Theory has both been celebrated and condemned in educational practice and research. Many proponents have argued that theory allows—even forces—us to see the “big picture” and makes it possible for us to view our practice and our research from a broader perspective than that envisioned from the murky trenches of our practice. This broader perspective helps us to make connections with the work of others, facilitates coherent frameworks and deeper understanding of our actions, and perhaps most importantly allows us to transfer the experience gained in one context to new experiences and contexts. Critics of theory (Wilson, 1999) have argued that too strict an adherence to any particular theoretical viewpoint often filters our perceptions and blinds us to important lessons of reality. The intent of this chapter is to look at learning theory generally, and then focus on those attributes of the online learning context that allow us to develop deeper and more useful theories of online learning.

强调了理论在教育和研究实践中的双重角色，既受到赞扬也受到批评。它提出了理论能帮助我们看到“大局”，并从更广阔的视角看待我们的实践和研究。同时，理论也可以帮助我们将在一个环境中获得的经验转移到新的经验和环境中。

Wilson (1997) has described three functions of a good educational theory. First, it helps us to envision new worlds. Few of us need help envisioning new worlds in the midst of the hype and exuberance of online learning proponents that flood the popular press, but we do need theory to help us envision how education can best take advantage of the enhanced communication, information retrieval, and management capability provided by the Net. It is all too easy to consider new innovations in a “horseless carriage” manner, and to attempt to develop new actions based on old adaptations to obsolete contexts.

Second, a good theory helps us to make things. We need theories of online learning that help us to invest our time and limited resources most effectively. There are many opportunities, but always a critical shortage of resources, a situation which demands that we maximize the efficiency of our development and delivery efforts. This book contains a number of chapters with particular recommendations and suggestions for online course development and teaching. It is hoped that this chapter provides a theoretical “big picture” that will help make sense of these specific recommendations.

Third, Wilson argues that a good theory keeps us honest. Good theory builds upon what is already known, and helps us to interpret and plan for the unknown. It also forces us to look beyond day-to-day contingencies and to ensure that our knowledge and practice of online learning is robust, considered, and ever expanding.

详细描述了威尔逊（1997年）所提出的好教育理论的三个功能：帮助我们构想新的世界，帮助我们制造东西，以及让我们保持诚实。这些功能在在线学习的背景下尤为重要，因为它们可以帮助我们最有效地利用在线学习提供的增强的通信、信息检索和管理能力。

This chapter begins with a general assessment of how people learn that is based on Bransford, Brown, and Cocking’s (1999) work. It then assesses the unique characteristics of the Web that enable it to enhance these generalized learning contexts; that is, the Web’s “affordances.” The chapter next discusses the six forms of interaction and their critical role in engaging and supporting both learners and teachers. It then presents a model of e-learning, a first step toward a theory in which the two predominant forms of elearning—the collaborative and independent study modes—are presented, with a brief discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of each. The chapter ends with a discussion of the emerging tools of the “Semantic Web” and the way they will affect future developments of the theory and practice of online learning.

对在线学习理论的具体探讨，包括基于布兰斯福德、布朗和科金（1999年）工作的学习评估，网络的独特特性如何能够增强这些学习环境，六种交互形式在在线学习中的关键作用，以及电子学习模型和未来“语义网络”工具对在线学习理论和实践的影响。

As many theorists have argued (Garrison & Shale, 1990), and as practitioners experience for themselves, online learning is a subset of learning in general; thus, we can expect issues relevant to how adults learn generally to be relevant to how they learn in an online context. In an insightful book on the “new science of learning,” Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (1999) provide evidence that effective learning environments are framed within the convergence of four overlapping lenses. They argue that effective learning is learner centered, knowledge centered, assessment centered, and community centered. Discussing each of these lenses helps us to define learning in a general sense, before we apply this analytical framework to the unique characteristics of online learning.在线学习是学习的一种方式，所以我们可以推断出，成人学习者进行的一般学习与他们怎样在在线环境中的学习是相关的，在《新学习科学》这本书中，有学者提供的证据表明，有意义学习环境由四个相互重叠的视角构成，他们认为，有意义学习是以学习者为中心、以知识为中心、以评估为中心、以社区为中心。讨论这四个视角，有助于我们从一般意义上定义学习，然后可以将这个分析框架应用于在线学习的独特特征上。

A learner-centered context is not one in which the whims and peculiarities of each individual learner are uniquely catered to. In fact, we must be careful to recognize that learner-centered contexts must also meet the needs of the teacher, of the institution, of the larger society that provides support for the student and the institution, and often of a group or class of students. For this reason, I have argued elsewhere (Anderson, in press) that this attribute might more accurately be labeled “learning centered,” than “learner centered.”

“以学习者为中心”的教学环境不仅仅是满足于学习者的个性化需求，还要考虑教师，教学机构和社会环境的影响，这样的概念用 "以学习为中心 "可能比 "以学习者为中心 "更准确

Learner-centered learning, according to Bransford et al., includes awareness of the unique cognitive structures and understandings that the learners bring to the learning context. Thus, a teacher makes efforts to gain an understanding of students’ pre-existing knowledge, including any misconceptions that the learner starts with in their construction of new knowledge. Further, the learning environment respects and accommodates the particular cultural attributes, especially the language and particular forms of expression, that the learner uses to interpret and build knowledge. Learner-centered activities make extensive use of diagnostic tools and activities, so that these pre-existing knowledge structures are made visible to both the teacher and the student.

因此，教师还需要考虑学生已有的经验以及对现有知识的错误理解，可以通过广泛使用相关诊断工具和活动更好的掌握学习者知识结构

Online learning can present challenges to educators, because the tools and opportunities for discovering students’ preconceptions and cultural perspectives are often limited by bandwidth constraints that limit the view of body language and paralinguistic clues. Some researchers have argued that these restrictions negatively affect the efficacy of communication (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976). Others have argued that the unique characteristics that define online learning (most commonly asynchronous textbased interaction) can actually lead to enhanced or hyper communications (Walther, 1996).

在线学习可能会给教育者带来挑战，比如由于带宽的限制从而限制了肢体语言和沟通交流，但也有一些人员认为异步文本交流可能会促进更深入的沟通。

We have found evidence of significant social presence in computer conferencing contexts (Rourke, Anderson, Archer, & Garrison, 2002; Rourke & Anderson, 2002). Nonetheless, it is fair to say that the challenges of assessing student preconditions and cultural prerequisites are often more difficult in an online learning context, because teachers are less able to interact transparently with students—especially in the critical early stages of the formation of a learning community. It is for this reason that experienced online learning teachers make time at the commencement of their learning interactions to provide incentive and opportunity for students to share their understandings, their culture, and unique aspects of themselves. This sharing can be done formally, through electronically administered surveys and questionnaires, but is often accomplished more effectively by virtual icebreakers, and by the provision of an opportunity for students to introduce themselves and to express any issues or concerns to the teacher and the class.

由于线上学习环境的限制，早期教师很少有机会与学习者进行面对面交流，但现在有经验的教师可以通过如调查问卷、虚拟破冰活动、个人介绍等方式更好的了解学生情况。

The online learning environment is also a unique cultural context in itself. Benedikt (1992) has argued that cyberspace “has a geography, a physics, a nature and a rule of human law” (p. 123). Many students will be new to this context, but increasingly, students will come to online learning with preconceptions gathered from both formal and informal experience in virtual environments. They will exercise their mastery of communication norms and tools, some of which will not be appropriate to an educational online context. Researchers have attempted to quantify this proficiency and comfort with online environments through the use of survey instruments that measure a learner’s internet efficacy (Eastin & LaRose, 2000). They have argued that it is not Internet skill alone that determines competency; rather, a strong sense of Internet efficacy allows users to adapt effectively to the requirements of working in this environment. Thus, the effective online learning teacher is constantly probing for learner comfort and competence with the intervening technology, and providing safe environments for them to increase their sense of Internet efficacy. Learner-centered online-learning contexts thus are sensitive to the cultural overlay acquired in offline contexts, and the ways in which it interacts with the Web’s affordances.

在线学习环境并不是所有情况都适合，研究表明是否胜任该种学习环境不仅与互联网工具应用技能有关，也与互联网效能感有关，应提高透明度互联网效能感，更好的促进学习。

Effective learning does not happen in a content vacuum. McPeck (1990) and other theorists of critical thinking have argued that teaching generalized thinking skills and techniques is useless outside of a particular knowledge domain in which they can be grounded. Similarly, Bransford et al. argue that effective learning is both defined and bounded by the epistemology, language, and context of disciplinary thought. Each discipline or field of study contains a world view that provides often unique ways of understanding and talking about knowledge. Students need opportunities to experience this discourse, as well as the knowledge structures that undergraduate teaching affords. They also need opportunities to reflect upon their own thinking: automacy is a useful and necessary skill for expert thinking, but without reflective capacity, it greatly limits one’s ability to transfer knowledge to an unfamiliar context or to develop new knowledge structures.

In comparison to campus-based learning, online learning neither advantages nor disadvantages knowledge-centered learning. As I discuss below, the Net provides expanded opportunities for students to plunge ever deeper into knowledge resources, thus affording a near limitless means for students to grow their knowledge, to find their own way around the knowledge of the discipline, and to benefit from its expression in thousands of formats and contexts. However, this provision of resources can be overwhelming, and the skillful e-teacher needs to provide the “big picture” scaffolding on which students can grow their own knowledge and discipline-centered discoveries.

1.有效的学习是建立的内容上的，要在特定的领域中加以运用；不能孤立的看待，还需要把知识和思维能力结合在一起。
2.在线学习为学生提供了更多的机会，学生有广阔的方法和手段来增长知识。但是需要提供“脚手架”来帮助学习，以避免知识迷航和认知过载的问题。

The third perspective on learning environments presented by Bransford et al. is the necessity for effective learning environments to be assessment centered. In making this assertion, they do not give unqualified support for summative assessments (especially those supposedly used for national or provincial accountability), but rather look to formative evaluation that serves to motivate, inform, and provide feedback to both learners and teachers.

Quality online learning provides many opportunities for assessment: not only opportunities that involve the teacher, but also ones that exploit the influence and expertise of peers, others that use simple and complex machine algorithms to assess student production, and, perhaps most importantly, those that encourage learners to assess their own learning reflectively. Understanding what is most usefully rather than what is most easily assessed is a challenge for the designers of online learning. Developments in cognitive learning theories and their application to assessment design are helping us to devise assessments that are aligned with the subject content, and that assess cognitive processes as well as end results. For example, Baxter, Elder, and Glaser (1996) found that competent students should be able to provide coherent explanations, generate plans for problem solution, implement solution strategies, and monitor and adjust their activities. I am continually disappointed when reviewing assessments that my own children are subjected to in school and at university to note the very high percentage of recall questions and the lack of assessment strategies that effectively measure the four sets of competencies identified by Baxter et al.

有效的学习环境必须以评价为中心，特别是形成性评价，以激励、通知学习者和教师，并为其提供反馈。高质量的在线学习为评价提供了多种机会，包括教师参与、利用同伴影响力和专业知识、利用机器算法评估学生成果，以及鼓励学习者自我反思评价的机会。

认知学习理论的发展及其在评价设计中的应用，有助于我们设计与主题内容相一致的评价，既能评价认知过程，又能评价最终结果

Can we do any better in online learning? The diminution of opportunities for immediate interaction between learners and teachers might reduce opportunities for process assessment; however, the enhanced communications capacity of online learning and the focus of most adult online learning in the real world of work provide opportunities to create assessment activities that are project and workplace based, that are constructed collaboratively, that benefit from peer review, and that are infused with both the opportunity and the requirement for self-assessment.

A danger of assessment-centered learning systems is the potential increase in the workload demanded of busy online learning teachers. Strategies that are designed to provide formative and summative assessment with minimal direct impact on teacher workload are urgently needed. There is a growing list of tools that provide such assessment without increased teacher participation, including • the use of online computer-marked assessments that extend beyond quizzes to simulation exercises, virtual labs, and other automated assessments of active student learning;

• collaborative learning environments that students create to document and assess their own learning in virtual groups; • mechanisms, such as online automated tutors, that support and scaffold students’ evaluation of their own work and that of their peers; • student agents who facilitate and monitor peer activities to allow students to assess and aid each other informally; • the use of sophisticated software tools, such as latent semantic analysis (LSA) or neural networks, to machine-score even complicated materials, such as students’ essays. Thus, the challenge of online learning is to provide high quantity and quality of assessment while maintaining student interest and commitment. These goals are often best achieved through the development of a learning community, to which we turn next.

在线学习可以做得更好。虽然学习者与教师之间的即时互动机会减少，可能会影响过程评价的机会，但在线学习具有增强的交流能力和在现实世界的工作环境中注重学习，提供了基于项目和工作环境、协作构建、受益于同伴评审、自我评价的机会。

评价为中心的学习系统存在潜在的危险，即可能增加忙碌的在线学习教师的工作负担。因此，迫切需要制定策略，提供形成性和总结性评价，同时尽量减少对教师工作量的直接影响。有一些工具可以提供此类评价，而无需增加教师参与，包括：在线计算机标记评价、协作学习环境、支持学生评价自己的工作的机制、学生代理、使用复杂的软件工具等。

The community-centered lens allows us to include the critical social component of learning in our online learning designs. Here we find Vygotsky’s (1978) popular concepts of social cognition to be relevant as we consider how students can work together in an online learning context to create new knowledge collaboratively. These ideas have been expanded in Lipman’s (1991) community of inquiry and Wenger’s (2001) ideas of community of practice to show how members of a learning community both support and challenge each other, leading to effective and relevant knowledge construction. Wilson (2001) has described participants in online communities as having a shared sense of belonging, trust, expectation of learning, and commitment to participate and to contribute to the community。

Although there are many online learning researchers who celebrate the capacity to create learning communities at a distance (Harasim, Hiltz, Teles, & Turoff, 1995), there are also those who note problems associated with lack of attention and participation (Mason & Hart, 1997), economic restraints (Annand, 1999), and an in-built resistance among many faculty and institutions to the threatening competition from virtual learning environments (Jaffee, 1998). Ethnographic studies of the Net (Hine, 2000) illustrate how the lack of “placedness” and the complications of anonymity attenuate different components of community when the community is located in virtual space. In short, it may be more challenging than we think to create and sustain these communities, and the differences—linked to a lack of placedness and synchronicity, that is, mutual presence in time and place—may be more fundamental than the mere absence of body language and social presence.

以社区为中心的视角使我们能够将学习的关键社会成分纳入我们的在线学习设计中。

维果斯基（1978年）关于社会认知的流行概念与我们考虑学生如何在线学习环境中合作创造新知识的问题相关。这些想法在利普曼（1991年）的探究社区和温格（2001年）的实践社区理念中得到了扩展，展示了学习社区成员如何相互支持和挑战，从而有效地构建相关知识。威尔逊（2001年）描述了在线社区的参与者有一种共同的归属感、信任、对学习的期望，以及对参与和贡献于社区的承诺。

学习社区可能存在缺乏关注和参与（梅森和哈特，1997年）、经济限制（安纳德，1999年）以及许多教师和机构对虚拟学习环境带来的威胁性竞争所固有的抵触情绪（贾菲，1998年）相关的问题。

缺乏定位和同步性（即时间和地点上的相互存在）可能比仅仅缺乏肢体语言和社会存在更为根本

I have been struck by the wide variation in the expectations of learners about participation in a community of learners. Traditionally, distance education has attracted students who value the freedom from constraints of time and place that is provided by independent modes of distance education. Contrary to popular belief, the major motivation for enrollment in distance education is not physical access, but rather, temporal freedom to move through a course of studies at a pace of the student’s choice. Participation in a community of learners almost inevitably places constraints on this independence, even when the pressure of synchronous connection is eliminated by use of asynchronous communications tools. The demands of a learning-centered context might at times force us to modify the prescriptive participation in communities of learning, even though we might have evidence that such participation will further advance knowledge creation and attention. The flexibility of virtual communities allows more universal participation, but a single environment that responds to all students does not exist; thus, the need for variations that accommodate the diverse needs of learners and teachers at different stages of their life cycles.

学习者参与在线学习的主要动机是自由，社区反而限制了这种自由。

本段的观点可以提炼为：在线学习可以做得更好。虽然学习者与教师之间的即时互动机会减少，可能会影响过程评价的机会，但在线学习具有增强的交流能力，并且可以在在现实世界的工作环境中更注重学习，提供了基于项目和工作环境、协作构建、受益于同伴评审、自我评价的机会。

以评价为中心的学习系统还存在不足，即可能增加在线学习教师的工作负担。因此，迫切需要制定策略，提供形成性和总结性评估，同时尽量减少教师的工作量。有一些工具可以提供此类评估，而无需增加教师参与，包括：在线计算机标记评价、协作学习环境、支持学生评价自己的工作的机制、学生代理、使用复杂的软件工具等。

These potential barriers argue for a theory of online learning that accommodates, but does not prescribe, any particular boundaries of time and place, and that allows for appropriate substitution of independent and community-centered learning. To this requirement, we add the need for a theory of e-learning that is learning centered, provides a wide variety of authentic assessment opportunities, and is grounded in existing knowledge contexts.