This is pretty well the first non-constructivism oriented reading I’ve had in this course so it’s been interesting to see the other side – as far as I can tell, the differences between the behaviourist/cognitivist and constructivist approaches aren’t nearly as vast as is made out and most of them are cosmetic in nature, aside from the emphasis on discovery learning, socially created meaning and a stronger focus on activity.

The behaviourist approach also benefits from having a much more detailed strategy for designing individual classes and activities, with the “9 instructional events” offering a fair amount of structure.

I read this chapter with a particular project in mind, for Instructional Strategies and Authoring we have been given the task of creating a prescriptive learning environment (to complement the democratic one from before) which is meant to draw heavily from the 9 events.

I felt that this could be an appropriate area to focus the “training level” of the Exploring the EDC game on – a pre-game level that teaches users (particularly non-gamers) how to move in and view a 3D environment as well as interact with objects and solve basic puzzles. The instructions that I included at the start of the previous game that I made (a single text based image) weren’t adequate for most of the first-time users who tried it out.

The prescriptive approach/environment seems very much about setting up clear outcomes and providing step by step instructions (with feedback) that allow learners to develop the scaffolding knowledge needed to move to the scenario based activities in the Exploring the EDC game. (Actually, this might need a new name – I think it’s now the CEE)

Here are the pertinent points from the chapter as well as the ideas this triggered and any other general ramblings that come to mind.

“Planning a course of instruction makes use of the principles… :determining what the outcomes of instruction are to be, defining performance objectives and deciding upon a sequence for the topics and lessons that make up the course.”

“During a lesson there is progress from one moment to the next as a set of events acts upon and involves the student. This set of events is what is specifically meant by instruction”

“Whatever the medium, the essential nature of instruction is most clearly characterised as a set of communications”

“The events of instruction are designed to make it possible for learners to proceed from “where they are” to the achievement of the capability identified as the target objective”

“Mostly however, the events of instruction must be deliberately arranged by an instructional designer or teacher”
This seems to be one of the biggest points of difference between the two approaches – one focusses on the activities of the teacher and the other on the learner – but they are both to the same end, learning.

“There is perhaps no better way to avoid the error of talking too much than to keep firmly in mind that communications during a lesson are to facilitate learning and that anything beyond this is mere chatter”

“The purpose of instruction, however it may be done, is to provide support to the processes of learning. It may, therefore, be expected that the kinds of events that constitute instruction should have a fairly precise relation to what is going on within the learner whenever learning is taking place”

“Each of the particular events that make up instruction functions to aid or otherwise support the acquisition and the retention of whatever is being learned. These functions of external events may be derived by consideration of the internal processing that makes up any single act of learning”

This seems to be making the same point in two (slightly wordy) ways, which, funnily enough is one of the key strategies in the instructional events.

Gagne’s approach is heavily tied to cognitive theories about the physical activies undertaken in the brain in the process of learning. This can be broken down (relatively simplistically perhaps) to:

• Stimulation (i.e information/input) is “briefly registered by sensory registers” (e.g you see/hear it)
• “This information is then changed into a form that is recorded in the short-term memory, where prominent features of the initial stimulation are stored”
• These items may be retained by being internally rehearsed
• Meaning is added to the information (semantic encoding) and it is transferred to long-term memory
• “When learner performance is called for, the stored information or skill must be searched for and retrieved”
• “It may then be transformed into action, by way of a response generator”
• “Retrieved information is recalled to working/short-term memory, where it may be combined with other incoming information to form new learned capabilities”
• “Learner performance itself sets in motion a process that depends upon external feedback, involving the familiar process of reinforcement”

From here, we pretty well move into the actual instructional events – just quickly, they are:

1. Gaining attention
2. Informing the learner of the objective
3. Stimulating recall of prerequisite learning
4. Presenting the stimulus material
5. Providing learning guidance
6. Eliciting the performance
7. Providing feedback about performance correctness
8. Assessing the performance
9. Enhancing retention and transfer

I can see here how the constructivists take issue with the vibe of this approach, the language has an overly scientific feeling, as though learners are lab animals, but the principles in themselves seem sound when they are fleshed out.

1. Gaining Attention

“The initial event of gaining attention is one that supports the learning event of reception of the stimuli and the patterns of neural impulses they produce”

“Basic ways of commanding attention involve the use of stimulus change, as is often done in moving display signs or in the rapid cutting of scenes on a television screen. Beyond this, a fundamental and frequently used method of gaining attention is to appeal to the learner’s interests. A teacher may appeal to some particular student’s interests by means of a verbal question such as ‘Wouldn’t you like to know what makes a leaf fall from a tree?’ ”

This made me think about having some kind of video – maybe in fast-forward – of a screen capture of navigating through either the EDC game or maybe through the obstacle course/puzzle section of the training game.  

2.  Informing the learner of the objective

“This… is presumed to set in motion of process of executive control by means of which the learner selects particular strategies appropriate to the learning task and its expected outcome”

“In some manner or other, the learner should know the kind of performance that will be used as an indicator that learning has, in fact, been accomplished”

“What kind of purposeful activity might the learner be engaged in once the multiple objectives of the lesson have been achieved?”

Maybe (as mentioned) there is a final puzzle or series of actions to be achieved before the learner is able to access the EDC game – this of course raises the question of how to make the training level optional. There may be players who don’t need it or who have already completed it. This could be done by offering two initial doors for the player to choose from – however if they are already able to enter a door, they probably don’t need the training. 

3. Stimulating recall of prerequisite learning

“Much of new learning (some might say all) is, after all, the combining of ideas”

“Component ideas (concepts, rules) must be previously learned if the new learning is to be successful.

“The recall of previously learned capabilities may be stimulated by asking a recognition or, better, a recall question”

We could start with a look at navigation in 2D games – maybe even play some examples – Pong for up/down control, Breakout for left/right and move on to something like Pacman for 4 directional. Getting players used to the W,A,S,D controls is an early step – maybe after camera control with the mouse, maybe even before.  The idea of holding keys down to move is important.

Using the mouse to look around – need to get the concept across (not sure how) that it’s just like moving the cursor, only it’s not the cursor that moves, it’s the environment

Different kinds of learning outcomes for this event – by the nature of the capability to be learned

Intellectual skill – Essential for learner to retrieve to working memory prerequisite skills and concepts
Cognitive strategy – Recall task strategies and relevant intellectual skills
Verbal information -  recall familiar well organised bodies of knowledge related to the new learning
Attitude – recall the situation adn the actions involved in personal choice.
Motor skill – recall the executive subroutine and relevant part skills

4. Presenting the stimulus model

“The stimuli to be displayed (or communicated) to the learner are those involved in the performance that reflects the learning.”

“Stimulus presentation often emphasises features that determine selective perception. Thus, information presented in text may contain italics, bold print, underlining or other kinds of physical arrangements designed to facilitate perception of essential features. When pictures or diagrams are employed, important features of the concepts they display may be heavily outlined, circled or pointed to with arrows.”

“Stimulus presentation for the learning of concepts and rules requires the use of a variety of examples”

The variety of examples approach rings particularly true here, it’s useful because it supports transfer of an idea to other contexts.  

“Retention and transfer are also likely to be enhanced by presenting problems stated in words, in diagrams and in combinations of the two over a period of time” What about video? 

More concepts to cover in the game – jump and jump forward.  (Not entirely sure why this was triggered by this “event” but it’s where I wrote it down. Text based or video instruction? (Players walk up to tv units to trigger videos – like in GTA schools)

Different kinds of learning outcomes for this event – by the nature of the capability to be learned

Intellectual skill – Display the statement of the rule or concept, with example giving emphasis to component concepts Cognitive strategy – Describe the task and the strategy, and show what the strategy accomplishes
Verbal information – Display printed or verbal statements, emphasising distinctive features
Attitude – Human model describes the general nature of the choice of personal action to be presented
Motor skill – Display the situation existing at the beginning of the skill performance. Demonstrate executive subroutine

5. Providing learning guidance

This gets into the cognitivist side of things a little more, very much about structuring the information

“…These communications and others like them may be said to have the function of learning guidance. Notice that they do not “tell the learner the answer”; rather, they suggest the line of thought which will presumably lead to the desired “combining” of subordinate concepts and rules to form the new to-be learned rule”

“The amount of learning guidance, that is, the number of questions and the degree to which they provide “direct or indirect prompts” will obviously vary with the kind of capability being learned… If what is to be learned is an arbitrary matter such as the name for an object new to the learner (say a pomegranate), there is obviously no sense in wasting time with indirect hinting or questioning in that hope that somehow the name will be “discovered”. In this case, just telling the student the answer is the correct for of guidance for learning. At the other end of the spectrum, however, are cases where less direct prompting is appropriate because this is a logical way to discover the answer and such discovery may lead to learning that is more permanent than that which results from being told the answer”

“Too much guidance may seem condescending to the quick learner, whereas too little can simply lead to frustration on the part of the slow learner”

Different kinds of learning outcomes for this event – by the nature of the capability to be learned

Intellectual skill – Present varied examples in varied contexts; also give elaborations to furnish clues for retrieval Cognitive strategy – Describe the strategy and give one or more application examples
Verbal information – Elaborate content by relating to larger bodies of knowledge, use mnemonics, images
Motor skill – Continue practice with informative feedback

WASD mnemonic?

6. Eliciting the performance

“We must now ask them to show that they know how to do it. We want them not only to convince us, but to convince themselves as well. Accordingly, the next event is a communication that in effect says “show me” or “do it”. Usually, this first performance following learning will use the same example (that is, the same stimulus material) with which the learners have been interacting all along. ”

7. Providing feedback

“…as a minimum, there should be feedback concerning the correctness or degree of correctness of the learner’s performance”

Forms of feedback in the game – aural, a square (or other object) changes colour, a door opens

8. Assessing performance

“The immediate indication that the desired learning has occurred is provided when the appropriate performance is elicited. This is, in effect, as assessment of learning outcome”

“When one sees the learner exhibit a single performance appropriate to the lesson objective, how does the observer or teacher tell that he or she has made a reliable observation?”

In the puzzle/obstacle course section, needing to repeat several, increasingly complex steps (preferably involving a lava pit  

“How is the teacher to be convinced that the performance exhibited by the learner is valid? This is a matter that requires two different decisions. The first is, does the performance in fact accurately reflect the objective?… The second judgement, which is no easier to make, is whether the performance has occurred under conditions that make the observation free of distortion? As an example, the conditions must be such that the student could not have “memorized the answer” or remembered it from a previous occasion. The teacher much be convinced, in other words, that the observation of performance reveals the learned capability in a genuine manner”

9. Enhancing retention and retrieval

“When information or knowledge is to be recalled, the existence of the meaningful context in which the material has been learned appears to offer the best assurance that the information can be reinstated”

Maybe the training level should use similar decor to the game level? 

“As for the assurance of transfer of learning, it appears that this can best be done by setting some variety of new tasks for the learner – tasks that require the application of what has been learned in situations that differ substantially from those used for the learning itself”

 Or maybe it should use different decor. Have to think about that one. The tasks in the actual Exploring the EDC game will certainly offer the variety.

“Variety and novelty in problem-solving tasks are of particular relevance to the continued development of cognitive strategies. As has previously been mentioned, the strategies used in problem solving need to be developed by the systematic introduction of occasions for problem solving, interspersed with other instructions.”

Interesting to see that constructivism doesn’t have the lock on higher level skill development, particularly in problem solving, that I’ve regularly read about.

Gagne (et al) wraps up by saying:

“In using the events of instruction for lesson planning, it is apparent that they must be organised in a flexible manner, which primary attention to the lesson’s objectives”

So it’s a relatively flexible system after all

One final thought about the game itself, maybe as some kind of reward there could be an art gallery that they could explore 

“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 web by 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.

Agostinho, S., Meek, J., & Herrington, J. (2005). Design methodology for the implementation and evaluation of a scenario-based online learning environment, Journal of Interactive Learning Research. 16(3), 229-242.

Schwier, R.A. and Misanchuk, E.R. (1993). Interactive Multimedia Instruction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications. Chapter 2, pp.19-33.

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.

TEDI (2006.) Teaching and learning glossary Retrieved August 14, 2007 from Teaching and Educational Development Institute website: http://www.tedi.uq.edu.au/teaching/toolbox/glossary.html#lectures

TEDI (2001) Teaching and assessment in large classes Retrieved August 14, 2007 from Teaching and Educational Development Institute website:http://www.tedi.uq.edu.au/largeclasses/pdfs/LitReview_3_Teach&Assess.pdf

Brown A.R., & Voltz B.D. (2005) Elements of Effective e-Learning Design, Retrieved August 14, 2007 International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/217/300

Prenksy, M. (2001a). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5).

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.

Robyler, M. D., Edwards, J., & Havriluk, M. A. (1997). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (pp. 54-79). New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Ok well this is a slightly more sizable piece of writing, let’s see how I go here.

Again, essentially an overview of differences between behaviourist/cognitivist (here referred to as directed instruction) and constructivist theory and practice.

Chapter begins with a guide to what is to be covered, a nice “advanced organiser” approach which gives the learner a mental framework to hang the new knowledge on.

• Information age means that we are constantly playing catchup and learning to learn is seen by many as a key skill.
• Need to become more effective decision makers.
• Directed Instruction = Behaviourism + Information processing branch of cognitivism
• Constructivism = comes from other branches of cognitivism (mainly a reaction to directed instruction approaches)
• Both theories focus on what Gagne calls “the conditions of learning”

Strengths of Directed Instruction approach

• can allow for individual pacing (students can be busy while teacher supports slower students)
• efficient (skill practice through drills)
• provides foundation skills needed for higher level skills
• instruction is replicable, quality is consistent
• some students like a structured learning environment

Strengths of Constructivist approach

• encourages higher level skills – problem solving, teamwork/collaboration, critical thinking, research
• adds context/relevance as a motivator and to anchor learning to students experiences
• students pushed to figure out what they need to learn to solve problems

Tennyson (1990) claims that about 30% of learning time should be spent on “acquiring knowledge” (e.g. verbal info and procedural knowledge) and 70% spent on the “employment of knowledge” (e.g., contextual skills, cognitive strategies and creative processes)

More about Directed Instruction:

• learning as a sequence of stimulus and response (response is the best indicator that learning has occurred)
• teachers and resources are the stimuli, skills demonstrated are the response
• information processing theory – learning = input variables (info) + processor (attention + short/long term memory) + outputs (responses)
• inputs that receive attention go to short-term memory (stm) for 5-20 secs, then on to long term (ltm) (hopefully)
• teachers shape info to make it more likely to move from stm to ltm, give practice exercises to help it.

Gagne’s events of instruction

1. Gaining attention
2. Informing the learner of the objective
3. Stimulating the recall of prerequisite info
4. Presenting new material
5. Providing learning guidance (cognitivist tools ?)
6. Eliciting performance
7. Providing feedback about correctness
8. Assessing performance
9. Enhancing retention and recall

Gagne’s learning hierarchy – build base skills first needed for more complex ones.

Systematic instructional design / Systems approaches – step by step process for preparing instructional materials

Problems with Directed Instruction approach

• leads to standardised testing => (teaching to the test)
• regimented
• weak support for higher level skills of problem solving etc
• more oriented to individuals, not group work (which is more prevalent in “the real world”)

More about Constructivism

The more I read about Constructivism, the more it annoys me. It’s ill defined, it seems to identify itself largely in terms of what it isn’t (i.e. directed instruction) and while some of it’s ideas are common sense – using real world examples to add motivation to content, using multimedia, developing problem solving and critical reflection skills – they seem fairly easy to apply to other approaches.

I’m also unconvinced about the obsession with collaborative group work (how do you ensure that all members of the group have digested the required knowledge and aren’t just coasting) as it seems oriented to creating happy little worker drones.

Some of the ideas about allowing learners all the time they want to discover things and also letting them learn things in the ways that they think are most suited seem completely divorced from the reality of a classroom. (Particularly in the VET sector).

I can see some use in a collaborative approach that encompasses students from a range of disciplines – for example, putting on a major music festival, with a student from design, p.r, public events, OHS etc I guess.

Anyway, this is what Robyler et al. have to say about it.

• focus on students motivation to learn and relevance to the real world
• activities meaningful to a student’s own experience
• provides scaffolding through supervised collaborative activities

According to Piaget: sometimes they fit new experiences into their existing schemes or patterns of behaviour, a process he called assimilation; sometimes they change their existing schemes to incorporate new experiences, which he called accommodation.

According to Lev Vygotsky: “children begin learning from the world around them, their social world, which is the source of all their concepts, ideas, facts, skills and attitudes”

According to Bruner: Discovery learning is an approach to instruction through which students interact with their environment – by exploring and manipulating objects, wrestling with questions and controversies or performing experiments

Teachers have found that discovery learning is most successful when students have prerequisite knowledge and undergo some structured experiences

According to Rand Spiro (et al.) :Cognitive Flexibility theory – calls for students to generate not only solutions to new problems but also the prior knowledge needed to solve the problems.

According to CTGV: Inert knowledge is “knowledge that can usually be recalled when people are explicitly asked to do so but is not used spontaneously in problem solving even though it is relevant”

Constructivist approaches:

• Problem oriented activities
• Visual mental models of problems to be solved
• Rich media environments
• Cooperative/collaborative group learning
• Learning through exploration
• Qualitative assessment – student portfolios, teacher narratives of student work habits, performance based assessments in combination with checklists of criteria for judging student performance

Problems with Constructivism:

• “Many teachers are still bound by the constraints of required curricula and they must ensure that their students accomplish existing district objectives as well as newer, more constructivist ones”
• Sometimes instructional activities based on constructivist models are more time-consuming, since they may call for teachers to organise and facilitate group work and to evaluate in authentic ways. By comparison, paper-and-pencil tests are both quicker to develop and easier to administer
• Papert feels that learning activities should be fairly unstructured and open-ended, frequently with no goal in mind other than discovery of “powerful ideas”
• How can one certify skill learning? – Just because a team of med students succeed in an operation, can all of them do it
• Are students able to find their own prior knowledge?
• Can students learn this knowledge in the best way?
• Little evidence that skills learnt this way do actually transfer to real world situations
• Minimal objective evidence to back it up.

Technology Integration Strategies

These are a few of the reasons that the writers offer to make more use of technology in the classroom.

Directed Models

• Self paced drills/tutorials allow lagging students to spend time catching up and make them feel less self-conscious
• Drill and practice help prerequisite skills become more automatic
• Advanced tutorials/resources can be made available to advanced students wishing to skip ahead
• I.T tools such as Word, CAD etc reduce some logistical tools – don’t teach skills in themselves but make production of student work easier
• I.T tools optimise scarce resources – stationery, teachers, simulations of lab experiments

Constructivist Models

• Add motivation
• Support creativity
• Allow for reflection
• Using more visual models of problems and creation of multimedia helps bypass literacy issues in some students
• Enhances cooperative work

Issues to consider in introducing technology to teaching

• Assessment for constructivist activities should be planned to occur over long time-frames
• Assessment should dovetail with the activities
• Flexibility is important – might need to change things as you are going
• Finding a balance between directed and constructivist approaches requires some experimentation.

Parts I’m unsure of

• Constructivists claim use of multimedia etc as relatively unique tool to overcome lack of base skills (eg literacy) but it can be used in any approach
• Simply accepting literacy problems and finding work-arounds feels wrong – literacy is a fundamental skill
• Critical reflection requires the ability to assess data and sources but more importantly the learner needs to care about it in the first place

This article discusses behaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism from an adult learning/training perspective.

Ok, so a few pages in and I’m already really appreciating the attitude towards learning taken by the authors. Their emphasis is squarely on how to take learning theories – behaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism – and translate them into concrete practical ideas and exercises for learning.

They’ve made it very clear that they see value in all of the theories and that the role of the instructional designer (I.D) is to understand all of the theories and be able to identify which learning situations they are best suited for. This comes down to the types of learners, the types of teachers presenting the material, the material itself and the context in which it is to be presented.

Understanding the theories allows the I.D to find the strategies and tactics in each for effective learning, know which ones to use, figure out how to integrate them into the learning environment and predict which will be most successful.

It offers a list of 7 questions that can be used to differentiate the theories.

1. How does learning occur?
2. Which factors influence learning?
3. What is the role of memory?
4. How does transfer* occur?
5. What types of learning are best explained by this theory?
6. What basic assumptions/principles of this theory are relevant to instructional design?
7. How should instruction be structured to facilitate learning?

*Transfer refers to the application of learned knowledge in new ways or situations, as well as to how prior learning affects new learning. (e.g. A student learns how to recognise/classify elms trees and then applies the same methods to maple trees)

Two opposing theories on the origin of knowledge – empiricism vs rationalism. Empiricism posits that knowledge comes from sensory input and our experiences, which we mesh together to form more complex associations. Seems reasonable. The learning focus comes in controlling the environment to maximise the occurence of associations.

Rationalism on the other hand says that learners discover what is already in their minds and knowledge is developed by reflection on what they already know in combination with the observations that trigger or reveal this knowledge. (This seems a little harder to grasp imho. The rationalist approach focuses on the best ways to structure new information so it is effectively encoded and sparks recall of related things that are already known. )

Behaviourism – learning (knowledge) takes the form of a response to stimuli (eg teacher holds up a flash card that says 4 + 2 = and the student says 6) – the primary focus is how the association between the stimulus and response is made, strengthed and maintained. Responses followed by reinforcement are more likely to recur in the future.

Behaviourism seems more useful (to me) in fact based situations. (As opposed to analytical / creative ones)

Hey, what do you know, the next question says much the same thing -

“These prescriptions have generally been proven reliable and effective in facilitating learning that includes discriminations (recalling facts), generalisations (defining and illustrating concepts), assocations (applying explanations), and chaining (automatically performing a specified procedure). However it is generally agreed the behavioural principles cannot adequately explain the acquisition of higher level skills or those that require a greater depth of processing (e.g., language development, problem solving, inference generating, critical thinking)(Schunk,1991)”

How Behaviourism is relevant to instructional design:

• An emphasis on producing observable and measurable outcomes in students [behavioural objectives, task analysis, criterion-reference assessment]
• Pre-assessment of students to determine where instruction should begin [learner analysis]
• Emphasis on mastering early steps before progressing to more complex levels of performance [sequencing of instructional presentation, mastery learning]
• use of reinforcement to impact performance [tangible rewards, informative feedback]
• Use of cues, shaping and practice to ensure a strong stimulus-response assocation [simple to complex sequencing of practice, use of prompts]

Stimulus is about something that the learner needs to know – generally as a question or an instruction to complete a task, the response is the answer or the successful completion of the task. Cues can be presented to facilitate the learning needed to create the correct response – examples of the correct answer or way to do something and repetition and reinforcement lead to the correct response being provided without the learner needing to rely on cues.

Cognitivism – this focusses more on more complex cognitive processes such as thinking, problem solving, language, concept formation and information processing.

It seems to be about equipping learners with effective learning strategies to process the information that they are given – as well as factoring in the students own beliefs and thought processes in interpreting/measuring how well they understand the knowledge.

Much more emphasis on connecting prior knowledge (which might not be exactly the same but close) to new knowledge – use of analogy to make new concepts seem familiar more quickly.

Sort of about identifying patterns which could be useful in problem solving by showing the learner what information they need to access to deal with a new situation that may resemble something they already know.

More about how to learn than how to teach.

“Knowledge acquisition is described as a mental activity that entails internal coding and structuring by the learner. The learner is viewed as a very active participant in the learning process” – I have to say here that this strikes me as the way that knowledge is acquired under any system – even behaviourism. This kind of statement assumes that in a behaviourist model (where it is implied that knowledge is simply branded onto the brain through sheer repetition) the learner doesn’t make any effort to apply their own meaning to the instruction/information being imparted and that they don’t relate it to other things that they have learnt. This process may not be built into the learning experience by the teacher but I would be surprised if it didn’t happen in the learner regardless.

Cognitivism, like behaviourism, emphasises the role that environmental conditions play in facilitating learning. Instructional explanations, demonstrations, illustrative examples and matched non-examples are all considered to be instrumental in guiding student learning. Similarly, emphasis is placed on the role of practice with corrective feedback.

Cognitive theories contend that environmental “cues” and instructional components alone cannot account for all the learning that results from an instructional situation. Additional key elements include the way that learners attend to, code, transform, rehearse, store and retrieve information. Learners’ thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and values are also considered to be valuable in the learning process.

Learning results when information is stored in the memory in an organised, meaningful manner. Teachers/designers are responsible for assisting learners in organising that information in some optimal way. Designers use techniques such as advance organisers, analogies, hierarchical relationships and matrices to help learners relate new information to prior knowledge. - This seems to say that the brain is a big filing cabinet and it’s easier to find something when it’s organised alphabetically. If teachers present information in a way that is structured differently to the behaviourist approach of simply dealing with the facts, are they simply presenting more facts or are they facilitating greater understanding? I guess if it is able to create more meaning for the learner, then it will be more memorable.

Transfer in Cognitivism works in the same way as in Behaviourism – “when a learner understands how to apply knowledge in different contexts, then transfer has occurred.”

“Specific instructional or real-world events will trigger particular responses but the learner must believe that the knowledge is useful in a given situation before he will activate it” – This is just a matter of knowing what you know and why it is useful. It’s about being able to create associations with existing knowledge and new input.

Cognitive theories are usually considered more appropriate for explaining complex forms of learning (reasoning, problem-solving, information processing) than are those of a more behavioural perspective.

Two techniques used by both camps in achieving this effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge transfer are simplification and standardisation. That is, knowledge can be analysed, decomposed and simplified into basic building blocks. Knowledge transfer is expedited if irrelevant information is eliminated. Well duh.

Behaviourists would focus on the design of the environment to optimise that transfer while cognitivists would stress efficient processing strategies.

So essentially, cognitivists teach study skills or they present cues that are more psychologically oriented to understanding. (Taking understanding to equal knowledge that a learner can ascribe personal meaning to)

The actions undertaken by the teacher or instructional designer seem to be the same (aside from the emphasis given to creating links to prior knowledge) , it’s mainly the language that has changed. Behaviourism revolves around the teacher, cognitivism revolves around the learner.

Both use feedback – B’s for “reinforcement”, C’s to “guide and support mental connections”.

Both use learner/task analysis – B’s to see what the learner already knows (and thus where to begin) and what “reinforcers should be most effective”. C’s to determine the learners predisposition to learning and how to design the most effective learning experience.

I guess the cognitivist approach in this case seems a more compassionate one however ultimately they both dumb down or ramp up the material depending on the learners capacities.

Techiques in the Cognitivist approach

• Emphasis on the active involvement of the learner in the learning process [learner control, metacognitive training (e.g. self-planning, monitoring and revising techniques)]
• Use of hierarchical analyses to identify and illustrate prerequisite relationships [cognitive task analysis procedures]
• Emphasis on structuring, organising and sequencing information to facilitate optimal processing [use of cognitive strategies such as outlining, summaries, synthesisers, advance organisers]
• Creation of learning environments that allow and encourage students to make connections with previously learned material [ recall of prerequisite skills, use of relevant examples, analogies]

Cognitivism seems to be more about making knowledge more meaningful by helping learners link it to existing knowledge. Learning needs to be more tailored to the learners needs and abilities. Use of analogies and metaphors is one cognitive strategy. Other cognitive strategies include the use of framing, mnemonics, concept mapping, advance organisers and so forth.

If the teacher does the work in shaping the information so that it is more easily absorbed by the learner, the learner still seems like a fairly passive participant in this process, just a better taught one.

Let’s see if the Constructivist approach brings the learner into the process any more.

Constructivism

Knowledge “is a function of how the individual creates meaning from his or her experiences”

I’m not sure that I understand how knowledge can be a function – this implies a process rather than an outcome or something relatively concrete. Knowledge of something can evolve over time as contexts change but ultimately it seems like something that is fixed.

Most cognitive psychologists think of the mind as a reference tool to the real world; constructivists believe that the mind filters input from the world to produce it’s own unique reality.

Is this to suggest that cognitivists take a near solipsistic view of the world and assume that all knowledge is already held in the mind? My understanding of cognitivism from the earlier part of the article suggests nothing of the sort.
The evolution of educational philosophies here seems at best to be that greater attention is paid to the (probably ever-present) ability of the learner to filter received information and process it.

I get the distinct impression that the people putting forward one theory/philosophy tend to misrepresent that which came before in an attempt to make the new seem more enlightened and progressive. (Or it could just be the authors of this article and/or the people that they are referencing).

Of course people apply their own experiences to data that they take in and of course they make links to other similar knowledge that they have in the course of giving it meaning, which is unavoidably personal. Encouraging and stimulating this is a sound method for encouraging learning but it’s hardly been invented in the last 20 years.

Constructivists do not share with cognitivists and behaviourists the belief that knowledge is mind-independent and can be “mapped” onto a learner. Constructivists do not deny the existence of the real world but contend that what we know of the world stems from our own interpretations of our experiences. Humans create meaning as opposed to acquiring it. Since there are many possible meanings to acquire from any experience, we cannot achieve a predetermined “correct”meaning.

Again, I’m not sure that this fairly represents the views of behaviourists or cognitivists at all. Cs and Bs from my reading focus on methods of delivering instruction, not the philosophical vagueries of whether something exists because one person has had a different experience of it to another. A nutritionist sees a banana as a source of potassium, a creationist as evidence of God and a farmer as a source of income but none will deny that it is a piece of fruit. (But maybe this is a difference between meaning and truth/facts – I think meaning shapes a view of truth but can’t change it and just because something thinks something is so, doesn’t mean it is.)

Knowledge emerges in contexts within which it is relevant.

Fair enough.

Constructivists argue that knowledge is situationally determined (Jonassen, 1991a) Just as the learning of new vocabulary words is enhanced by exposure and subsequent interaction with those words in context (as opposed to learning their meanings from a dictionary), likewise it is essential that content knowledge be embedded in the situation in which it is used.

Again, makes a lot of sense
(I wonder if my work in the fact based, highly practically oriented VET sector is colouring my views on these philosophies to a degree. Some of this particularly meta stuff seems interesting but irrelevant at times). This bit is good though.

Just as shades of meaning of given words are constantly changing a learner’s “current” understanding of a word, so too will concepts continually evolve with each new use.

Again, in the VET sector this seems a little overstated. Things seem a little more static here. I see what they mean though.

For this reason, it is critical that learning occur in realistic settings and that the selected learning tasks be relevant to the student’s lived experience.

The goal of instruction is not to ensure that students know particular facts but rather that they elaborate on and interpret information.

This type of learning serves a different purpose to that in a behavioural model.
I’m finding that I’m quoting a lot more from this section of the article as it’s hard to summarise what the constructivists are about. Knowledge seems to be a dirty word though.

Representations of experiences are not formalised or structured into a single piece of declarative knowledge and then stored in the head. The emphasis is not on retrieving intact knowledge but on providing learners with the means to creat novel and situation-specific understandings by “assembling” prior knowledge from diverse sources appropriate to the problem at hand.

Isn’t this just association by another – ridiculously long – name? Taking a range of information that you have processed and added meaning to and applying it in a different situation. (After all, in any theory, you aren’t going to take prior knowledge from inappropriate sources, are you. )

I’m starting to actually appreciate heuristics now – any idea that you can’t express clearly in a handful of words is starting to feel like padding and technocrat-ese.

Constructivists emphasise the flexible use of pre-existing knowledge rather than the recall of pre-packaged schemas

Ok good, so it encourages problem solving – but doesn’t cognitivism
The point seems to be that constructivism offers an approach which is more about context than any system before.

There is no need for the mere acquisition of fixed, abstract, self-contained concepts or details. To be successful, meaningful and lasting, learning must include all three of these crucial factors : activity (practice), concept (knowledge) and culture (context). (Brown et al. 1989)

But I thought that “experiences are not… structured into a single piece of declarative knowledge and then stored in the head”?. And doesn’t the behaviourist and cognitivist approach make use of activity(practice) in reinforcement?
Context seems to be the big revelation of constructivism. (A worthwhile addition to the previous theories but not awe-inspiring).

Something else about the discussion of constructivism so far – I’m yet to see a single concrete example of how this is applied in the learning environment – but I’ll read on now.

Now I consider myself a good progressive lefty but the more I read about the underlying philosophy of constructivism, the more I am reminded of the words of Cartman, E (2001) – “It’s all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy crap”. There’s nothing new here that isn’t simple commonsense and there is a lot of touchy-feely-nobody -can-be-wrong-because-everyones-opinion-is-valid-but-come-assessment-time-this-is-out-the-window bullshit. (I like blogging, there is no way I could say this in an essay)

I’m also thinking of heuristics as I’m going here – my favourite so far is Constructivism is a bunch of tree hugging hippy crap.

Can you tell that it’s late and I”m getting tired – I’m sure that at the heart of the constructivist philosophy are some valuable and useful insights but the language surrounding it is horrendously obtuse, ideologically driven and seemingly irrelevant to the needs of actual learners.

The constructivist position assumes that transfer can be facilitated by involvement in authentic tasks anchored in meaningful contexts.

Yes, the context in which learning occurs adds to the learners ability to bring their other experiences to the fore in creating associations which help them to understand the things that they are being taught. (Oh, shouldn’t say taught, I think the point of constructivism is to remove teachers from the context entirely). This seems to be the only new thing so far.

Ooh, got another one – Hulk inspired this time. Constructivism make Col mad – Col smash.

Ok, this seems to be the crux of it all – the goal of instruction is to accurately portray tasks, not to define the structure of learning required to achieve a task

“introductory knowledge acquisition is better supported by more objectivistic approaches (behavioural and/or cognitive) but suggests a transition to constructivistic approaches as learners acquire more knowledge which provides them with the conceptual power needed to deal with complex and ill-structured problems”

Ok, now we are getting somewhere. It’s more about working at a higher level , not learning about things but learning how to apply the things that you would already know in the course of doing a particular job – say working as an Instructional Designer.

“For example, a typical constructivist’s goal would not be to teach novice I.D. students straight facts about Instructional Design but to prepare students to use ID facts as an ID might use them. As such, performance objectives are not related so much to the content as they are to the processes of construction.”

Ok, so that sheds new light on that other article I was – uh – less flattering about. The Tse-Kian one. Still, the whole emphasis on the use of multimedia there seemed way off track and I stand by that.

“Some of the specific strategies utilised by constructivists include situating tasks in real world contexts, use of cognitive apprenticeships (modeling and coaching a student toward expert performance), presentation of multiple perspectives (collaborative learning to develop and share alternative views), social negotiation (debate, discussion, evidence-giving), use of examples as real “slices of life”, reflective awareness and providing considerable guidance on the use of constructive processes”

The following are several specific assumptions or principles from the constructivist position that have direct relevance for the I.D

• An emphasis on the identification of the context in which the skills will be learned and subsequently applied [anchoring learning in meaningful contexts]
• An emphasis on learner control and the capability of the learner to manipulate information [actively using what is learnt]
• The need for information to be presented in a variety of different ways [revisiting content at different times, in rearranged contexts, for different purposes and from different conceptual perspectives]
• Supporting the use of problem-solving skills that allow learners to go “beyond the information given” [developing pattern-recognition skills, presenting alternative ways of representing problems]
• Assessment focused on the transfer of knowledge and skills [presenting new problems and situations that differ from the conditions of the initial instruction]

Ok,this is all making a lot more sense now. I guess the problem with summing up peoples opinions about a new field that they are quite invested in is that they will tend to couch the discussion in far more ideological and evangelical terms than others.

As one moves along the behaviourist-cognitivist-constructivist continuum, the focus of instruction shifts from teaching to learning, form the passive transfer of facts and routines to the active application of ideas to problems.

Meaning is created by the learner: learning objectives are not pre-specified nor is instruction pre-designed.

Are you sure this isn’t just a high-falutin way for teachers to get out of delivering instruction?
All that said, I think teachers still have a strong responsibility to facilitate this learning by providing adequate and timely support and feedback.

Ah, just like it says here I guess

Here the task of the designer are two-fold: 1) to instruct the student on how to construct meaning, as well as how to effectively monitor, evaluate and update those constructions; and 2) to align and design experiences for the learner so that authentic, relevant contexts can be experienced.

Ok, so in a nutshell – this is probably closer to an actual, usable heuristic – constructivist learning is contextually problem based. It’s all about already having a base level of knowledge and being put in a real world situation with a job to do where you have to work out how to use what you know and how to learn what you don’t know but need to finish it.

Not so hard after all.

Overall then,

What might be most effective for novice learners encountering a complex body of knowledge for the first time, would not be effective, efficient or stimulating for a learner who is more familiar with the content. Typically, one does not teach facts the same way that concepts or problem-solving are taught; likewise one teaches differently depending on the proficiency level of the learners involved.
(Holy crap – just did a quick word count – this weighs in at 3733 so far – no wonder it’s taken a while – I think I need to do this differently. Still, I feel like I’ve learnt a lot from this)

A behavioural approach can effectively facilitate mastery of the content of a profession (knowing what); cognitive strategies are useful in teaching problem-solving tactics where defined facts and rules are applied in unfamiliar situations (knowing how); and constructivist strategies are especially suited to dealing with ill-defined problems through reflection-in-action.

Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place.

Tasks requiring a low level of processing (eg basic paired associations, discriminations, rote memorisation) seem to be facilitated by… a behavioural outlook (eg stimulus-response, contiguity of feedback/response)

Tasks requiring an increased level of processing (eg classifications, rule or procedural executions) … have a stronger cognitive emphasis (eg schematic organisation, analogical reasoning, algorithmic problem solving)

Tasks demanding high levels of processing (eg heuristic problem solving, personal selection and monitoring of cognitive strategies) are frequently best learned with … the constructivist perspective (eg situated learning, cognitive apprenticeships, social negotiation)

The approach of cherry-picking the best strategies from the three, based on the complexity of the task and the knowledge level of the learners is known as “systematic eclecticism”

OK, that’s it.

Great article guys – some of the constructivism stuff drove me nuts but we got there in the end. (Maybe a few small case-studies might have been nice but that’s just me)