Definition

Constructionism lies between the social and radical constructivist paradigms. The model suggests students learn by creating materials. Unlike constructivist models that provide students with cases and context-bound problems, constructionism involves students in the creation of their own cases or problems. Students may work alone or in teams, but their efforts are scaffolded closely by the instructor.

Download annotated Powerpoint slides describing constructionist, project-based models (PDF File).

Relevant Examples

If you have created course materials at Virginia Tech that are representative of this teaching model, we would like to showcase your work here. Please contact us with a description of your project so other faculty may learn from your efforts.

• Senior Design Tasks, V.T. Materials Science and Engineering, Bob Hendricks Initiative, Virginia Tech
  
• Multimedia History Tutorials, Calgary
• Anthropology and Sociology Senior Projects
• Valley of the Shadow, UVA

Design and Development Tips

The Valley of the Shadow digital library could be used by students working on constructionist design tasks to conduct background research into topics of interest (e.g., women in the war, newspapers during the war, food supply during the war), then write a paper or develop some other product to interpret or teach their selected topic.

To adopt constructionism, you will need to provide your students with adequate resources and tools. Depending on the content you wish your students to interpret and re-present, resources could include graphics, photos, text, links to web sites, books, or access to human resources via Internet communication tools. After students interpret and critique the resources, they use development tools to construct or re-present information in a new format (e.g., paper, design, Web page, multimedia program).

You can use student projects to develop "collections" of related materials. For instance, if each student group was assigned a particular Native American tribe, then asked to develop a Web site describing the culture of their assigned tribe, the instructor could link together each Web site into a large "digital library" describing Native American cultures. Future students can then use the projects of former students to learn about specific topics.

Recommended Readings

• Epistemology and Learning Group, MIT
  
• Guzdial, M. (1997). Constructivism vs. Constructionism.
  
• Harel, I., & Papert, S. (1993). Software design as a learning environment. In I. Harel, & S. Papert (Eds.), Constructionism (pp. 41-84). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
  
• Jonassen, D. H., Myers, J. M., & McKillop, A. M. (1996). From constructivism to constructionism: Learning with hypermedia/multimedia rather than from it. In B. G. Wilson (Ed.), Constructivist learning environments (pp. 93-106). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.
  
• Krudwall. Constructionism: Tools to build and think with.
  
• Murphy, E. (1996). A constructionist learning environment.
  
• Salomon, G., Perkins, D. N., & Globerson, T. (1991). Partners in cognition: Extending human intelligence with intelligent technologies. Educational Researcher, 20 (3), 2-9.