In contrast to the traditional methods of teaching in which the teacher disseminates knowledge to be memorized by the students, who in turn recite the information back to the teacher, constructivism promotes strategies based on active learning. Thus, the role of the teacher shifts from the “sage on the stage” to a collaborator and facilitator; scaffolding, reciprocal teaching, and guided instruction are considered primary effective teaching strategies for both the traditional and e-learning environment. This learning theory and the associated strategies are associated with effective e-learning, especially higher education e-leaning.

• Scaffolding is a temporary supportive structure that the instructor uses to assist a learner to accomplish a task that they could not complete alone.
• Reciprocal teaching refers to a dialogue between teachers and students. The dialogue is structured through the use of four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher and students take turns leading the dialogue (Palincsar,1986).
• Guided instruction involves the teacher and learners exploring problems and via dialogue sharing their different problem solving strategies (Hausfather, 1996).

The constructivist instructor provides tools plans problem-based learning activities so that learners can construct ideas, make inferences, draw conclusions and inferences, and discuss their knowledge in a collaborative learning environment. For example, the instructor may pose a case study based question in the discussion or provide students with a multimedia flash-based case study to discuss during a online video conferencing session. The instructor then focuses on assisting the learners. He or she may prompt each learner to reflect on and examine his or her current knowledge related to the problem and indicates to the group of learners fruitful avenues they may want to explore based on their ideas. Another well known online constructivist instructional strategies is a WebQuest. Click here to download a brief description of a WebQuest and click here to see an example WebQuest. A mobile instructional strategy is the use of augmented reality. Do a web-search on “Augmented Reality in Education” to learn about the current practice and research. 

NOTE A common misunderstanding regarding constructivism is that instructors should never tell students anything directly but, instead, should always allow them to construct knowledge for themselves. This is actually confusing a theory of pedagogy (teaching) with a theory of knowing. Constructivism assumes that all knowledge is constructed from the learner’s previous knowledge, regardless of how one is taught. Thus, even listening to a lecture involves active attempts to construct new knowledge. Taken from: http://www.learning-theories.com/constructivism.html