Brook, C. and Oliver, R. (2003). Online learning communities: Investigating a design framework. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 19(2), 139-160. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet19/brook.html
Begins with a quick overview of some of the benefits of collaboration and community interaction in learning:
increased motivation
promoting learning achievement
enhanced perception of (and satisfaction with) skill development
nurturing, socialisation & support
“modern societies tending to develop more relational communities… or communities of the mind”
“a learning community is characterised by a willingness of members to share resources, accept and encourage new membership, regular communication, systematic problem solving and a preparedness to share success (Moore & Brooks, 2000)”
“Potentially negative influences include the need for members to conform and the subsequent loss of individuality… and the potential to hoard knowledge and thus restrict innovation… Also noteworthy is the potential for community structures to exert pressure on some individuals to engage in nonconforming rather than conforming behaviours, resulting in dissidents and the formation of sub-communities..”
“Sense of community is based on an attachment relationship and this relationship is not based on the interactions with any one member of the community but instead with any member (Hill, 1996)”
“Sense of community has been defined as ‘a sense that members have a belonging, members matter to one another and to the group and a shared faith that member’s needs will be met through their commitment to be together’(McMillan & Chavis, 1986p.9)
Strategies to support a good online community might include:
a common symbol system
establishing a common purpose
facilitating frequent and easy meetings
developing a sense of place
being non-judgemental
“Constructionism is seen as offering an important bridge between cognitive and sociocultural perspectives on cognitive development, by arguing that individual development cycles are enhanced by shared constructive activity in the social environment. Furthermore, social settings are enhanced by the cognitive development of the individual”
“It has been suggested that the social construction of knowledge in the online environment progresses through five sequential phases (Gunawardena, Lowe & Anderson, 1997):
Sharing and comparing of information: statements of opinion and observation and corroborating examples provided by one or more participants characterise phase one
The discovery of exploration of dissonance or inconsistency among ideas, concepts or statements: Phase two identifies and states areas of disagreement, and perhaps escalates conflict through reference to research or experience
The negotiation of meaning: exploration of meaning and the identifying of areas of agreement characterise phase three
Testing and modification of proposed synthesis or co-construction: phase four is characterised by testing the proposed synthesis against ‘received fact’; as shared by the participants and/or their culture
Agreement statements and the application of newly constructed meaning: metacognitive statements by the participants, illustrating their understanding that their new knowledge or ways of thinking have changed, characterise phase five.
People may participate in communities because of the perceived benefits even if their nature is to avoid such interactions – teachers may need to emphasise the benefits in ’selling’ the community
“Factors that may influence community development include policies…, the discipline and education level of the course…, the instructor… and the students. At a process level, influencing factors include the purpose the community serves in the lives of its members.., support for communication…, the nature of meetings… and the gathering place…”
Some ideas, tips and strategies:
“It has been suggested that the role of the instructor is pivotal in the development of online learning communities… The manner in which this role is approached depends on the characteristics and beliefs of the instructor…, including educational philosophies…, perceptions of self as either connected of separate… and perceptions of their role. Other considerations include the instructor’s online experience, the nature of the social environment they develop and the manner in which they manage the learning environment”
“The nature of the cohort, including the number of participants, may also influence community development strategies. In asynchronous environments, groups size is recommended to be no larger than 25, while 10 is suggested for the synchronous environment”
“Groups that are dominated by individuals who perceive themselves as separate are likely to be characterised by competition, while those dominated by connected individuals are likely to be characterised by cooperation”
“Essential in the formation of all communities is the purpose that the community serves in the lives of its members”
“Purpose may reflect the manner in which student participation is encouraged. Suggestions include mandated participation through the allocation of grades…, providing an increase in intellectual resources through guest experts…, presenting a problem or disorienting dilemma… and linking activities to the lived in world… The purpose and context may also be established through encouraging collaborative construction of knowledge…, facilitated through group work or projects… or by the instructor acting as an agent provocateur”
“An essential requirement for community development is regular and meaningful meetings… Communication may be encouraged through grading participation, based on the quantity or quality of communications…, requesting responses…, establishing a sense of positive outcome as a result of belonging… and encouraging members to pay their dues.”
“Setting an appropriate pace and schedule for participation that maintains active engagement, without dominating the learning experience, may provide further support”
“Strategies that promote connectedness include engendering the human elements of community… and establishing user profiles… Additional strategies include welcoming new members, sharing wisdom, resolving problems and sharing success…”
I think that the user profiles part in particular is important – the more you know about someone the more interested you are in what they have to say. Questions might also be framed in such a way that learners are encouraged to relate them directly to their experiences, bringing personal anecdotes to the discussion. An initial face-to-face orientation session is also a useful idea as a way of creating connections – maybe voice or even video chat (even avatar based) could add something. – Maybe a chat session in second life?
“Supporting communication includes assisting students in becoming proficient with the technology…, developing text based communication skills… and instituting a sequencing of activities…”
“Due to the more independent nature of the online learning environment, there is a need to support students in managing their own learning experience including setting goals and prioritising tasks… It is also useful to provide weekly reminders… and clearly state roles and responsibilities…”
“Given the importance of non-verbal factors in communication…, which are to a large extent absent in text based environments…, helping students develop text based communication skills may also support community development…”
The rather glaring alternative to this – or perhaps supplement – is to be less reliant on text for communication – again, audio, video, images and virtual world based communication might help level the playing field a little here. I’d say that half of the fellow students in my class have English as a second language and while you get the gist of what they are saying in text, it may well come across more effectively in other ways.
There’s a bit of other stuff about encouraging respect and trust with codes of conduct – I’d suggest that these be generated by the group and possibly even subject to regular review. It also talks about creating a greater sense of place by using welcoming messages (hmm maybe) and acknowledging individual contributions, making sure that trade in ideas and information is fair (some people will just lurk, it’s the nature of the boards) and avoiding anonymity and “electronic self”s
Quite a few interesting ideas which draw on a lot of research that has come before – I would have liked to have seen a few more specific strategies for encouraging contributions beyond the initial entry point but all in all, this is a useful piece of writing.
An interesting overview of some useful guidelines for setting up and running a successful community of practice. This is heavily business oriented and the communities seem to all be based within one organisation but some of the ideas are still useful – particularly as these are things that can be hard to sell to the finance types who need to pin measurable achievements to money spent.
“What are communities of practice? In brief, they’re groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise”
“People in communities of practice share their experiences and knowledge in free-flowing, creative ways that foster new approaches to problems”
“Communities of practice… are informal – they organise themselves, meaning they set their own agendas and establish their own leadership. And membership in a community of practice is self-selected”
There’s a lot of stuff in here about the need for strong organisational support in nurturing a community of practice in a business – ideally there will be a senior executive who is able to step in and provide support when the community identifies problems (such as I.T infrastructure that holds things up) . They also make the point that managers need to use non-traditional means to assess the value of the community of practice – anecdotal evidence from participants about how problems were solved etc. (Good forum for sharing “best practice”). (Apparently they can also help with staff retention)
In essence, this might be a useful paper with a lot of case-study type examples if you were wanting to create a c.o.p in your large enterprise – but there’s virtually nothing about communities that stretch across fields.
This is the design statement for my latest foray into game based learning. I’ve used FPS Creator once more to create a democratic learning environment which creates a simulation of the Education Development Centre here. Learners can access scenario tasks in the course of find out about the multitude of awesome services and knowledge we can provide
Harper, B. (1992) Navigation Options in Interactive Multimedia. In J. G. Hedberg and J. Steele, Educational Technology for the Clever Country, Selected papers from EdTech’92,Conference of the Australian Society for Educational Technology. University of Adelaide-Australia, 1-3 October (pp 10-16). Belconnen, A.C.T. : AJET Publication for the Society.
This article, like many others, starts out with the usual rah-rah interactive multimedia is great, shift to learner-control, enriching the learning experience yada yada spiel. It’s all fairly true but it seems to be at the start of every article I’ve read for a while now.
Once it gets past this preliminary stuff though, it is actually fairly useful and contains a number of interesting approaches to designing navigation in multimedia. It’s a little unfortunate that the article is 15 years old though as you get the sense that there’s probably been a lot more work done since. It therefore requires a little extrapolation to move the concepts to the 3D game based environment that I’m thinking about (I think Wolfenstein 3D had only just been released at the time this was written)
My project is to develop a 3D game space that the learner walks through in first person perspective. It provides new teachers at CIT an orientation to the services and resources available within the Education Development Centre at CIT, which includes Curriculum, Teacher Education, the Library and Flexible Learning Solutions (the online learning unit).
It’s possible to run this as a multiplayer game which allows for real-time text chat interaction between a number of players.
I’ll run through some of the interesting ideas about multimedia navigation in the paper and how I might use them in my game.
(To begin, here is why good navigation design is important)
“… used effectively, the technology can allow users to interact in ways that the designers of the system did not plan… good instructional design of interactive multimedia materials makes it unnecessary to materials to be structured for the learner. Effective student use of unstructured materials however, will depend on the type of access to the information the users can obtain i.e. the navigation options available to the user. ”
“When a learner can branch down multiple paths and rapidly change the direction and focus of the learning sequence, there is possible interference with effective learning through the inappropriate application of information by the learner to their internal schemas”
Navigation options:
“the guide metaphor where a character is created and used by the author to link ideas and visual travel through the hypermedia materials” – this is certainly one approach to the game and could be done in several different ways.
A non-player-character is automated and sets the learner tasks to complete in the environment (although this isn’t a guide so much I guess) – there could be NPCs in hallways that can answer basic queries about where certain areas are. The other option is to have a live guide in the multiplayer version who runs a bit of an orientation – though this isn’t necessarily very practical or realistic.
“other suggested structures include those which are based on ideas such as sequential navigation (using cues to show how far you are along a path; the clues varying from a simple screen number of the total or some conceptual description of the sequence), visual navigation (using a plan of the possible paths) and hybrid navigation (mixtures of both) (Hedberg & Harper, 1991)”
This has given me some thoughts about ways to set up the activities – in recreational gaming I’m fairly partial to sandpit style games such as the Grand Theft Auto series, where you can take on missions or just explore the environment. (But you need to complete certain missions to unlock new missions or new parts of the environment). I could have the entire area explorable, with different kinds of resources accessible (including being able to chat to all the staff) as well as having a room where you can get your missions from. You could collect keys (or something) which allow you to unlock rooms which provide additional missions. You could measure your progress by looking at the rooms you’ve opened.
Techniques to provide navigation cues for users:
“using colour to identify the area or major learning path”
This actually works pretty well as we recently had the rooms in our area repainted and each dept went with a different colour scheme. I’m thinking that it would be useful to have a few “You are here” maps around the place and/or some signs which could be colour coded without too much difficulty.
“simple use of contextual clues, regular use of a standard format of basic word style format to indicate links with other sources of information”
Other than the fact that this seems like a fairly tortured sentence, what I got from it was that in the rooms, on the walls near the desks of the different people we could have text and icons that reflect their areas of expertise. These could also be replicated on the maps. (E.g an artists palette for our graphic designer)
“written directions which appear in separate areas or windows to the information required to learn the underlying concepts”
I agree with this idea although I’m not sure entirely how to put it into action in the software that I’m thinking of. (FPS Creator). If the player/learner had a key that they could toggle a PDA on and off, you could have this information there. It could be possible to have some computer screens that the player/learner could access this information from but they would need to go to the screen any time they wanted to check a detail. If it was a multiplayer game I guess the instructions could just sit in the chat window.
“enabling learning path maps to be modified highlighting the paths which have been travelled”
This comes back to my earlier point about knowing what you’ve done by what rooms you’ve unlocked. I’m a little unsure about this however as it goes against my desire to have an environment that people can wander around completely freely.
“creating new links by the learner using a series of tools which enable the package to be modified, either by adding new information or by adding new hypertext linkages based on the students’ own conceptual maps”
It would be great if there was some way to embed web access (and presumably a wiki) into a part of the game. As far as I’m aware, this isn’t an option but I’ll keep looking. A setup like the 3D browser called 3B would be good – it could live on the smartboard in the training/conference room part of the game.
Defining Navigation types:
This is another of those instances where the datedness of this article shows – the concepts are still sound, just behind the times.
“Materials can be designed to focus on the appropriate development of schema and hence improve learning efficiency. In effect, any navigational system must employ elements with as much intrinsic meaning as possible… this link can be enhanced through understandable and well chosen metaphors”
He goes on to list a few different options:
Modal (icon based)
Relational (stack maps)
Hierarchical (more like an organisational chart or a website map)
Sequential (basic back, forward and index buttons)
Geographical/Spatial (much closer to Florin’s info landscape model – and my 3d game)
Conceptual (metaphor + info landscape)
The Geographical/Spatial seems to reflect my approach with the game so I guess I’ll note the quote:
“selecting parts of a whole by an inherent physical/geographic relationship. This approach might be exemplified region by using a map as a link between objects” – or a navigable 3D environment.
I had a few other thoughts as I was reading this paper:
What about a bookshelf in every person’s area? (Or similar metaphor for stored info – maybe a pda?)
It would be good to be able to access the online pd courses from inside the game – again, in game web access is the key.
Hedberg, J. and Harper, B. (1997) Creating Motivating Interactive Learning Environments. Keynote address at EDMEDIA, Calgary, Canada, 1997.
This paper repeats a lot of the points covered in the last two.
It still contains a few interesting points though so I’ll try to sum them up as succinctly as I can. (As it’s getting late and wading through this hard to read ode to constructivism has fried my mind a little)
In essence:
learners use productivity tools to construct their own meaningful chunks of content that sum up the available information
In designing learning environments: 1. identify the information to be covered, how to structure it and what the target audience already knows about it 2. find a metaphor to shape the information structure 3. link the design ideas to an interaction structure
This next bit is actually worth quoting (I think):
” Each interaction consists of a node point which forms the basis of the interaction, a set of options which provide links to other nodes or additional information attached to the current node. One of the links must relate to earlier travelled or preferred paths through the materials and each choice must inform the user about what is likely to occur as the result of a choice.
These can translate into the traditional concept of results (correct or incorrect) or performance support enhancement such as suggested hints (maybe you could have levels of hints?) or revision of the underlying concept/principle which might be employed to make the choice.
Depending on the instructional strategy chosen, another element might include the concept of duration, either time or the limit of options based up previous choices or paths taken.”
“The range and extent of user interaction with the data in the software increases as the user is given more freedom to navigate, access, determine the format of information representation and manipulate the data using cognitive and metacognitive tools”
You can have more than just text in the information presented.
In interaction, “it is important that the user is required to think before a response is possible”
“Being able to store and report thoughts and impressions derived from media experiences by using the media itself (actual video/audio and pictures, not just text representations of the media) provides a more powerful means of ‘reformulating’ (Schroeder & Kenny, 1994, p 965)”
Simulations can be powerful tools – “which provides support for the solution to one of the embedded problems by mimicking a “real world process”"
Good idea to allow learners to share and compare the products that they create – particularly to compare them against the work of experts in the field – “learning can occur through the resolution of multiple responses to the same task”
Florin, F. (1990) Information Landscapes. In S. Ambron & K. Hooper (Eds) Learning with Interactive Multimedia. Microsoft Press. pp. 27-49.
“As you visit an information landscape, you can merely walk along pathways and look at roadside attractions, or you can choose from many different options. Some of the options take you on linear trails, which you experience passively from start to finish, as you would ride in a bus. Other activities give you local control – similar to driving a car. Maps can show you a bird’s eye view of the territory and guides can take you on tours or give you more conversational assistance.”
Fabice Florin presents a range of different models for presenting information – broken into five essential structures:
Collections of data
Interactive documentaries
Annotated movies
Networks of guides
Hands-on activities
“I have referred to raw images, sounds, text, and film clips as data, regardless of media type. Meaningful arrangments of such data into thoughtful presentations are referred to as information”
collections of data:
“the simplest way to present knowledge is to break it down into collections of similar data or materials” Should that be information?
Data could be organised in a cube shape, with an x, y and z axis to define it in different ways (eg data could be presented chronologically along the x – width – axis, thematically along the y – height – axis and alphabetically along the z – depth – axis)
This system has limitations in that it may be necessary to categorise data in more than 3 ways and it may be difficult to create meaningful connections between the data in this manner.
Florin reached these conclusions about this approach:
“Clusters of tightly interconnected materials focused on specific topics are more satisfying that thin layers of data covering broad subjects. For example, isolated pictures are not as interesting as sets of five or more, where each picture in the set adds meaning to the others, exposing relations hidden in the single shot
In most cases, pictures with no good captions or data are not very useful
Still pictures and text can ofter be perecived as lifeless unless they are combined with sound or motion footage. I highly recommend that great care be given to the selection of a rich audio track and, if possible, film or video clips that bring a subject to life.”
interactive documentaries:
“a more elaborate structure for an information landscape is the interactive documentary, which centres all data around modular presentations. These presentations can be short stories or interactive diagrams linked to related materials. By focusing on such presentations as building blocks of an information landscape, more meaning is given to the materials, connecting data points to each other along specific lines of thought. These nodes of informations can now be browsed as integrated documents, rather than as disconnected data. Moreover, users can choose the order in which these presentations appear and interrupt them at will”
(e.g a sequence of video clips set up like a storyboard, with a brief explanatory title below each one)
The important aspect is that the information is connected but democratically accessible and learners can dig down into related collections of data from the starting point.
“It is a collection of experiences and ideas about a given subject, available to users in either linear or nonlinear modules, story modules organise materials against a temporal axis, whereas place modules arrange them in a spatial layout.”
“A clear drawback however is that often no easy way exists for first-time users to know which modules to try first, and some time needs to be spent poking around and playing clips at random before discovering what is available”
annotated movies
“In this structure, a feature-length movie is the main backbone of the landscape. Unlike the free-form browsing approach of the interactive documentary, the annotated movie has a strong linear structure. Viewers are encouraged to view the entire movie and then to use the interactive information environment surrounding the movie to revisit it and explore the issues that it raises”
This is one of many examples in which this print based article really suffers from the lack of a supplementary website, where we can actually experience the material being discussed. I think I understand it but I’m not sure if this means that the whole movie is clickable, providing interactivity all the way through or if it is a menu that offers this option. As far as I can see, it’s the former, but being able to see this in action would be a tremendous help.
“One of the main advantages of the annotated movie is that the narrative provides a common thread that ties together all subject in the information landscape. Having to build around a specific storyline encourages the interactive developers to go for depth rather than breadth, which makes for a richer environment”
networks of guides
“Looming on the horizon is a fascinating challenge, that of building information landscapes containing individual guides who provide users with personalised assistance”
Perhaps something like the internet – making use of real people and computer mediated communications? (Ah, ok, he comes to this as an option)
“The best way for an information landscape to grow is through live channels of communication to and from the outside world, allowing for feedback, editing, updates and so on. In such a scenario, the process becomes more important than the actual product. The system becomes a focal point for the development of a community of interested users and authors who collectively extend the shared knowledgebase.
This requires a simple but powerful set of composition tools that allow content experts and novice users to mark, annotate, link and otherwise interconnect various parts of the information landscape. Such tools would let users compare different points of view and develop their own through essays, diagrams, tours and other custom presentations. Ultimately, any user could become a guide to the environment.
To illustrate this concept, I have added guides to the landscape in my diagram. These guides add their knowledge to the environment by connecting various information nodes and data points; the webs they weave reach deep within the shared landscape, but they also extend out into the real world.”
Ok, well this impresses me a fair bit – certainly for something written in 1990. It seems to predict Wikipedia and the social webby quite a few years. (It is very much in keeping with Tim Berners Lee’s initial vision for the World Wide Web)
“As larger user communities gather around our information landscapes, different classes of guides are likely to emerge, including:
System operators, information brokers and editors – who provide general services to help connect users with what they are looking for (i.e. Search engines, RSS? )
Specialists and content experts – who concentrate on specific subjects and report on their particular knowledge domain (websites)
Interdisciplinary authors – who provide editorial commentaries and personal insights across a wide range of subjects
Other users – who share tips with each other about interesting information they have found or added to the system (the blogosphere, social web news sites like Digg, Wikipedia)
hands-on activities
“the guiding principle is that they be fun and that they help users gain new insights”
“these activities are very compelling because they let users participate as players in the environment, not merely as spectators. The locus of control is shifted from the designers back to the users. Rather than absorb someone else’s ideas, users now determine the outcome of their individual experiences. The make choices and reach their own conclusions. This deepens their understanding of the subject, because that knowledge was discovered “hands-on” and is now theirs”
“The reason such activities seem so important is that they suggest different modes of interaction between users and their information environment. An activity provides an arena for people to play in and materials to play with; most importantly, however, it gives people ideas of what to do in that context”
Ok, so he thinks that games and scenario based activity is good – I’m hardly going to argue with that.
design factors to consider
“The first step in designing an information resource is to define it’s primary purpose:
Is it meant as a generic resource or to teach a specific topic?
How broad does it have to be?
Who is the intended user group?
How will users interact with it?
Where do they need the most help?
The next step is to identify the materials available for that project:
How much data is provided for each item?
Are the items catalogued?
Are they cross-indexed?
Have they been annotated or edited together with a single commentary?
Are they disparate documents or have they been carefully researched and sorted?
You now have to select a particular structure as the main framework of the landscape. The purpose of the project and the nature of the materials may suggest one but more often it is a creative call. This process feels somewhat like landscaping or urban design:
What primary features do you want to build around?
Which secondary features do you want to emphasise?
How do you balance these different elements?
How do people move from one to another?
I like to think of the different structures presented above as different types of space in a rural landscape. For example, collections could be fields of raw materials, a documentary could be seen as a small town, a movie might flow like a stream through the landscape, guides might be shown as figures on a hilltop and activities might be represented by a playground.
Like a city planner, you are designing not only the structure of the information landscape but also the flows and processes that take place in and around that environment. In the end, you really are shaping the culture of a user group, not just its database. “
I think this is one of the most useful things I have read in this course so far. Looking forward to seeing how I can put it into practice.
In the field of instructional design it can be seen that there are two fundamental approaches – the prescriptive and the democratic. These tend to align fairly closely with the contrasting educational philosophies of behaviourism/cognitivism and constructivism respectively.
As education attempts to address a broad spectrum of knowledge, organisational and learner needs, there can be no single perfect approach – in some instances a prescriptive strategy such as lecturing is the most appropriate and in others, a more democratic strategy such as scenario based learning is more effective. Whichever approach is taken however, it is possible to enhance the learning experience with the use of technology. In this paper I will examine the different approaches, identify useful strategies and offer some suggestions as to the implementation of technology in providing a better teaching and learning experience.
In the prescriptive approach, “information is concocted and delivered to the learner.”(Schwier & Misanchuk, 1993, p.19). The underlying behaviourist philosophy is that knowledge exists in the world in the form of facts and that this knowledge can be transferred directly to the learners brain through exposure to it from a teacher. (Robyler & Havriluk, 1997). This can be enriched with cognitivist strategies such as advance-organising or matrices which make the information/knowledge more digestible. (Bednar, Cunningham, Duffy & Perry, 1995)
The prescriptive approach is therefore considered quite teacher-centric and is generally also quite rigidly structured. “There are usually specific objectives the learner is expected to learn and in most cases learning is evaluated in accordance with the specified objectives.”(Schwier & Misanchuk 1993, p.20). Learners are often required to individually demonstrate adequate knowledge of one facet of the subject before they are allowed to progress to the next. New information is presented to the learners, they practice using it (which reinforces the information), their understanding of it is assessed and they move on.
In areas which focus on foundation knowledge and skills, such as Vocational Education and Training or learning a musical instrument, this can be a practical approach. Each new skill or piece of information adds meaning to the next and makes them easier to process and retain.
When learners have developed this foundation or scaffolding knowledge, the limitations of the prescriptive approach become more apparent. Higher level problem solving, analytical, collaborative and cognitive skills that enable the learners to think more creatively and transfer knowledge from one situation to another aren’t highly emphasised in this approach. This is when a more democratic approach might be considered.
The democratic approach has its roots in constructivist philosophy, which takes the position that knowledge must come from within and as a result of the right activities in the right context (Jonassen, Peck & Wilson, 1999). While undertaking these activities, the learner accesses the information necessary to achieve them which creates meaning. A process of reflection on the activities, the information, past experience and external feedback leads to knowledge.
Learner control, therefore, lies at the heart of the democratic approach. Schwier and Misanchuk (1993) make the point that “democratic environments permit the learner to influence what is learned, or how it is learned, or at least the order in which it is learned” (p. 23). This sense of ownership of the process can enhance a learner’s motivation as it feels more relevant to their needs.
The use of relevant and authentic activity, often in the form of problem or scenario based learning, encourages the learner to identify and find the information they need to perform a task. This shifts the role of the teacher to a more supportive one, acting as a guide and offering supplementary resources.
This is where it becomes apparent that the democratic approach is best employed when there is a foundation level of existing knowledge. According to Schwier and Misanchuk (1993) “Supplementary instruction either reinforces what has already been taught or it attaches new instruction to what has been taught… the difference is that supplementary instruction is voluntarily undertaken; the locus of decision-making rests with the learner.”(p. 24) This need for foundation knowledge brings us back to the prescriptive approach.
Lectures are probably the most obvious example of a prescriptive learning strategy. “In a tertiary context, a lecture has come to be understood as a public presentation by a teacher to a large group of students. In its most common form… a teacher speaks without any changes of activity for the whole allotted time.”(TEDI, 2006)
Lectures aren’t highly regarded for “stimulating active learning and higher order thinking” (TEDI, 2001) however in combination with tutorials and other learning strategies, they can still be beneficial. One of the primary reasons that lectures are used by organisations is the simple economic efficiency of teaching large numbers of learners at one time.
In my work for the Flexible Learning Solutions team at CIT (Canberra Institute of Technology), we will sometimes give lectures on new developments in educational technology to educators as part of broader e-learning events. I’ve also provided technological advice to teachers in the department of Communications, Media and Music who run a single weekly Mass Media Studies lecture to students from a range of subjects.
When considered in its own right, a lecture is a highly prescriptive learning activity as the information is delivered in a particularly structured manner. The learner has to attend a specific location at a specific time and the flow of information is largely one way.
It is nonetheless possible to use technology to enhance lectures. At the simplest level, the lecturer could provide paper handouts with relevant diagrams and space for learner notes which would allow them to spend more time focused on the material being presented and less time trying to copy it down. (TEDI 2001)
A lecturer could incorporate multimedia presentations, anything from an overhead projector to PowerPoint to video for more “stimulating and entertaining delivery” (TEDI 2001). Audio and video samples are used in the Mass Media Studies lectures at CIT to illustrate concepts being discussed.
Social Web technology could radically reshape the structure of a lecture by making a wiki available for students to create collective notes during a lecture, accessed from a wireless network with their laptop computers or mobile devices in a lecture theatre. This could even be displayed on a screen in the theatre. (There would be a number of practical issues of distraction and moderation of content to deal with in this instance however.)
The issue of learners being prescribed to attend a set space at a set time could be avoided if the lecture was made available either synchronously as a web conference or asynchronously in the form of a podcast or vodcast.
A final option – although not a likely or practical one – would be for all seats in a lecture theatre to be equipped with voting buttons of some description – allowing the lecturer to ask a question and have a graphical display of learner responses appear instantly.
Interestingly, most of these options would shift the lecture from the prescriptive domain towards the democratic in one way or another by making the learners more active participants.
Scenario based learning is a strategy in the democratic approach that is primarily focussed on learners being active participants. It gives the learner a large degree of control over the decisions they make and the information resources they choose to access in the process of undertaking activities based on authentic tasks and problems in the area being studied.
Brown and Voltz (2005) describe scenarios as “usually provided by a story, role play, or simulation, within which the activity plays a pivotal role in helping the students to contextualise content”. Learners are presented with a problem or task in the context of a fictional story which is relevant to the field of study. They are given access to useful information resources and collaboratively or individually find appropriate solutions.
The scenario may be structured so that it comprises a series of increasingly complex activities that build on each other as the learner develops their knowledge.
I supported the implementation of such a scenario based approach in my work at CIT while working with a teacher in the Nursing department on a competency called Practice within legal and ethical parameters. This teaches nurses about some of the legal and ethical issues within nursing practice, the law and their responsibilities. In the past, it had been taught in a fairly prescriptive manner as a list of laws and policies that nurses needed to be aware of.
Together we created a detailed scenario in which nurses make decisions based on developments in a particular patient’s case, consultation with colleagues and other available information.
As the nurse progresses through the story, ethical and legal complications arise with the patient which highlight content in areas including negligence, euthanasia and patient consent. This adds relevant hospital and nursing culture issues to the learning and allows nurses to connect more personally with the course content, which to that point was considered fairly dry by the nursing students and teachers.
While scenario based learning is structured by the story, it is democratic in approach in that learners are able to choose the information they access and their knowledge is informed by the socially constructed meanings they develop by working collaboratively to solve the problems.
The potential of technology in enhancing scenarios is of interest to me as I have a broader fascination with game based learning and the role of engaging stories to provide motivation and develop authentic and relevant contexts is highly pertinent.
There are a range of accessible software packages and web platforms now available that make the creation of immersive 3D environments easy and affordable. In the game creation sphere, FPS Creator and The 3D GameMaker (both from www.thegamecreators.com) are but two. There are also of course the increasingly popular Massively Multiplayer Online Game platforms such as Second Life, Croquet and Multiverse, which all offer opportunities to create spaces for learners to play out scenarios, access information and communicate with each other and the broader online community.
I’m aware that the use of whiz-bang technology in scenario/game based learning doesn’t guarantee “”cognitive realism” to the real-life task” (Agostinho, Meek & Herrington, 2005, p.231) but the wealth of research on games in learning suggests it doesn’t hurt. (Prensky, 2001)
As we can see, there is no single approach for all learning contexts – it’s important to look at the content, the learners and the context in the process of designing instruction and choose the most appropriate one.
Robyler, M. D., Edwards, J., & Havriluk, M. A. (1997). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (pp. 54-79). New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Bednar, A. K., Cunningham, D., Duffy T. M. & Perry J. D. (1995). Theory into Practice: How do we Link? In G. J. Anglin (Ed), Instructional Technology: Past, present and future. Englewood, Co: Libraries Unlimited, pp 100-112.
Jonassen, D. H., Peck K. L. & Wilson, B. G. (1999). Learning With Technology: A Constructivist Perspective. New Jersey: Merril. pp 2-11.
Graham, C., Cagiltay, K., Lim, B-R., Craner, J., & Duffy, T. M. (2001). Seven principles of effective teaching: A practical lens for evaluating online courses. The Technology Source Archives at the University of North Carolina: http://technologysource.org/article/seven_principles_of_effective_teaching/
This is one of the best guides to practical, across the board strategies for better online teaching I’ve ever seen.
It’s simple, doesn’t get bogged down in which philosophical approach beats which and offers clear guidelines for online best practice.
1. Instructors should provide clear guidelines for interaction with students.
Establish policies describing the types of communication that should take place over different channels (e.g. send your technical support questions to FLS)
Set clear standards for instructors timelines for responding to messages (e.g. I will respond to emails on Tuesday and Friday afternoons)
2. Well designed discussion assignments facilitate meaningful cooperation among students
Learners should be required to participate (and their grade should depend on participation)
Discussion groups should remain small
Discussions should be focussed on a task
Tasks should always result in a product
Tasks should engage learners in the content
Learners should receive feedback on their discussions
Evaluation should be based on the quality of the postings (not length or number)
Instructors should post expectations for discussions
3. Students should present course projects
“Students presented case study solutions via the class website. The other students critiqued the solution and made further comments about the case. After all students had responded, the case presenter updated and reposted his or her solution, including new insights or conclusions gained from classmates. Only at the end of all the presentations did the instructor provide an overall reaction to the cases and specifically comment about issues the class identified or failed to identify. In this way, students learned from one another as well as from the instructor”
4. Instructors need to provide two types of feedback: information feedback and acknowledgement feedback.
Acknowledgement feedback is simply a response that an assignment (or whatever) has been received. As the semester gets busier and time is scarcer, this often drops off – maybe having a simple template to copy/paste or even an automated system might be helpful here.
Information feedback is a fuller response to submitted content – “when constraints increase during the semester’s busiest times, instructors can still give prompt feedback on discussion assignments by responding to the class as a whole instead of to each individual student. In this way, instructors can address patterns and trends in the discussion without being overwhelmed by the amount of feedback to be given”
5. Online courses need deadlines
“Regularly distributed deadlines encourage students to spend time on tasks and help students with busy schedules avoid procrastination. They also provide a context for regular contact with the instructor and peers” My personal experience makes me wonder if it might be useful to break assignment tasks down into a number of small milestone chunks with set deadlines – although these could be optional to avoid overloading the teacher – Perhaps the milestones could serve to provide learners with an indication of how long a part might take and whether they are on track or need to put in more time.
(Maybe this is something that learners should be able to do on their own but my personal experience is that I often forget about the breaking the task down into smaller parts/actions until afterwards)
Maybe some kind of personal tick box checklist
6. Challenging tasks, sample cases and praise for high quality work communicate high expectations
This is essentially about applying more relevant, more authentic, context oriented activities which offer higher levels of challenge.
It’s also about providing examples of past student work, “along with comments explaining why the examples are good”
7.Allowing students to choose project topics incorporates diverse views into online courses
“The instructor allowed students to research their own area of interest, instead of assigning particular issues… Instructors can provide guidelines to help students select topics relevant to the course while still allowing students to share their unique perspectives”
This seems largely about motivation but also about creating a more democratic learning environment.
Assumptions about Learning Jonassen, D. H., Peck K. L. & Wilson, B. G. (1999). Learning With Technology: A Constructivist Perspective. New Jersey: Merril. pp 2-11.
This is the first thing I’ve read that has given me any kind of real appreciation of the philosophy and theory underpinning Constructivism.
Until now it has all seem far too vague and airy-fairy but this introductory chapter to what seems like a very interesting book is able to clearly explain the learning concepts at the heart of this educational philosophy.
Here are some of the essential points made and some of my thoughts in response to them:
“We learn from experiencing phenomena (objects, events, activities, processes), interpreting those experiences based on what we know, reasoning about them and reflecting on the experiences and the reasoning. Jerome Bruner (1990) called this process meaning making”
“Constructivists believe that knowledge is constructed, not transmitted. Individuals make sense of their world and everything with which they come in contact by constructing their own representations or models of their experiences”
“We believe that teaching is a process of helping learners to construct their own meaning from the experiences they have by providing these experiences and guiding the meaning-making process”
“Knowledge construction results from activity, so knowledge is embedded in activity” Do all facts need “meaning” to be remembered or to make sense – I’ve never stuck a knife in a powerpoint but I know it’s bad. (How do I know this?)What if the urgency with which information is passed on affects our learning of it? – This would be much more about teaching than learning per se.
“Knowledge is anchored in and indexed by the context in which the learning activity occurs… Information about the context is part of the knowledge that is constructed by the learner in order to explain or make sense of the phenomenon” – does this give the learner too much credit? does the learner always do this – or always want to do this? Might they see it as too much work?
Relevant activity enhances information – but is it just another form of info?
Is it just like saying it twice but better (repetition) – reframing/contextualising – like making food easier to digest by pre-chewing it.
Motivation is still of vital importance
“The knowledge that a learner constructs consists of not only the ideas (content) but also knowledge about the context in which it was acquired, what the learner was doing in that environment and what the knower intended to get from that environment” This defines knowledge as a set of unique combined elements
“So the more directly and interactively we experience things, the more knowledge about it we are likely to construct”
“What we really understand about skills and knowledge is the application of them. When we learn how to use a skill, we store that use as a story, which is a primary medium of conversation and meaning making among humans (Schank 1986). ” Oh, so how do something in WebCT – I guess I have more of a visual physical conception of it – is that a story? This part is about both relevance and transferance.
“Meaning is in the mind of the knower”. We can share parts of our reality “by socially negotiating shared meanings. That is, we converse with others and agree on the relative importance and meanings for things.” Everyone’s knowledge is different but if one apprentice chef burns their hand on a pot, it’s very much the same as if another one does
“Therefore, there are multiple perspectives on the world. Since no two people can possibly have the same set of experiences and perceptions of those experiences, each of us constructs our own knowledge, which in turn affects the perceptions of the experiences that we have and those we share”
“Making meaning is prompted by a problem (GAMES?), question, confusion, dissonance (a need or desire to know) and so involves personal ownership of that problem… Meaning making often starts with a problem, a question, a discrepant and inexplicable event, a curiosity, wonderment, puzzlement (Duffy and Cunningham 1996), a perturbation (Maturana and Varela 1992), expectations violations (Schank 1986), cognitive dissonance, or a disequilibrium. We can memorize ideas that others tell use but to actively seek to make meaning about phenomena involves the desire to make sense of things”
“Knowledge-building requires articulation, expression or representation of what is learned… For usable knowledge to be constructed, learners need to think about what they did and articulate what it meant. Usually that articulation process is verbal, but learners can construct a variety of visual or auditory representations of their experiences or understandings” Reflection offers evidence => assessment items
“Meaning may also be shared with others, so meaning making can also result from conversation… Social constructivists believe that meaning making is a process of negotiation among the participants through dialogues or conversations.”
“So meaning making and thinking are distributed throughout our tools, culture and community. As we interact with others in knowledge-building communities, our knowledge and beliefs about the world are influenced by that community and their beliefs and values”
“Just as the cognitive properties of individuals vary, the cognitive attributes and accomplishments of communities also vary, depending on differences in the social organisation of the groups (i.e., the ways in which members distribute cognitive responsibilities) (Hutchins 1991)”. Collective wisdom/shared knowledge depends on how smart the members of the group are.
“Learning can also be conceived of as changes in our relation to the culture(s) to which we are connected (Duffy and Cunningham 1996). As we spend more time in a club, we become more influenced by its beliefs and culture, because the group’s knowledge is distributed among the participants (Saloman 1993)” If this is the case, where does new knowledge, innovation and ideas come from – if everyone becomes like everyone else?
“Within any knowledge-building community, share ideas are accepted and agreed upon. That is, meaning is reflected in the social beliefs that exist at any point in time. If individual ideas are discrepant from community standards, they are not regarded as viable unless new evidence supporting their viability is provided” Oh, that’s where it comes from
So something is only right as long as enough people believe it and no viable alternatives are proven
“Assessing the viability of anyone’s knowledge involves many criteria”Checks and balances system of knowledge in the group
“In order to engage different types of thinking, we must rethink the ways that we teach and the ways that we use technology in our teaching”
“When learning about things in natural contexts, humans interact with their environment and manipulate the objects in that environment, observing the effects of their interventions and constructing their own interpretations of the phenomena and the results of the manipulation” Doing gives meaning but it only goes so far.
“Through formal and informal apprenticeships in communities of play and work, learners develop skills and knowledge that they then share with other members of those communities with whom they learned and practiced those skills” Someone generally shows them what to do and the rules of the game. This reminds me of the paper about experienced people mentoring newbies in MMORPGS at http://users.bigpond.com/colsim/edugames/simpson3/annotate.html#Steinkuehler
“Real learning requires active learners ; people engaged by a meaningful task (not just pressing the space bar to continue) in which they manipulate objects and the environment in which they are working and then observe the results of their manipulations ” Games – but then again, why use a game when reality is available? Well, because it’s not always there or affordable or easily repeatable
“Activity is necessary but not sufficient for meaningful learning. Learners must reflect on their activity and observations to learn the lessons that their activity has to teach… By reflecting on on the puzzling experience, learners integrate their new experiences with their prior knowledge about the world, or they establish goals for what they need to learn in order to make sense out of what they observe… The active and constructive parts of the meaningmaking process are symbiotic. They both rely on the other for meaning making to occur.”
“When learners are actively and willfully trying to achieve a cognitive goal (Scardamalia and Bereiter 1993/94), they think and learn more because they are fulfilling an intention… Technologies need to engage learners in articulating what their learning goals are in any learning situation, and then support them. Technology based learning systems should require learners to articulate what they are doing, the decisions they make, the strategies they use and the answers that they found” And WHY they are doing something. This reminds me of Bronwyn Hegarty’s critical reflection model. Can problem based learning be prescriptive as well as democratic (levels of direction/guidance)
“A great deal of recent research has shown that learning tasks that are situated in some meaningful real-world task or simulated in some case-based or problem-based learning environment are not only better understood but also are more consistently transferred to new situations… we need to teach knowledge and skills in real-life, useful contexts and provide new and different contexts for learners to practice using those ideas” – ok but then we should point out the base, underlying ideas.
“And we need to engage students in solving complex and ill-structured problems as well as simple problems (Jonassen 1997) - like levels/progress in games.
“Humans naturally work in learning and knowledge-building communities, exploiting each others’ skills and appropriating each other’s knowledge”
“Often, educators will promote collaborative methods of learning, only to resort to independent assessment of learning… We cannot forget that most learners are strategic enough to know “what counts” in classrooms, so if they are evaluated individually, collaborative instruction may fail because students realize that group outcomes are not important” This strikes me as a VERY valid point – perhaps collaborative approaches need collaborative assessment to validate the process
Some very interesting explanations of the underlying philosophies of Constructivism here – I think I got more out of this than I have from anything else I’ve read to date.
There was one more interesting point made in the extract about collaboration that seems worth mentioning:
“Collaboration most often requires conversation among participants. Learners working in groups must socially negotiate a common understanding of the task and the methods they will use to accomplish it… When learners become part of knowledge-building communities both in class and outside of school, they learn that there are multiple ways of viewing the world and multiple solutions to most of life’s problems. “
While there are some interesting ideas in this chapter of the book about different approaches (prescriptive vs democratic) to the use of multimedia in education, for the most part this came across as something of a historical curiosity.
The rise of the Internet and the social web (which were at the time of writing, in fairness, respectively in their infancy and a mere twinkle in the eye) have rendered much of this discussion irrelevant.
However, because I’m meant to glean some wisdom from this and I have a big assessment on the differences between prescriptive and democratic approaches to education, I’ll press on.
Main points:
“Romiszowski (1986), discussing the function of control in self-instructional media, organizes a schemata of systems for individualizing instruction. He identifies three characteristic positions: prescriptive, democratic and cybernetic”
“Instructor preferences and learner characteristics… impose structure on instructional decisions”
PRESCRIPTIVE
“A prescriptive multimedia environment… prescribes what the learner is to learn. Instruction is concocted and delivered to the learner”
“There are usually specific objectives the learner is expected to achieve, and in most cases learning is evaluated in accordance with the specified objectives” (such as competencies in a VET context but surely there is an element of this is ALL assessment?)
“Access to content is structured”
“Learners are either granted or denied access to areas of instruction based on their progress in the instruction or they are advised which paths would be most profitable.”
“The focus of this environment is the achievement of specified, externally defined goals”
“A popular breakdown of prescriptive instruction designs includes drill and practice, tutorials, most games and some simulations”
“Drill and practice usually takes the form of a string of question-answer-feedback sequences. The purpose is usually to review previously learned material in a test-like environment rather than learn new material” (Reinforcing learning – this doesn’t seem like a bad thing)
“For drill and practice, multimedia instruction can be used to increase the types, amounts and layers of stimuli and feedback presented”
“Tutorials are used to teach new information. Information is usually presented, learners are given opportunities to practice using the information and learning is reinforced.
For example, a typical tutorial environment will have an introduction (including motivational set), organizing material (e.g. advance organizers, objectives, topics), novel content, embedded practice and interaction (e.g. adjunct questions, exercises, activities), feedback, review and evaluation.”
“In mediated tutorial instruction, our challenge is often to provide a rich, vicarious experience which approximates genuine human interaction” (reasonably achieved in the Web age with computer mediated communication)
“…tutorials constrict learner control over instruction. This is desirable in many instructional settings but highly undesirable in others” (making the incredibly insightful point that different learning approaches are needed in different situations)
“Games are usually directed at a specific goal and involve some measure of competition. Simulations provide an abstraction or simplification of reality – some level of mimicry, in which the learner encounters circumstances and tries to respond to them. Instructional gams are rule-based, focused on specific goals or outcomes, usually divorced from reality and based on competition among players or against the system.
Instructional simulations, by contrast, typically use rules to define the parameters of interaction within a model of reality and play ultimately results in one of several available conclusions. Which conclusion is reached by a player is determined by choices and decisions made during instruction. Close approximation of the dynamics of reality is desired and the learner becomes a part of the system rather than a competitor against it.” (Interesting take on games vs simulations – some merit to it although I think it’s simplistic)
Many simulations and games may not emphasize prescriptive instruction, the primary purpose of many games and simulations is entertainment or vicarious experience, with learning as a convenient by-product. (This may be true in some instances but a lot of research has gone into edugames since this was written. It also misses online gaming and the key element of interaction with others)
DEMOCRATIC:
“Democratic environments shift the control of instruction to the user… Democratic environments permit the learner to influence what is learned, or how it is learned, or at least the order in which it is learned” (This talk of learner-centredness reminds me of the approach of constructivists in defining constructivism by trying to belittle the behaviourist/directed learning methods. It seems bigger on rhetoric than solid examples)
Instructors or instructional designers do not impose structured instruction. The democratic environment either supports prescribed instruction or it exists without reference to prescribed instruction .(Um, so which one is it – how can it be different if it is the same?)
“The difference is in intent and control. Learner controlled instruction would supplement prescribed instruction in this case, not substitute for it. The learner chooses to use it or reject it. For other democratic resources, the emphasis shifts from constructing and controlling instructional events to providing easy access to instructional support. These types of multimedia learning resources emphasize navigation, motivation and access and would likely downplay objectives and evaluation” (Reminds me a little of problem based learning – learners first need to work out what they need to know to solve the problem. As far as providing easy access goes, this seems to describe hyperlinks. Moving away from objectives and evaluation sounds better in theory than practice – the StageStruck game offers next to no guidance (certainly none in exiting it) and I found it frustrating. )
Supplementary instruction “assumes primary instruction exists elsewhere. Supplementary instruction either reinforces what has already been taught or it attaches new instruction to what has been taught…the difference is that supplementary instruction is voluntarily undertaken; the locus of decision-making rests with the learner” (As far as I can see, the defining characteristic of democratic learning environments is that learners can choose to ignore all the material presented to them – and doesn’t the notion of supplementary resources just seem like the World Wide Web)
(So to sum up what seems to be the authors point:)
To us, instructionality is defined by intentionality and simply allowing a learner to “graze” informational resources (databases) does not necessarily lead to instruction (Now aside from the horrible mangling of language in that sentence, the point seems to be that a prescriptive, focused approach is better)
“Most well designed learning resources provide multiple avenues of access to material” (this I’m happy to agree with – but an avenue is still a path)
From here the datedness of this chapter becomes abundantly clear as it delves into current developments in multimedia – with respect they do touch on “Nelsonian Hypermedia”, which appears to be a forerunner to html hypertext as we know it today but after 15 years it seems a little less amazing than it did back then.
CYBERNETIC ENVIRONMENTS:
The authors make another interesting point in this section – that a lot of computer based designed relies too heavily on the “book metaphor”. “In other words, we think of interactive treatments in terms of chapters, tables of contents, pages, headings and subheadings” (This can be seen today in a lot of web design – particular web 1.0 )
“By contrast, human thought is a robust metaphor for interactive treatments. Conceptual environments, cognitive mapping and logic approaches may gain high status in the metaphoric pecking order” (definitely an interesting thought – not sure how well this has been realised yet though)
The chapter goes on to look at A.I options for designing interactive educational multimedia and the challenges this offers but again, the rise of computer mediated communication tools and the social web seem to render this a bit of a dead end.
