As an e-learning designer, it is important to create learner-centered courses–that are designed for not only the primary target audience but also any potential learners who may also interact with your course, AKA the secondary target audience.
An online learning course is published publicly for all members of an organization to interact with, and ideally, learn from. It is so important to understand the power that you have as an e-learning creator. YOU set the expectations of learning objectives to be obtained and how to transfer this learning to real life. You are also a makeshift leader.
By now, you may be wondering why I still haven’t addressed my title for this blog post: “Inspiration from the Bobo Doll”. Bandura’s Social Learning Theory suggests that instructors and leaders affect the environments that they are part of. From my experience, teachers have molded my learning experiences—especially teachers who were stricter and had higher standards.
Naturally, we look up to high standards (discrete pun fully intended), and we tend to observe and then imitate these standards in an effort to meet standards set by great instructors and leaders.
Of course, Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment resulted in children imitating adults’ behavior when interacting with the same Bobo Doll that these adults did (these children had observed how the adults interacted with the Dolls). With this said, this study had a separate, more negative result when children mimicked adults’ aggressive behavior (these adults were told to act aggressively towards the Doll).
Learners will be either positively or negatively affected by the instructor of an e-learning environment. A positive affect can create happy learners and, thus, also an overall satisfied and motivated learning community. So, set a standard that should be observed and can positively influence your community of learners.
Thanks so much for learning with me!
~CLL