Abstract:

Abstract enLearning theories differ in explaining how learning occurs and how instructional context should be organized. While some theories suggest that pre-defined instruction be delivered to students and external factors should be organized so that learning will be successful, some others claim that learning is an internal process that takes place in learners’ minds. Constructivism, for example, suggests that students learn from whatever knowledge they construct among the given information rather than pre-defined learning contents. New technologies present effective ways of delivering instruction which take different student characteristics into consideration. By doing so, they put the focus on students. Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI) can deliver instruction that can both be pre-designed and constructed according to the inputs of learners while learning from the computer. Many research studies have shown that learning activity taking place in a context that is related to students’ prior experiences is much more effective and will likely be permanent. This paper discusses how the learning content should be organized in CAI situations and what considerations should be taken in when designing CAI programs which are sensitive to learning context.

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