ICT in Education

Introduction to Educational research

Intro to Educational research is (hopefully) my last subject in this degree. I won’t say that it’s one I’ve been looking forward to as it is essentially a how-to-research-properly subject that seems to get tacked on to every Masters program in the world of academia. Given that I’ve successfully managed to complete the rest of the degree without it, it seems a little redundant but I shouldn’t look some gift knowledge in the mouth and hopefully it will help down the track.

Specifically the subject will address questions such as: why conduct research? what constitutes ‘good’ research? how are methodologies and theoretical frameworks for research determined? what are the ethical implications of conducting and reporting on research?

At the end of this subject, I should be able to:

1. Demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the nature of inquiry and research in educational contexts
2. Identify, critique and articulate published research from the education field
3. Demonstrate knowledge and skills in the design and conduct of education research and inquiry
4. Plan and present a research proposal

In the field of education we take the term research to mean the collection of unique data in some systematic manner as part of an investigation to respond to a problem.

So I have to identify an area that relates to my work that I might want to research.

This is an example of a classroom teacher who has identified something within her teaching practice that she wanted to examine further.  Consider:
-    Who the teacher has involved in the research
-    The issues the teacher wanted to explore (perhaps the questions you think the teacher posed)
-    What the key findings were for her
-    What her findings mean for you as you read the article

Her learners (both in business and creative writing streams)

Whether a new approach works for her learners

Key findings – learners appreciate richer media environments

Well duh.

-    Who you would involve in the research
-    The issues you would explore (perhaps the questions you might ask)
-    Who you would want to know about the information you gather

Thoughts on: Technology and human issues in reusing learning objects (Collis & Strijker, 2004)

Collis, B., & Strijker, A. (2004). Technology and Human Issues in Reusing Learning Objects. Journal of Interactive Media in Education. May (4). Retrieved 10 July 2006 from http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/2004/4/

This paper asks the question – will the rise of internet technology lead to greater re-use of learning resources

It then makes it’s position very clear – no.

A big problem I’m seeing with this paper is that it doesn’t clearly define learning objects

The two arguments for this are “…that human aspects not technology will constrain what will be done with learning objects. Our other argument is that the learning philosophy that seems to underlie many of the discussions and the technology relating to learning objects will limit their depth of development and impact”

Personally, these arguments seem a little thin but let’s dig in and take a proper look.

Collis and Strijker look at three different contexts that learning objects are used in and how the approaches in these three are fundamentally different.

“The most substantial problems however were related to incompatibilities with the local context and culture of the end users… The reusability of an electronic learning resource depends on its fit with the language, culture, curriculum, computer-use practices and pedagogical approaches of the potential learners and their instructors. Making this fit has proven to be very difficult”

The three contexts they look at are universities, corporate training and military training.

University context:

• “instructors also design, develop and deliver courses, frequently bringing their research into the course materials”
• instructor chooses how to structure the course
• courses regularly updated to accommodate updated research
• content may be more instructor specific
• limited use of tutorial software
• focus on developing higher level skills

Corporate context:

• stronger emphasis on just-in-time learning
• content may be industry generic (often outsourced) or business specific (developed in-house)
• content regularly updated to match business changes
• sharing and reusing objects/resources commonplace
• learning tends to divide into formal, structured (often LMS based) and informal (peer, c.o.p based)
• elearning seen (by the authors) as almost entirely online, little face to face (grudging acknowledgement of blended approaches)

Military context:

• heavy emphasis on consistency of information
• materials highly specialised and localised
• materials developed in-house
• strong task focus to learning

Comparing these three contexts:

• university content the most divergent, focussed on the instructor who also develops it – reuse relates to reuse of their material in different courses
• corporate must address the business needs and content is more fixed
• universities are good at providing academics with templates, corporates assemble learner centred resource databases
• military approach is fairly static and centralised, instructors generally not developers
• all three approaches tend to separate classroom/lecture based learning from computer based training
• uni’s use a LCMS, corporates use an LMS, military may also use an LMS but in a more secure way
• uni – instructor considers the learning object their IP and may not share willingly, corporate learning objects are company property, reuse is more common, military learning objects more secret but reuse is important

Learning philosophies

The authors divide the two standard philosophies into knowledge-acquistion (behaviourism/directed learning) and participation (constructivism, social constructivism)

Participation approach 

• more about learners contributing reusable learning objects
• learning objects function as discussion sparks

Acquisition approach

• this (according to the authors) is the approach taken by LMS’ (which I think is rubbish, it’s just a tool)
• the “least complex of three levels of learning, followed by highly individual constructivist approaches where the goal is self-regulated learning and the highest and most-desirable level: collaborative learning, participation in a community and knowledge creation and sharing. (Maybe – and only maybe – in a university context but what about schools and VET – these researchers seem to forget that there is education before you turn 18)
• “the snapshots and freezeframes of knowledge objects… are not to be mistaken for the processes of learning” (Lambe, 2002. pp. 5-6)

These authors clearly dislike learning objects – why are we being exposed to this level of negativity – if you don’t want to use it, fine, don’t but it doesn’t mean that don’t have usefulness.

Learning object lifecycle 

“A learning object can be seen as going through six distinct stages in it’s lifecycle: Obtaining or creating, labelling, offering, selecting, using and retaining”

What about designing?

Obtaining: 

“material is obtained in a digital form for easy distribution and adaptability”
How they are developed depends on the developer but Why comes down to the learning context.

University – to supplement the textbook by supporting classroom activities
Corporate – to make learning appealing and to cut costs by replacing instructors.  the object is ideally editable, compatible with inhouse technology and brand-able.
Military – for internal consistency and localisation

Where do they come from:

Universities – instructors resources, colleagues, projects, conferences, the web
Corporate – industry bodies, external vendors
Military – inhouse

Labelling:

Essentially tagging and metadata – database-oriented developers tools (such as Learning object repositories)

Why:

Universities: locating resources, organisation
Corporate: linking it to competencies, quality control
Military: archiving and reproduction, efficiency in recreating the resources (e.g shutterspeed of photos)

All of these Whys could easily be transferrable across the three contexts.

Offering: 

Where they come from  – see above

Selecting: 

There may be associated tools that support selection of these materials – (which presumably use the aforementioned tagging) – as well as Competency Assessment Tools, which can test learners and recommend pertinent learning objects.

Instructors consider the relevance of the material to their context (well duh)

Using: 

Pure (unchanged) or adapted – customised for the new environment.

Modification time, effort and expense means that the Pure versions can be better if they are appropriate (again, well duh)

Adaptation requires full access to all of the resources, without limitations. – “therefore the packaging of learning objects… is an essential method for distributing objects between systems. Distribution of packages includes the copying of learning objects instead of linking. By editing the learning object, a new instance or version of the learning material is created. Linking material is seen as an appropriate way to reuse material more than once.”

“The way a learning object is used reflects the underlying assumptions about how learning can be instantiated within a given context”

Retaining: 

“After or during the actual use of a certain learning object that object can becom outdated and should therefore be deleted or revised” – like a textbook I guess. “New instances or versions may be created to revise the original object”

ISSUES: 

specifications / standards: quickly evolving and rather technical – need for some technical skill in developers

granularity: objects might need adaption at ” course, module, lesson or object level”

reuse: interoperability between systems, exchange of material and the relevant financial/licensing/copyright issues

meta-tagging: objective vs subjective metadata – objective comes from external sources, subjective may come from someone who doesn’t know what they are doing

access and privileges: confidentiality, copyright, classified material, network security, terrorism

usability: need to be easy to use

time and effort: metadata tagging doesn’t provide obvious initial benefits and isn’t as highly valued as it should be

pedagogical aspects: “the opinions of those involved about the potential pedagogical value of learning objects can vary enormously, particularly in different organisational contexts” – oh for goodness sake, this says absolutely nothing at all – why am I reading this rubbish?

organisational payoff:  “What’s in it for the organisation?” – ok, I’m out of here, this is getting ridiculous – what’s in any form of training for the organisation?

intrinsic motivation: “why should creators want to share their material? Spontaneous sharing on the world wide web rarely occurs in the corporate or military sectors…”

willingness: “is it a protected domain of knowledge”

support services : “What are the resources available for the human support of the different phases of the lifestyle” – well finally, an observation that doesn’t suck or state the blindingly obvious.

access and privileges: “Who can or cannot have access to learning objects?” – didn’t you already use this heading?

ownership and copyright: “who owns the material, the creator, the development group, the subject matter expert, the publisher, the internet provider, the host organisation or the organisation itself?” – same questions could be asked about textbooks.
Semantic web and ontologies: An answer? To what question?

The authors make the point that some people claim that learning objects will change learning forever because they are accessible and taggable but they believe that all 6 aspects of the lifecycle are equally important and the other 4 make things complicated.

They concede that the ability to share and search for resources using technology can be valuable and feel that intelligent use of resources will help resolve many of the implementation issues. They feel that they are best suited to knowledge transfer (acquisitional approach) but can’t help at higher levels (of course, you could always try developing something – oh, I don’t know, like a game – to address this)

They seem to feel that learning objects can’t/won’t be used in blended learning environments

I think our class did something bad and making us read that article was our punishment.

Add comment October 9th, 2007

Looking at: 2 case studies of multimedia learning objects

Bennett, S. and Reilly, P. (1998). Using interactive multimedia to improve operator training at Queensland Alumina Limited. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 14(2), 75-87. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet14/bennett.html.

Lockyer, L. & Bennett, S. (2003) Digital video cases: Investigating the effectiveness of technology-supported continuing professional education for general practitioners. In N. Smythe (Ed.), Proceedings of the Apple University Consortium Conference (pp. 13.1-13.7). (Proceedings published on CD-ROM.)

These are two papers published about the process of developing some multimedia learning resources. They are written by some of my uni lecturers, which makes this a little weird but I’ll press on anyway.

The first revolves around a package called Dual Diagnosis, which is designed to assist GPs with evaluating patients with both mental illness and substance dependencies. It includes video clip case study examples of patients attending a number of sessions with a doctor. It also has pre and post tests and a range of printed information and weblinks.  There is also the ability to take notes within the tool.

Overall this is a pretty well put together package (well, at least given my knowledge of medicine) – however one thing I would have found useful was more in depth feedback in the pre and post tests. It gives you a breakdown of the questions that  you got right and wrong but doesn’t reiterate what they were and what the correct answers should have been. This might have broken the elegance of the single page presentation but would have been more helpful.

“Case-based methods are considered to support learners in making links between theory and practice – specifically such methods support active, independent learning with authentic situations and interactions. (Bromley, 1986). Learners are required to analyse these ‘real-world’ problems, reflect on their understandings, interact with other learners and thus explore multiple perspectives and reflect upon or suggest a course of action. (Bennett, Harper and Hedberg, 2002). Specifically these strategies are seen to support deep understanding, critical analysis, decision-making and communication skill development”

This package was tested on two groups of GPs – one that had attended a face-to-face orientation session and another that hadn’t. This paper was written before the evaluation was complete but some of the responses to and concerns about the package were interesting – “Participants expressed concern about using it in an office setting – particularly with a patient in the office. They also identified that they already felt pressed for time and were unsure that they would find opportunity to work through the package. Some identified lack of access to a computer or were concerned that they might lack the necessary technology literacy to use the package”

This suggests to me that some people will instinctly react against the use of multimedia technology and that the design of the interface should be as simple as possible (which I think it is in this case) and probably should reflect something that the learner is already familiar and comfortable with.  

The second package is a fairly specific training package for alumina producers at an aluminium refinery in Queensland. It is very much about training workers in particular processes to ensure maximum efficiency and safety.

Bennett begins by illustrating the proven usefulness of multimedia in education.

“Interactive multimedia can offer a range of benefits over traditional training approaches by providing improved flexibility, cost and time effectiveness, consistency and availability… Forman (1995) identifies benefits and values in four major areas – organisational benefits, instructional benefits, learning effectiveness and business efficiency.l Multimedia can also provide improved and more consistent testing and administration… Keppell and Richards (1996) also suggest that self paced multimedia materials offer a private environment which enables trainees to review the material as many times as they wish”

The multimedia package was designed as a supplementary resource to the face to face instruction.

“A new training structure was designed which incorporated a multimedia tutorial which could be used before, during and after practical training sessions with an experienced operator”

There was a comprehensive development cycle used:

1. Needs assessment
2. Costing and scheduling
3. Content collection
4. Planning grid development
5. Editorial
6. Client review
7. Revision and sign-off
8. Image collection
9. Digitising
10. Authoring
11. Audio
12. Beta testing
13. Client review
14. Revision and sign-off
15. Delivery
16. Trial and evaluation

“These multimedia packages were developed to train operators of heavy mining equipment and were designed to address limited literacy and computer skills through the following strategies:

• the use of simple direct language
• limiting screen information to a single concept
• logical explanations for procedures
• use of graphics to support and explain text
• use of large buttons
• avoidance of icons
• limited navigation options (next, back, help, quit, menu and settings”

“Further development of this model has seen the inclusion of optional, full narration which matches the on-screen text and text/audio help which provides an explanation of the features on each screen. Kenworthy (1993) recommends that information be both visualised and verbalised for poor readers and that supporting audio match on-screen text exactly to allow the identification of unfamiliar words.”

Those are some particularly handy hints – the use of audio in a lot of educational multimedia resources is very underdone and I think it should be used in most places that you have text. I was surprised by the avoidance of icons – maybe this means icons by themselves without accompanying text – I might have to follow that up.  

All in all a couple of interesting projects with some good detailed information about the multimedia design and development process.

Add comment October 1st, 2007

Thoughts on: Principles of Instructional Design (Gagne, Briggs & Wagner 1992)

Gagne, R., Briggs, L., & Wagner, W. (1992). Principles of Instructional Design. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Javanovich. pp 185-204.

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 

1 comment September 30th, 2007

Thoughts on: Online learning communities: Investigating a design framework (Brook & Oliver 2003)

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.

Add comment September 17th, 2007

Thoughts on: Navigation options in Interactive Multimedia (Harper, 1992)

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.

Add comment September 7th, 2007

Thoughts on: Creating Motivating Interactive Learning environments (Hedberg & Harper 1997)

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”

Add comment September 4th, 2007

Thoughts on: Information Landscapes – Florin (1990)

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 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.  

1 comment August 27th, 2007

Comparing the prescriptive and the democratic approaches to education

Analysis of Instructional Strategies.

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).

Add comment August 21st, 2007

915 Heuristic 3: Plan ahead for technology problems when using it in network based learning.

Information and communication technology (ICT) has made possible a radical reshaping of education design in the last few decades. Teaching and learning delivered online has become more flexible, more accessible, more interactive, more collaborative and more engaging. “A feature of online instruction over paper-based distance learning approaches is the ability to employ multiple media types to present ideas and concepts.” (Brown and Voltz, 2005)

While teachers and instructional/educational designers should avoid focusing on specific forms of technology while designing network based learning (Grubbs, 2006), it’s important to have (or have access to) knowledge about alternate options in case hardware or software fails or is inadequate. Grubbs (2006) suggests that to “ensure the greatest success, instructors may benefit by partnering with other faculty or staff with expertise in incorporating technology in the most effective ways possibly.”

Problems with ICT can prevent learners from accessing course content and resources, submitting assessment items or communicating and collaborating with fellow students and teachers. They could come in the form of hardware or software failures (e.g. the learning management system, streaming media server, learning objects), low bandwidth which makes accessing large data files (such as videos) impractical or even the design of the ICT systems being used themselves.

Oliver (2004) makes the point that “the courseware management systems that are currently being implemented (eg. WebCT and Blackboard) have been designed very much to support content oriented approaches” (p. 4) Admittedly this isn’t quite the same as the class email system going down however it still presents its own set of challenges to a teacher trying to develop a course which focuses on “performance and capabilities as intended learning outcomes” (p. 1)

In my work with the Flexible Learning Solutions team at CIT, part of my role is to support teachers and learners using our learning management system (WebCT) as well as the streaming media server and we also try to provide support with external social web tools such as blogs and wikis. The negative impact on learner motivation when ICT learning tools don’t work for them, particularly when they aren’t very technologically confident, can reach the point where the learner is prepared to give up entirely.

Many of these situations are unavoidable however there are more often than not easy work-arounds to problems when they occur as well as alternate strategies that can be put into place in advance to minimise disruption to learning activities.

• “A CD-ROM was prepared especially for students with a limited bandwidth Internet connection” (Grubbs 2006)

• Provide alternate contact details (e.g. Email or IM) for teachers and learners

• Use a Web 2.0 service such as YouTube or TeacherTube for video – being Flash-based it is more likely to be supported by learners individual computer set ups at home

• Many institutions have some kind of unit supporting educational technology.

Grubbs, J. Integrating Methods to Achieve an Effective Online Learning Environment. Illinois ONline Network Research Case Studies. Retrieved 10 July 2006 from http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/casestudies/vol2num1/grubbs/index.asp

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

Oliver, R. (2004). Moving beyond instructional comfort zones with online courses.. In R.Atkinson, C. McBeath, D. Jonas-Dwyer & R. Phillips (Eds), Beyond the comfort zone: Proceedings of the 21st ASCILITE Conference (pp. 713-723). Perth, 5-8 December. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/procs/oliver-r.html

Add comment August 19th, 2007