2.1 What is online pedagogy?

Pedagogy can be defined as the method and practice of teaching. As an academic subject, pedagogy is the study of how knowledge, skills and professional practices are imparted in an educational environment. Online pedagogy refers to how teaching is practiced using the internet and associated tools.

Learning theories

In order to be able to put effective online teaching strategies into practice it is useful to have a basic understanding of the theories behind these practices.

In this section the following two topics will be briefly examined.

1. Learning theories
2. Learning centred teaching

Theories of how humans learn, and how they should be taught, have been put forward and discussed since the time of the early philosophers; Socrates, Plato and Aristotle .

• Philosophers, such as Descartes, Locke and Kant, continued to discuss the meaning of learning until the early 19th century.
• As scientific methods developed the study of how humans learn was undertaken by psychologists such as Thorndike, Skinner, Piaget and Vygotsky.
• In the late nineteenth and early 20th century progressivists, such as Dewey, Montessori and Bruner, combined many of the earlier theories that had been developed by both the philosophers and psychologists.

There are many different learning theories and models in use today. These are illustrated in the Learning theory model developed by the Holistic approach to technology enhanced learning (HoTEL) project in 2013. For an interactive version of the model please see  Learning Theory HoTEL map – interactive version.