Constructivism places the learner center as an active participant, constructing their own knowledge. The Japanese bento minicourse seeks to tap into intrinsic motivation with activities that encourage problem-solving, exploration, and questioning. Students construct their own knowledge. And, after they get the foundational knowledge of tools, ingredients, and measurement system, the teacher acts as facilitator
 

• Language and culture centric: Vygotsky did emphasize the role of language and culture in cognitive development
   

• In a way, the delivery system of another language can reinforce learning about the culture's healthy cuisine. 
   

• Re-inforcement: With each module, there's repetition of vocabulary, kanji, and cooking elements, which helps re-inforce learning. 
   

• Construct and re-construct socially: The instructor and learners would form a community of recipe sharing where once the format of delivery is established, each student can author their own variation on a theme.
   

• Cooperative learning and situated learning may both be a good models for small group activities or pairs. Each group  would collaborate on the authentic task of cooking a meal. Depending on their level, they can collaborate on video demonstration in Japanese. Other students can critique for grammar, usage, pronunciation, etc. 
   

• Anchored Instruction Model – Another activity that could follow this model would be recipe translation to or from Japanese. Students can do a presentation on a specific category like pickling or fermentation and demonstrate their findings in presenting key vocabulary words or through presenting in Japanese. 
   

• ZPD & Scaffolding – for this course, there is a clear, flexible Zone of Proximal Development and scaffolding available customized to the student's level and interest in language acquisition. Each module will have two levels of Japanese.

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A Constructivist approach would require a level of customization that may not be possible an enrollment cap for the Japanese bento minicourse:
 

• Assessment: Students will be required to self-assess their level by watching each video to see which level of immersion they'd prefer, since assessments would be too time consuming for a minicourse. 
   

• Students may need to be paired with an MKO (more knowledgeable other) that's a fellow student, so learning received will be uneven.
   

• Level of customization may be limited due to the resources required (instructor time per student)
   

• Cooperative learning approaches and situated learning assume rudimentary knowledge of cooking and some interest in the language, which might be very niche.
   

• Limited face-to-face social interaction could limit the effectiveness of cooking as a motivator for some. Or a sense of being an active participant. 
   

• Asynchronicity of the course could thus be de-motivating. However, if reasonable, smaller groups can choose to meet synchronously if time zones work.
   

• Keller's ARCS model: Because this is a niche course, it assumes the learners consider the topic relevant to their lives and that they will actively participate by cooking as well.  Folks who opt to audit will still be required to pay for the course. But may get less out of it because it's no longer hands on.
   

• Language learning can be limited online. Usually for conversational learning to happen, there needs to be a Person A and Person B speaking directly to each other. This would be considered active learning.
   

• For ARCS online, showing the student their progress and providing timely feedback may or may not be possible.
   

• Providing the student praise or rewards would be a more gamification/behaviorism technique.

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Techniques grounded in Constructivism can motivate students and further underscores the social nature of learning which can be limited online. 

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