Meaningfullness, as part of the Cognitive approach to learning, can definitely have an effect on learning. The fact that each and every person has the ability to create their own meaning based on the context and past experiences gives everyone the flexibility of learning and creating meaning in a way that is appropriate for them and that essentially enables them to better understand what is being taught/learnt. While the content or context may be the same, each learner can relate to it in a way that is meaningful to them. In e-learning, as much of the content is or can be self directed and autonomous, this means that individuals have the ability to make the content meaningful to them in the way they understand it best. This can allow the e-learner to learn more effectively.
Insight, to a lesser extent I believe, can also impact e-learning. As insight allows us to solve problems by looking at things from a different perspective through the restructuring and reorganising of different pieces of information, this can be applied to an e-learning context as in many instances of e-learning it can be modular, and by viewing it in this way a learner is able to relate information to the specific context or problem and percieving it in this way can lead to those “light blub” moments or moments of clarity. Learning in other more formal ways may not allow this to happen.
Advance organisers, who create a “scaffold of ideas” to understand the higher level or more general concepts before they learn and incorporate the more detailed pieces of information into their framework, in an e-learning context can learn effectively through the sequential learning of content in meaningful relation to previous concepts. This allows information and knowledge to build upon those already learnt. In e-learning, this can allow the advancement of skills over time and is also relevant when a learning process or context is long or involved.
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