Learner Experience

Pat Parrish and I will be in Orlando in October, presenting an AECT paper titled New Attention to the Learning Experience: Implications for Instructional Design. We present a definition and framework for understanding the learning experience, taking a transactional view based on Dewey. The paper isn't quite ready to share, but here are some slides prepared for my Trends class.

The idea behind the paper is this: Instructional-design practice can be understand in terms of:
- scientific theory (cognitive processing; learning sciences; cognitive load; etc.)
- tools and processes (ADDIE; learning technologies; instructional plans; etc.)
- dedicated craft mastered by committed designers and instructors

This last bullet gets neglected, partly because of the way we value things. Things like science and technology are valued more than arts and crafts. Theory usually gets valued more than practice - teachers are supposed to follow theory, not the other way around.

But I like to cheer for the underdog! Today's world is so saturated with well-designed entertainment resources - movies, TV, games, Web, phone - and their power and influence are becoming obvious. Educators need to acknowledge the power of media and craftsmanship in their ability to wake up learners and get them deeply engaged in experiences. And this requires a different look than educational theory, or even our customary procedures and tools might suggest. We need new ways of talking about learning and instruction - and aesthetics can help out.

Focus on the Learning Experience

I gave a talk last week to faculty and students at the University of South Alabama - their Design and Development graduate program. I provide a couple of papers in advance: the Transformative Learning paper written with my research lab, presented at AECT last year; and a new paper I'm working on with Pat Parrish and George Veletsianos on instructional outcomes.

The presentation slides are posted on my server. I asked participants to engage in a thought experiment - flipping the usual values in the field, and imagining a practice of ID that emphasized craft over science, practice over theory, and aesthetics over psychology. Reversing those values, we would give much more attention to the crafting of learners' experience and perhaps educating the whole person.

I was excited to meet several folks at AECT who shared my interest in this area. The program at Minnesota has several faculty and students with th is focus, including Simon Hooper who just left for Penn State. Lloyd Rieber at Georgia has sympathetic interests. BYU's program also is a potential center for this kind of work.

Creativity and Instructional Design

Pat Parrish and I participated in a panel on Creativity and Instructional Design at AECT in Anaheim, organized by Greg Clinton of Georgia and Brad Hokanson of Minnesota. Panelists each submitted a one-page synopsis of their thoughts; these were compiled into a handout. My synopsis is here. Brad Hokanson placed the video of our panel discussion online - a thoughtful thing to do, even if it doesn't hit the YouTube charts!

What I said was - we don't understand creativity very well, but it's at the heart of what we do. Cognitive theories are good at explaining processing of thinking, but not where cool ideas come from in the first place. Every designer needs to come up with creative solutions to problems - and the art of visioning or imagining possible solutions - that often takes years of experience.

Stephen Downes was also a panelist. As an outsider and occasional critic of instructional design, he did a good job keeping us on edge and provoking the discussion.

IDs Using Theory in Practice

This past year I've worked with colleagues at Brigham Young University, studying how practicing instructional designers do their everyday jobs - and in particular, how they use theory. My co-authors are Steve Yanchar, Joseph South, and Dave Williams. We presented our in-progress findings at AECT in Ahaheim, a couple of weeks ago.

Based on interviews and examination of working products of several designers in higher-ed and corporate settings, we found some interesting things. All our practitioners had instructional-design degrees and were glad they had that training and background. The degree gave them entry into the field and credibility with clients. Initial training in models and theory guided their general practice and orientation.

On the other hand, participants in the study did not report high levels of systematic theory use in their jobs. A designer might reference a theory when challenged on a particular design decision. Or they might consult a theorist when grappling with a challenging issue. Generally though, theory was in the deep background.

Another interesting finding - Not much effort to keep up with theory in the professional literature. Participants benefited from initial exposure in graduate school, but theory was strongly associated with that initial training, rather than part of a conversation that evolves over time.

These findings confirm in my mind the puzzling connection between what researchers do and what practitioners do. It's not merely that practitioners are failing in their work - the theories available often have only a limited relevance to the immediate issues facing the practitioner. Somehow we need to find better ways of dialogue and reciprocal influence.

On a related issue - one colleague mentioned a discussion with a leading theorist, approving wholeheartedly of people adapting or modifying his theories as they are put to work in real settings. I wonder if practitioners feel that same permission. Would be an interesting study for next year - to query theorists about their hopes and intentions for use of their work.

Technology Educators

I've been busy last 2-3 weeks - speaking at conferences and meetings. In the process I've learned a lot - making some new friends and strengthening professional connections.

Last Thursday I gave a keynote address to the Colorado Technology Education Association at Copper Mountain. Technology education includes folks who also identify with other names such as industrial arts, vocational education, or career education. The slides are being posted to the conference site. Colorado's lieutenant governor spoke earlier in the day - so I felt somewhat intimidated.

As a relative outsider to the group I offered my take on technology education in Colorado - how important it is for schools and kids. I believe tech educators are doing things that other teachers and students should be doing more of - project-based learning, technology integration, multi-disciplinary units, and student-empowering design activities. Colorado has included technology education in its definition and standards for technology literacy.

So bottom line - ALL teachers should be integrating technology where appropriate into their teaching. But technology educators have a special role to play in helping kids make the transition to college and careers. I hope tech educators have full voice and participation in these issues - their perspective is strongly needed!

Facilitating Change in Ed Tech

Several years ago I decided I knew what our field was about:

- Designing good instruction and related resources to help people learn and perform on the job

- Helping people make use of the learning tools and resources available to them.

In short, helping people design and use learning tools and resources.

Easy to say, harder to do!

Because it takes so much work and time, the design part takes up lots of room in our graduate curriculum - learning theory, instructional models, development tools, etc. But the using part needs attention too.

Along these lines I invite all students in my two classes to read the following paper:

Dan Surry and Don Ely, Adoption, Diffusion, Implementation, and Institutionalization of Educational Technology

This was a draft chapter in the first edition of Dempsey & Reiser's Trends and Issues in IDT book. The concepts are just as valid today, and they relate our roles of change agents within our organizations. The chapters appears in the second edition as well.

Two videos are also recommended:

Who Moved My Cheese Part 1

Who Moved My Cheese Part 2

The Surry-Ely paper outlines Everett Rogers' model of diffusion of innovations; that's the best-known model for change and technology. I'd be very interested in your response to these ideas - especially how the change ideas relate to your leadership role in your school or business. Do you find similar profiles of people, from innovators and early adopters to more reluctant or resistant users? Do you find similar motivations or incentives for people to engage in change? What works best in your organization, to help people make positive change?

Does Constructivism Work?

A controversy crops up occasionally among IDT theorists about how people learn best, and hence what kind of instruction we should design. Two major camps of theory are:

- Cognitive load theory - John Sweller, Jeoren Van Merriënboer, Rich Mayer, Paul Kirschner, Richard Clark. In some ways this group follows Robert Gagné and David Merrill's 1970s work to emphasize instructional control, subject-matter structure, and performance feedback. The instructional prescriptions are explicit - kind of like a detailed diet regimen to lose weight. The learning theory is heavy on information processing, encoding, memory limits, and so forth. They look at multimedia messages in terms of the cognitive demand placed on working memory. They use lab experiments to test out their hypotheses. Their work finds good reception in settings like military training and technical/vocational training. Master's students in our Message Design and Learning Processes classes get some introduction to these ideas.

- Situated learning and the learning sciences - Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Jerome Bruner, Sasha Barab, Michael Cole. These folks look at learning more broadly to include its social, participatory nature, and give less attention to individual info processing. Their instructional recommendation would be less detailed and prescriptive, and more about creating positive climate and relationships, and creating tools and environments to support productive learning activities. Our doctoral students get heavier doses of this line of thinking.

I like it when papers address this split - where one camp challenges the other. Examples include:

Anderson, Reder, and Simon's critique of situated learning (1996)

Rich Mayer's Should there be a three-strikes rule against discovery learning?(2002)

Or this title says it well:

Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of
the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching (Sweller, Kirschner, and Clark, 2006)

All of these articles are provocative pieces written by cognitive load theorists, explaining the failures of the other side.

I admit though - these attacks can be a lot more fun than the kiss-and-makeup attempts:

Anderson, Greeno, Reder, and Simon (2000)

I wrote a paper on the split myself, with Karen Myers:

Situated Cognition in Theoretical and Practical Context (2000)

This paper is reviewed in the American Journal of Psychology:

Jonassen and Land (2000) Book Review

Our paper was another attempt to reconcile the two sides, showing how info-processing and situated approaches could co-exist.

In the end, I see theories of learning and instruction mostly as lenses to try on - like I did at the optician's store a few weeks ago. Human learning is complex enough that no theory can really capture it. Particularly when the sides are divided, it's good to listen to both sides, and even appropriate their ideas on occasion, if the situation fits.

Laptops in classrooms - distracting?

Here is an NPR story of a professor's complaint about inappropriate use of laptops in class.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15127343

Once in awhile I'll ask people in a lab to quit typing while someone is giving a presentation (or while I'm lecturing). The clicking of the keyboard can be a distraction. Students sometimes say, I'm taking notes. But when I walk around, I see a lot of off-task behavior.

Laptops are just one of the personal technologies making their way into classrooms. Phones and iPods are two other examples.

What do you think? Seems that a best response is to develop some rules for appropriate use - but not to block these things out entirely. At least in most cases. I acknowledge that sometimes, you just gotta take them out entirely.

Kevin Oliver's Tech Integration Coursehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

In the current issue of TechTrends, Kevin Oliver describes the redesign of a tech integration course offered to licensure and master's students. The APA refernce is:

Oliver, K. (2007). Leveraging Web 2.0 in the redesign of a graduate-level technology integration course. TechTrends, 51 (5), 55-61.

The course helps teachers learn to integrate technology into their teaching, and uses many of the tools we've sampled in class - blogs, Google docs and spreadsheets, Powerpoint, del.icio.us, and so forth. Overall the class was well received by students.

Our focus is different, of course - we teach adult educators and trainers, in addition to K12 teachers - and trends in general rather than tech-integration principles. Still, I'll be drawing on this article for revisions to our Trends class, as we figure out how best to use Web 2.0 tools in our activities.

One item of interest - the blogging assignment seemed to be the least preferred activity. Teachers reported blogging as useful, but several had complaints, e.g.,:

I didn't enjoy the blogs as much as some other aspects of the class, however, I did understand their purpose and appreciated being able to apply the material to my classroom. Plus, it ws advantageous to know how to do blogs now, since it was my first time doing them.

The article doesn't describe teachers' specific concerns, but I'd guess they're similar to our struggles - the time and efforted needed to post and keep up with others; how to present yourself publicly and have something to say; etc.

Other tools I want to explore described in the article:

• Trailfire - a tool that lets you superimpose comments or instructions on top of websites, and lead people through a trail of sites
• Cmaps Tools - for concept mapping and decision-making

These both seem to have good potential for educational use - I know Cmap tools, but hadn't heard of Trailfire - it looks really cool!

Kevin also requires a multimedia presentation, similar to our Trends Analysis report. He mentions several possible tools and sharing sites that I'll explore and report on soon.

As a teacher, I benefit tremendously from careful reports of other teachers' successes. These articles may not be the most theoretical or research-oriented, but they are extremely valuable forms of knowledge sharing. Thanks Kevin!

Ed Tech for ALL Learners

I've been in the field of instructional design and technology for more than 30 years. We've come a long way, but one thing I've noticed - We are definitely NOT on the forefront of understanding diverse learning needs. We almost work from the assumption, good instruction works for everyone; hence we don't need to worry about diverse needs.

Over the last few years, CU-Denver's School of Education has moved toward a more sharply defined mission to serve the needs of the Denver urban community. Urban schools have critical needs - we all know that. So what does that have to do with a technology program like ours, which focuses on uses of technology in multiple settings (work and school) at all levels (children and adults)? If a course is delivered online, how do you meet diverse learners' needs?

This post only sets up the question - How does instructional design and technology relate to diversity issues? As a starting point, I've got a collection of references on the subject; see:

Diversity References
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~bwilson/Trends/Diversity References.doc

Starred references are good starting points for discussion in this area.

I'll submit further thoughts on the subject in future posts.

Technocentric or Learning-centric?

I just posted this over to Karl Kapp's Kapp Notes blog. He is using Second Life with classes - far beyond what I'm trying. But he's bound to have questions similar to mine.

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I'm having very mixed thoughts and feelings as I begin blogging with first-semester master's students. Many feel unprepared and overwhelmed - not just with the technology but with the expectation to:

- Have something to say in an area that's new to them
- Have a voice in a public conversation
- Care enough about the issues to drive their participation

These are things that come gradually for most students. Here they are though - out there looking for things to say, finding ways to join the conversation, looking for a reason beyond "class assignment" to participate.

One thing we haven't discussed much - my pushing the technology as a near-end in itself. What at the learning goals that drive our blogging requirement? Am I not guilty of the first ed-tech leader's original sin - pushing the technology ahead of the learning?

My response to that question is, maybe exploring technology's learning potential is a little techno-centric, but we'll never know the learning gains until we try some things out. The risks are there, but the benefits are too - getting out of the weekly readings/discussion cycle that drives most graduate education classes. Asking students to hurry up the development cycle and quickly assume a professional identity - that's an exciting prospect to try out, even if it doesn't totally succeed.