Designing Learning Experiences within Learners' Zones of Proximal Development (ZPDs): Enabling Collaborative Learning On-Site and Online

Abstract

In recent years, learning has been reconceptualized from an additive process characterized by an individual's acquisition of knowledge to a socially enabled developmental process in which learners continually reorganize knowledge structures and create new representations. In the new view, learning is defined as the development that results from social interaction that affords learners increased access to roles in expert performances. Accepting the dual cognitive-social nature of learning creates a new problem for instructors: designing learning experiences that meld the cognitive and social aspects without subordinating either to the other. This article addresses the problem by presenting, justifying, and exemplifying an approach to designing learning experiences that support learners' development of capabilities so that they learn to do without assistance things that they could initially do only with assistance. The goal of this design approach is for learners to develop capabilities that they first experience in assisted or collaborative learning situations. Formally, this approach comprises designing learning experiences within learners' zones of proximal development (ZPDs), “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (see Vygotsky 1978, 86). The article illustrates the design phases with explanations of learning experiences for a master's course in information systems assurance.