In this course, we will explore perspectives and research on domain-specific and domain-general learning in and out of schools, especially those typically considered in the field of the learning sciences. We will examine various perspectives researchers use to inform their work and how these perspectives provide insight into what it means to learn and know.

The course objectives include the following:

• Understand key questions addressed in research on learning
• Understand foundational and modern theories and perspectives in learning
• Understand how various learning theories are applied in domain-specific and domain-general research contexts and their limitations
• Develop and articulate your own perspectives and research questions on learning.

This course provides an overview of major theories of human development from childhood through adulthood. This course will focus on the individual learner as influenced by individual and social-learning processes; the interrelationships between human learning and development; social settings for learning such as classroom, business, and informal learning environments; the applications of learning theories and models; the learning of language(s), content, social practices, and reasoning processes. Emphasis will be placed on how social, cultural, and linguistic diversity interacts to create variation in human learning.

This course provides an overview of technology applications in learning environments, including history, theoretical foundations, design processes, and available technologies. The course includes an exploration of online learning applications/software, instructional design considerations, and curriculum development for online settings. Topics could include multi-literacies, digital youth network, media and connected learning, web-based learning, Al, and machine-based learning models.

This course provides an overview of the assessment of learners in the educational, business, workplace, and informal settings, emphasizing considerations related to cultural and linguistic diversity. Topics include classroom-based assessment, high-stakes assessment in educational settings, job placement and certification testing, and program evaluation. Among the assessment techniques to be covered are cognitive interviews, the analysis of group-based processes, discourse analysis, and focus-group work.

This course provides an overview of how organizations adapt and change, including changes that could be considered “learning.” Changes in shared values, structures, and practices can facilitate and/or hinder an organization’s capacity to gather, select, and process information, retain that information, and act upon knowledge valued and created by members. Emphasis is placed on how participants’ careers fit within their employment or field-placement sites as learning organizations and how their efforts can help their sites to learn.

This course deepens participants’ understandings of workplace training and professional development by relating learning to needs assessments; instructional design techniques; program planning, marketing, and delivery techniques; and evaluation of adult learning programs within a variety of organizational settings. Emphasis is placed on constructing training and professional development programs that are meaningful to a diverse workforce and that achieve individual and organizational outcomes to improve an individual’s and the organization’s performance. 

This graduate course focuses on diverse philosophies and epistemologies of research and the various methodologies that arise from them. Students will develop an understanding of and appreciation for a range of complementary educational research traditions. The goal is to enable students to participate meaningfully and critically in multiple discourse communities that employ and/or produce research bearing on substantive local, national, and international issues in education. 

This course provides an introduction to data analysis and statistical inference. Students learn to describe data (quantitatively and graphically), to select and compute statistical estimates and hypothesis tests, to use computer packages (SPSS) to accomplish these tasks and to interpret and write about the results of the estimates and tests.

The completion of this course is focused on a project that should address a local problem or issue related to learning (e.g., designing effective instruction online). For that, students need to:

• Design and develop a sophisticated need analysis (e.g., learner analysis, task analysis, performance analysis) about addressing a situation/issue they selected
• Layout the theoretical foundations that they take up/will be applying based on the field of the learning sciences
• Describe the new design in detail, including its constituent components and how it is informed by the theory laid out.

This course explores the impacts of non-cognitive factors on learning and the inter-relationships among what are usually thought of as cognitive and non-cognitive spheres of learning. At times, there may be conflicts between cultural practices as found in learning settings (including classrooms, businesses, and informal learning environments) and the practices into which learners have been encultured by families and communities; at other times, an individual’s identity and the values being imparted in a learning environment may work synergistically. The course includes a critical examination of the sources of these factors on human and organizational learning programs and practices.

Review of emerging policy, practice, empirical research and scholarly writing on important educational issues for which formal course title and syllabus have not been developed and formalized in the UM Bulletin. Allows for experimental instructional formats. Course number indicates appropriate student audience. See Course Notes for specific topic.

The purpose of this course is to introduce graduate students to qualitative research methods and enable them to become educated consumers of such research. Students will also be introduced to basic strategies of qualitative interviewing and observation and will be encouraged to reflect on the potential fit between their own developing skills and their research interests.

This graduate seminar focuses on learning concepts and practices in and out of formal (school) instructional settings. People learn across a variety of places and over their entire lifespans; much of this learning is elective or interest-driven, in the sense that people voluntarily engage in activity in order to learn.

In this we course, we consider how learning is organized within and across a variety of informal settings, including state and national parks, museums, theater organizations, zoos, aquariums, sports teams, one-on-one performance coaching, after-school programs, non-profit community centers, in families or home environments, in virtual or online social spaces, and even in interactions between medical personnel and their clients.

This course will include ties to sociocultural theories of development and learning as applied to out-of-school, informal contexts. The course provides a review of new empirical research and an overview of theoretical approaches to learning that can be used to analyze informal learning environments.

The course will involve theoretical and empirical readings with group discussion, but also visits from and to people who are involved in learning in informal settings.

Students build upon, (re)define, (re)conceptualize, (re)develop, and (re)implement their group-based project from TAL 709 by using the research methods employed in its evaluation. The advanced project and its results may be submitted as a digital artifact making use of multiple media in a single language (such as English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, or Chinese) by a team where that language was used to implement the plan and where its use will facilitate the project’s completion.

Each individual member of the team submits a paper defining their unique contributions to the project in such a way that it is clear that the work was built upon and drawn from coursework in the learning sciences. Individual contributions must be substantive and should be complementary. Projects must be approved by the advisor before it is implemented; if a language other than English will be employed, it must also be approved by faculty who will review and evaluate it.