多的机会去获取学习资源，进而为学习者提供了深度学习的可能，即学习者能在网络环境下获取更多的资源、丰富个人的学习方式等。然后网络为学习者提供的便利可能是压倒性的，熟练使用网络进行教学的教师需要提供一个“big picture”，从而为那些能够自己自主获取知识和在学科领域中有所成就的学生提供学习支架。

The third perspective on learning environments presented by Bransford et al. is the necessity for effective learning environments to be assessment centered. In making this assertion, they do not give unqualified support for summative assessments (especially those supposedly used for national or provincial accountability), but rather look to formative evaluation that serves to motivate, inform, and provide feedback to both learners and teachers.

Quality online learning provides many opportunities for assessment: not only opportunities that involve the teacher, but also ones that exploit the influence and expertise of peers, others that use simple and complex machine algorithms to assess student production, and, perhaps most importantly, those that encourage learners to assess their own learning reflectively. Understanding what is most usefully rather than what is most easily assessed is a challenge for the designers of online learning. Developments in cognitive learning theories and their application to assessment design are helping us to devise assessments that are aligned with the subject content, and that assess cognitive processes as well as end results. For example, Baxter, Elder, and Glaser (1996) found that competent students should be able to provide coherent explanations, generate plans for problem solution, implement solution strategies, and monitor and adjust their activities. I am continually disappointed when reviewing assessments that my own children are subjected to in school and at university to note the very high percentage of recall questions and the lack of assessment strategies that effectively measure the four sets of competencies identified by Baxter et al.

中心观点：有效的学习环境是以评估为中心，优质的在线学习能提供更多的评价机会。

Bransford等人提出的学习环境的第三个观点是，有效的学习环境必须以评估为中心。在做出这一论断时，他们并没有无条件地支持总结性评估(特别是那些被认为用于国家或省级问责制的评估)，而是着眼于为学习者和教师提供激励、信息和反馈的形成性评估。

优质的在线学习提供了许多评估机会：（1）教师参与的机会；（2）利用同龄人的影响和专业知识的机会；（3）使用简单和复杂的机器算法来评估学生的生产能力的机会；（4）鼓励学习者反思自己的学习情况的机会。对于在线学习的设计者来说，理解什么是最有用的而不是最容易评估的是一个挑战。

认知学习理论的发展及其在评估设计中的应用，正在帮助我们设计与主题内容相一致的评估，评估认知过程和最终结果。例如，Baxter, Elder，和Glaser(1996)发现，有能力的学生应该能够为解决问题提供连贯的解释和总体计划，实施解决方案战略，并监测和调整他们的活动。当我回顾我自己的孩子在学校和大学接受的评估时，我一直感到失望，因为我注意到回忆问题的比例非常高，而且缺乏有效衡量个人四方面技能的评估策略（Baxter等）。

Can we do any better in online learning? The diminution of opportunities for immediate interaction between learners and teachers might reduce opportunities for process assessment; however, the enhanced communications capacity of online learning and the focus of most adult online learning in the real world of work provide opportunities to create assessment activities that are project and workplace based, that are constructed collaboratively, that benefit from peer review, and that are infused with both the opportunity and the requirement for self-assessment.

A danger of assessment-centered learning systems is the potential increase in the workload demanded of busy online learning teachers. Strategies that are designed to provide formative and summative assessment with minimal direct impact on teacher workload are urgently needed. There is a growing list of tools that provide such assessment without increased teacher participation, including • the use of online computer-marked assessments that extend beyond quizzes to simulation exercises, virtual labs, and other automated assessments of active student learning;

• collaborative learning environments that students create to document and assess their own learning in virtual groups; • mechanisms, such as online automated tutors, that support and scaffold students’ evaluation of their own work and that of their peers; • student agents who facilitate and monitor peer activities to allow students to assess and aid each other informally; • the use of sophisticated software tools, such as latent semantic analysis (LSA) or neural networks, to machine-score even complicated materials, such as students’ essays. Thus, the challenge of online learning is to provide high quantity and quality of assessment while maintaining student interest and commitment. These goals are often best achieved through the development of a learning community, to which we turn next.

我们在线上学习中能做得更好吗? 学习者和教师之间即时互动的机会减少，可能会减少过程评估的机会; 然而，在线学习交流能力的增强以及现实工作世界中大多数成人以在线学习为重点，为创建基于项目和工作场所的评估活动提供了机会，这些活动是协同共建的，从同行评议中受益，这其中包含了自我评估的机会和要求。

减少教师参与的评估工具例子：

以评估为中心的学习系统的一个缺点是潜在增加了忙碌的在线学习教师的工作量。目前迫切需要的策略是，提供形成性和总结性评估，把对教师工作量的直接影响减到最小。在没有增加教师参与的情况下提供这种评估的工具越来越多，包括：

（1）使用在线计算机标记评估，从小测验扩展到模拟练习、虚拟实验室和其他主动学生学习的自动评估等; 

（2）学生创建的协作学习环境，在虚拟小组中记录和评估他们自己的学习;

（3）一些机制，比如在线自动导师，支持和支持学生对自己和同学的作业进行评估;

（4）促进和监督同伴活动的学生代理，使学生能够非正式地互相评估和帮助;

（5）使用复杂的软件工具，比如潜在语义分析(LSA)或神经网络，甚至可以用机器对学生论文等复杂材料进行评分。

因此，在线学习的挑战在于提供高质量和高质量的评估，同时保持学生的兴趣和投入。这些目标通常是通过发展学习型社区来最好地实现的，我们接下来将谈到学习型社区。

The community-centered lens allows us to include the critical social component of learning in our online learning designs. Here we find Vygotsky’s (1978) popular concepts of social cognition to be relevant as we consider how students can work together in an online learning context to create new knowledge collaboratively. These ideas have been expanded in Lipman’s (1991) community of inquiry and Wenger’s (2001) ideas of community of practice to show how members of a learning community both support and challenge each other, leading to effective and relevant knowledge construction. Wilson (2001) has described participants in online communities as having a shared sense of belonging, trust, expectation of learning, and commitment to participate and to contribute to the community。

Although there are many online learning researchers who celebrate the capacity to create learning communities at a distance (Harasim, Hiltz, Teles, & Turoff, 1995), there are also those who note problems associated with lack of attention and participation (Mason & Hart, 1997), economic restraints (Annand, 1999), and an in-built resistance among many faculty and institutions to the threatening competition from virtual learning environments (Jaffee, 1998). Ethnographic studies of the Net (Hine, 2000) illustrate how the lack of “placedness” and the complications of anonymity attenuate different components of community when the community is located in virtual space. In short, it may be more challenging than we think to create and sustain these communities, and the differences—linked to a lack of placedness and synchronicity, that is, mutual presence in time and place—may be more fundamental than the mere absence of body language and social presence.

以社区为中心的视角允许我们在在线学习设计中包括学习的关键社会成分。在这里，我们发现Vygotsky(1978)流行的社会认知概念与我们考虑学生如何在在线学习环境中协作创造新知识有关。这些观点在Lipman(1991)的探究社区和Wenger(2001)的实践社区的观点中得到了扩展，以展示学习社区的成员如何相互支持和挑战，从而导致有效和相关的知识构建。Wilson(2001)将在线社区的参与者描述为具有共同的归属感、信任、学习期望并且承诺参与和贡献于社区的一类人。

尽管有许多在线学习研究人员称赞远程创建学习社区的能力(Harasim, Hiltz, Teles， &Turoff, 1995)，也有人注意到社区学习中学习者缺乏关注和参与的相关问题(Mason &Hart, 1997)，经济限制(Annand, 1999)，以及许多教师和机构对来自虚拟学习环境的威胁竞争的内在抵制(Jaffee, 1998)。对网络的民族志研究(Hine, 2000)说明了当社区位于虚拟空间时，位置的缺乏和匿名的复杂性如何削弱社区的不同组成部分。简而言之，创建和维持这些社区可能比我们想象的更具有挑战性，这种差异与缺乏地点性和同步性有关，也就是说，在时间和地点上的相互存在可能比仅仅缺乏肢体语言和社会存在更根本。

I have been struck by the wide variation in the expectations of learners about participation in a community of learners. Traditionally, distance education has attracted students who value the freedom from constraints of time and place that is provided by independent modes of distance education. Contrary to popular belief, the major motivation for enrollment in distance education is not physical access, but rather, temporal freedom to move through a course of studies at a pace of the student’s choice. Participation in a community of learners almost inevitably places constraints on this independence, even when the pressure of synchronous connection is eliminated by use of asynchronous communications tools. The demands of a learning-centered context might at times force us to modify the prescriptive participation in communities of learning, even though we might have evidence that such participation will further advance knowledge creation and attention. The flexibility of virtual communities allows more universal participation, but a single environment that responds to all students does not exist; thus, the need for variations that accommodate the diverse needs of learners and teachers at different stages of their life cycles.

学习者对参与学习者社区的期望的存在巨大差异。传统上，远程教育吸引了重视独立的远程教育模式所提供的不受时间和地点限制的自由的学生。与普遍的看法相反，远程教育的主要动机不是物理上的接触，而是学生根据自己的选择在学习课程上的时间自由。参与学习者社区几乎不可避免地会对这种独立性造成限制。

These potential barriers argue for a theory of online learning that accommodates, but does not prescribe, any particular boundaries of time and place, and that allows for appropriate substitution of independent and community-centered learning. To this requirement, we add the need for a theory of e-learning that is learning centered, provides a wide variety of authentic assessment opportunities, and is grounded in existing knowledge contexts.

这些潜在的障碍为适应但没有规定任何特定的时间和地点的边界的在线学习理论提供了依据，这允许适当地替代独立的和以社区为中心的学习。针对这一需求，我们增加了对以学习为中心的电子学习理论的需求，该理论提供了多种真实的评估机会，并基于现有的知识环境。

Effective educational theory must address the affordances and the limitations of the context for which it is designed (Norman, 1999). The World Wide Web is a multifaceted technology that provides a large set of communication and information management tools that can be harnessed for effective education provision. It also suffers from a set of constraints that are briefly outlined in this section.

Online learning, as a subset of all distance education, has always been concerned with providing access to educational experience that is at least more flexible in time and in space than campusbased education. Access to the Web is now nearly ubiquitous in developed countries. The Wall Street Journal of February 4, 2002, reported that 54% of U.S. adults use the Web on a regular basis, and 90% of 15-17 years olds are regular Web users. This high percentage of users would probably include well over 90% of those citizens interested in taking a formal education course. Access to the Web is primarily through home or workplace machines, but placements in public libraries and Internet cafes and connections through personal wireless devices are such that access poses no problems for the vast majority of citizens of developed countries. I have also been surprised by the availability of access in developing countries, as exemplified by free use of the Net in McDonald’s restaurants in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the numerous Internet cafés, in most Chinese cities. Access is still problematic for those with a variety of physical handicaps; however, in comparison with books or video media, the Web provides much greater quality and quantity of access to nearly all citizens, with or without physical disabilities.