Chapter 15: Motivating Engaged Participation and Generative Learning in Fully Online Course Contexts

This chapter makes four arguments that are inspired by four developments since the earlier edition of Big Theories Revisited(McInerney & Van Etten, 2004) was published more than a decade ago. The first development is that the situativetheories of knowing and learning explored in Hickey and Granade's chapter in that volume have become much more widely appreciated. These theories and related sociocultural theories assume that knowledge is strongly rooted (i.e., situated) in the material and social context in which it is learned and used. Most scholars affiliated with the learning sciences, educational psychology, and instructional systems technology are familiar with situative theories; many now embrace them and/or relatedsociocultural theories as a primary orientation (e.g., Hughes & Holmes, 2005; Penuel, Cole, & O'Neill, 2016; Turner & Nolen, 2015). These developments continue a trend among cognitive psychologists towards more domain-specific forms of disciplinarylearning (e.g., Glaser, 1984) and towards concern over sociocultural backgrounds of learners relative to the sociocultural context where learning takes place (e.g., Gutiérrez, Rymes, & Larson, 1995).