THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN A CONSTRUCTIVIST CLASSROOM

Technology has changed the way we teach and the way we learn. The use of internet, social media and mobile technologies is common these days among students; lecturers need to find pedagogical approaches to integrate these technologies for academic purposes. With the higher education landscape changing in terms of student expectations and teaching methods, learning theories like constructivism are crucial to underpin this trend. Constructivism states that learners actively construct their own knowledge and meaning from their experiences, while technology refers to the designs and environments that engage learners. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of technology in a constructivist classroom and how lecturers use learning theories to enable more effective use of technology leading to constructivism as a framework for educational technology. The paper is conceptual highlighting the importance of the theory of constructivism in a classroom scenario due to innovations in technologies. There is a close relationship between technology and constructivism, the implementation of each one benefiting the other. However, using technology in the classroom by itself is not effective unless the lecturer has a theory to model the instruction with. It is not what equipment is used, but how the equipment is used which makes it relevant to a constructivist classroom.