Making insights from educational psychology and educational technology research more useful for practice

Articles in this special issue on “Diverse Lenses on Improving Online Learning Theory, Research, and Practice” begin to address the gap between (1) research on psychological constructs that are too abstract to guide many instructional decisions and (2) empirically derived guidance that is quite concrete but limited in explanatory value and generalizability. Needed now is a multi-level framework for online learning that offers specific guidance for practitioners’ instructional decisions while also supporting a conceptual organization of accumulated research findings that fosters new insights and research questions. In this commentary, I describe a framework that would encompass multiple kinds of learning; different learning goals; discipline-specific ways of knowing and demonstrating knowledge; key technology features; and learner differences.