The main purpose of this thesis was to clarify whether there would be difficulties in using constructivistic learning in distance education in which interactive video was used. Other purposes of the thesis were to study the quality of learning in distance education compared to conventional education, and to study the quality of learning in constructivistic education compared to traditional education. The thesis consists of five studies in which three treat distance education and constructivistic learning. The first study treats distance education on its own, and the last study treats constuctivistic learning in conventional study groups. The methods in all studies were questionnaires for all participans, complemented with interviews in three studies. In the studies about constructivistic learning, the questionnaire contained questions to measure the extent of the constructivistic learning environment. The questionnaire in the first study contained questions to find out the participants' opinions about the course. The main hypothesis was that it would be more difficult to introduce constructivistic learning in distance education using interactive media, compared to conventional education. The findings from the studies could by no means verify this hypothesis. All the findings showed that the difficulties in distance education did not influence the possibilities to introduce constructivistic learning negatively. As to the quality of the distance students' learning there were some conflicting results. One group when tested achieved lower results than its reference group and the other groups did just as well as their reference groups. In the questionnaire the students claimed that the use of interactive video did not mean that the quality of learning was affected in negative ways. The findings in the last study showed that the students' opinions about the quality was much higher for the constructivistic group than its reference group. When tested the constructivistic group achieved better results in three out of four tests, but the differences were too small to be of any significance. / digitalisering@umu

The aim of this thesis has been to describe and analyse the students'views on the effects of constructivistic indicators in a learning environment of vocational training. The indicators concerned here were activity, authenticity, holism, context and multiple perspectives. The thesis focuses futher on the differences between traditional and constructivistic vocational training in its practice-of-skills aspect. The work consists of two sections, of which the first is a theoretical survey of cognitive constructivistic learning in which the views of various researchers are presented, analysed and compared. By designing a learning method with the highest possible number of constructivistic indicators, it has been possible to record students opinions of these in three different ways, by using questionnaires, interviews and video recordings. The pupils' experiences of various learning situations have then been described and analysed. Data have also been gathered using a fourth method, by recording spontaneous comments from the teachers concerned. The information has then been collated, and the results compared with the views of those researchers already presented. The results indicate that the effects of cognitive constructivistic indicators are felt as favourable by the pupils, who make it clear that it is of great value to be able to "think for oneself' as they put it, in the course of acquiring professional skills. Among other things, what the pupils consider specially valuable for the learning process is the personal activity and authenticity involved in creating usable products. No noticeably unfavourable pupil experiences of the constructivistic learning have emerged, while the spontaneous comments of the teachers express both advantages and disadvantages. The advantages include increased motivation on the part of pupils as a consequence of learning through creating usable products; pupils feel that what they do is more meaningful than would be the case in traditional vocational training. They also become independent learners more quickly: the teachers feel that the pupils learn more efficiently, and that the training period for some of them could be reduced by one-third. The major disadvantage is that the teacher has to learn to play a partly new role, since the teaching material does not consist of rigidly specific written instructions. Initially a greater amount of work is demanded of the teacher until pupils have become accustomed to the mainly constructivistic learning method. The learning environment that is presented in conclusion includes among other things features of business economics, product design and innovation, as well as certain conditions for the establishment of small-scale industry. Judging from the results, these components may be considered as further reinforcing the learning effect from a cognitive-constructivistic point of view. Vocational training thus acquires a new qualitative dimension when constructivistic indicators integrate instruction with the subsequent situation of working and earning a living, instead of concentrating simply on the content of the syllabus with no relation to the situation of pupils after completion of their training. / digitalisering@umu