An interesting overview of some useful guidelines for setting up and running a successful community of practice. This is heavily business oriented and the communities seem to all be based within one organisation but some of the ideas are still useful – particularly as these are things that can be hard to sell to the finance types who need to pin measurable achievements to money spent.
“What are communities of practice? In brief, they’re groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise”
“People in communities of practice share their experiences and knowledge in free-flowing, creative ways that foster new approaches to problems”
“Communities of practice… are informal – they organise themselves, meaning they set their own agendas and establish their own leadership. And membership in a community of practice is self-selected”
There’s a lot of stuff in here about the need for strong organisational support in nurturing a community of practice in a business – ideally there will be a senior executive who is able to step in and provide support when the community identifies problems (such as I.T infrastructure that holds things up) . They also make the point that managers need to use non-traditional means to assess the value of the community of practice – anecdotal evidence from participants about how problems were solved etc. (Good forum for sharing “best practice”). (Apparently they can also help with staff retention)
In essence, this might be a useful paper with a lot of case-study type examples if you were wanting to create a c.o.p in your large enterprise – but there’s virtually nothing about communities that stretch across fields.
This is the design statement for my latest foray into game based learning. I’ve used FPS Creator once more to create a democratic learning environment which creates a simulation of the Education Development Centre here. Learners can access scenario tasks in the course of find out about the multitude of awesome services and knowledge we can provide
This is a fairly wordy section on a quite specific aspect of the process of designing interactive multimedia so I’m just going to scan for salient quotes. (I’m a little tired
“Given the capability of multimedia systems to house massive quantities of information and to construct complex delivery systems, it seems reasonable to encourage the development of instructional systems which contain mre than a single cognitive orientation. In this way, the designer can impose consistency between the cognitive orientation and different learning tasks, and also capitalise on the possibility of designing instruction which is compatible with learning styles and preferences”
I won’t quote it but there’s a pretty good summation of the differences between the behaviourist, cognitivist and constructivist philosophies and approaches in this chapter.
They then move on to look at options for specifying content.
“Many projects will result in a glut of information you need to organise. In fact, one can argue that instructional design is largely the process of organising rather than creating, opportunities for learning”
The Content Outline is a suggested approach, consisting of a set of objectives for the course, the content necessary to achieve them and the treatment that the the content might be given. (How it is presented)
From here, Design specifications are quite useful – simple things to ensure consistency across the multimedia product- These might be broken into technical standards, instructional formats and aesthetic considerations.
Technical standards could look at issues like:
Writing style
Screen format (eg a single idea to a screen of text)
Grammar (eg no contractions to be used)
Numbering
Layout restrictions
Abbreviations
Instructional formats could consider:
Strategy (e.g scenarios with background reading)
Menu Organisation (advanced organisers)
Length of segments (time allocated to activities)
Reading level
Test-like events
feedback
Aesthetic considerations:
Screen text (font + size)
Color
Computer vs video
music
illustrations
visual cues
From here, Misanchuk & Schwier see the next step as setting up the framework for the content.
This takes five forms.
Core instruction: introductory segments (what’s to come, objectives) + core instruction (the primary content) + summary segments (reinforcing key points)
Complementary instruction: help segments (rephrasing or embellishing core instruction) + remedial segments (filling in scaffolding knowledge that should already be there) + additional information (enriching but not essential extra info). (Complementary instruction shouldn’t appear by default but should be easily accessible if it is needed)
Management elements: quizzes, games, scenarios which offer feedback (or assessment)
Navigation elements: easy access to all sections of content, global escape route, “you are here” type maps
Interactive elements: immediacy of response, non-sequential access of information, adaptability, feedback, options, bi-directionality and interruptability (pause and escape options and context sensitive help)
“For interaction to be dynamic, it is necessary to build content for the varied directions the instruction may follow.This means developing a great deal of content which any particular learner may never see.”
From here, Schwier and Misanchuk move on to the matter of allowing learners to practice their new knowledge in the multimedia environment. They outline some generalised principles for this:
practice during instruction should be varied, not constant
as familiarity with the learning task increases, so should the difficulty of practice increase
learners should be weaned from prompts as their facility with knowledge or skills increases
use practice often during the early stages of learning and gradually lengthen the space between practice sessions on a particular topic as instruction progresses
for some types of learning, practice should progress from accuracy to speed to automaticity
review segments can be used successfully in place of questions
feedback should identify the successful and the unsuccessful features of the interaction and describe why incorrect responses or omissions are insufficient
learners can benefit from memory or organisational strategies to make information more meaningful
practice events should require learners to use information and discover and derive new relationships in information
practice should be designed to motivate learners
Learner control:
There are a range of areas that learners might control in a multimedia product:
which content they access
the method it is presented in
whether they access supplementary material
the order they access the content
how much practice they undertake
level of difficulty of exercises undertaken
They finish up the chapter by looking at some different studies on what happens when learners use multimedia products in groups – some show that retention is the same for singles as pairs but drops off with 3 or more in the group while other studies don’t. (But the 2 vs 3+ thing seems to make a certain amount of sense – hard to cram three people around a screen for one thing)
Harper, B. (1992) Navigation Options in Interactive Multimedia. In J. G. Hedberg and J. Steele, Educational Technology for the Clever Country, Selected papers from EdTech’92,Conference of the Australian Society for Educational Technology. University of Adelaide-Australia, 1-3 October (pp 10-16). Belconnen, A.C.T. : AJET Publication for the Society.
This article, like many others, starts out with the usual rah-rah interactive multimedia is great, shift to learner-control, enriching the learning experience yada yada spiel. It’s all fairly true but it seems to be at the start of every article I’ve read for a while now.
Once it gets past this preliminary stuff though, it is actually fairly useful and contains a number of interesting approaches to designing navigation in multimedia. It’s a little unfortunate that the article is 15 years old though as you get the sense that there’s probably been a lot more work done since. It therefore requires a little extrapolation to move the concepts to the 3D game based environment that I’m thinking about (I think Wolfenstein 3D had only just been released at the time this was written)
My project is to develop a 3D game space that the learner walks through in first person perspective. It provides new teachers at CIT an orientation to the services and resources available within the Education Development Centre at CIT, which includes Curriculum, Teacher Education, the Library and Flexible Learning Solutions (the online learning unit).
It’s possible to run this as a multiplayer game which allows for real-time text chat interaction between a number of players.
I’ll run through some of the interesting ideas about multimedia navigation in the paper and how I might use them in my game.
(To begin, here is why good navigation design is important)
“… used effectively, the technology can allow users to interact in ways that the designers of the system did not plan… good instructional design of interactive multimedia materials makes it unnecessary to materials to be structured for the learner. Effective student use of unstructured materials however, will depend on the type of access to the information the users can obtain i.e. the navigation options available to the user. ”
“When a learner can branch down multiple paths and rapidly change the direction and focus of the learning sequence, there is possible interference with effective learning through the inappropriate application of information by the learner to their internal schemas”
Navigation options:
“the guide metaphor where a character is created and used by the author to link ideas and visual travel through the hypermedia materials” – this is certainly one approach to the game and could be done in several different ways.
A non-player-character is automated and sets the learner tasks to complete in the environment (although this isn’t a guide so much I guess) – there could be NPCs in hallways that can answer basic queries about where certain areas are. The other option is to have a live guide in the multiplayer version who runs a bit of an orientation – though this isn’t necessarily very practical or realistic.
“other suggested structures include those which are based on ideas such as sequential navigation (using cues to show how far you are along a path; the clues varying from a simple screen number of the total or some conceptual description of the sequence), visual navigation (using a plan of the possible paths) and hybrid navigation (mixtures of both) (Hedberg & Harper, 1991)”
This has given me some thoughts about ways to set up the activities – in recreational gaming I’m fairly partial to sandpit style games such as the Grand Theft Auto series, where you can take on missions or just explore the environment. (But you need to complete certain missions to unlock new missions or new parts of the environment). I could have the entire area explorable, with different kinds of resources accessible (including being able to chat to all the staff) as well as having a room where you can get your missions from. You could collect keys (or something) which allow you to unlock rooms which provide additional missions. You could measure your progress by looking at the rooms you’ve opened.
Techniques to provide navigation cues for users:
“using colour to identify the area or major learning path”
This actually works pretty well as we recently had the rooms in our area repainted and each dept went with a different colour scheme. I’m thinking that it would be useful to have a few “You are here” maps around the place and/or some signs which could be colour coded without too much difficulty.
“simple use of contextual clues, regular use of a standard format of basic word style format to indicate links with other sources of information”
Other than the fact that this seems like a fairly tortured sentence, what I got from it was that in the rooms, on the walls near the desks of the different people we could have text and icons that reflect their areas of expertise. These could also be replicated on the maps. (E.g an artists palette for our graphic designer)
“written directions which appear in separate areas or windows to the information required to learn the underlying concepts”
I agree with this idea although I’m not sure entirely how to put it into action in the software that I’m thinking of. (FPS Creator). If the player/learner had a key that they could toggle a PDA on and off, you could have this information there. It could be possible to have some computer screens that the player/learner could access this information from but they would need to go to the screen any time they wanted to check a detail. If it was a multiplayer game I guess the instructions could just sit in the chat window.
“enabling learning path maps to be modified highlighting the paths which have been travelled”
This comes back to my earlier point about knowing what you’ve done by what rooms you’ve unlocked. I’m a little unsure about this however as it goes against my desire to have an environment that people can wander around completely freely.
“creating new links by the learner using a series of tools which enable the package to be modified, either by adding new information or by adding new hypertext linkages based on the students’ own conceptual maps”
It would be great if there was some way to embed web access (and presumably a wiki) into a part of the game. As far as I’m aware, this isn’t an option but I’ll keep looking. A setup like the 3D browser called 3B would be good – it could live on the smartboard in the training/conference room part of the game.
Defining Navigation types:
This is another of those instances where the datedness of this article shows – the concepts are still sound, just behind the times.
“Materials can be designed to focus on the appropriate development of schema and hence improve learning efficiency. In effect, any navigational system must employ elements with as much intrinsic meaning as possible… this link can be enhanced through understandable and well chosen metaphors”
He goes on to list a few different options:
Modal (icon based)
Relational (stack maps)
Hierarchical (more like an organisational chart or a website map)
Sequential (basic back, forward and index buttons)
Geographical/Spatial (much closer to Florin’s info landscape model – and my 3d game)
Conceptual (metaphor + info landscape)
The Geographical/Spatial seems to reflect my approach with the game so I guess I’ll note the quote:
“selecting parts of a whole by an inherent physical/geographic relationship. This approach might be exemplified region by using a map as a link between objects” – or a navigable 3D environment.
I had a few other thoughts as I was reading this paper:
What about a bookshelf in every person’s area? (Or similar metaphor for stored info – maybe a pda?)
It would be good to be able to access the online pd courses from inside the game – again, in game web access is the key.
Hedberg, J. and Harper, B. (1997) Creating Motivating Interactive Learning Environments. Keynote address at EDMEDIA, Calgary, Canada, 1997.
This paper repeats a lot of the points covered in the last two.
It still contains a few interesting points though so I’ll try to sum them up as succinctly as I can. (As it’s getting late and wading through this hard to read ode to constructivism has fried my mind a little)
In essence:
learners use productivity tools to construct their own meaningful chunks of content that sum up the available information
In designing learning environments: 1. identify the information to be covered, how to structure it and what the target audience already knows about it 2. find a metaphor to shape the information structure 3. link the design ideas to an interaction structure
This next bit is actually worth quoting (I think):
” Each interaction consists of a node point which forms the basis of the interaction, a set of options which provide links to other nodes or additional information attached to the current node. One of the links must relate to earlier travelled or preferred paths through the materials and each choice must inform the user about what is likely to occur as the result of a choice.
These can translate into the traditional concept of results (correct or incorrect) or performance support enhancement such as suggested hints (maybe you could have levels of hints?) or revision of the underlying concept/principle which might be employed to make the choice.
Depending on the instructional strategy chosen, another element might include the concept of duration, either time or the limit of options based up previous choices or paths taken.”
“The range and extent of user interaction with the data in the software increases as the user is given more freedom to navigate, access, determine the format of information representation and manipulate the data using cognitive and metacognitive tools”
You can have more than just text in the information presented.
In interaction, “it is important that the user is required to think before a response is possible”
“Being able to store and report thoughts and impressions derived from media experiences by using the media itself (actual video/audio and pictures, not just text representations of the media) provides a more powerful means of ‘reformulating’ (Schroeder & Kenny, 1994, p 965)”
Simulations can be powerful tools – “which provides support for the solution to one of the embedded problems by mimicking a “real world process”"
Good idea to allow learners to share and compare the products that they create – particularly to compare them against the work of experts in the field – “learning can occur through the resolution of multiple responses to the same task”
Harper, B. & Hedberg, J. G. (1995). Exploration of Information Landscapes Through Networks. In Connecting the systems: Australian Telecommunication Networks & Applications Conference. Sydney, Australia, 11-13 December 1995 (pp 141-149). Clayton, Vic.: Monash University.
This paper says much the same as the others:
new technology offers new opportunities and requires new approaches
relevant authentic activities that draw on a pool of well organised data are important
learners construct their own knowledge from experiences and by socially negotiated meaning
provide a hierarchical set of problems to solve
It does manage to make a few more points however – heavily focussed on good design practices for information landscapes.
There are four key factors to consider:
interface design
navigation options
learning support for the user
instructional strategies to tie together underlying knowledge structures.
Inert knowledge is “knowledge which can usually be recalled when people are explicitly asked to do so but which is not used spontaneously in problem solving even though it might be relevant.”
“Situated learning has, as its main idea, the notion that “the activity in which knowledge is developed and deployed… is an integral part of what is learned”(Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989, p32)”
” “Legitimate peripheral practice”… refers to the engagement of a novice in a socially-based practice in which they can perform the same range of skills as an expert. Interactive multimedia provides an ideal structured environment which allows the novice to work with problems and learning situations which are some distance (peripheral) from the core of the expert’s world. As the novice begins to practice more as a full practitioner, the skills and shared experiences overlap more with those who are acknowledged as expert.”
This sounds like a good application of simulations and scenarios to me.
The design of the activities (how real & relevant they are) is just as important as the aesthetics (fancy graphics etc) used in creating immersion.
“The use of systems which can be given a set of attributes and defined rules of relating can prove a great boon for working with a particular information landscape or microworld… The question is, therefore, can we place all ideas into a microworld of objects, attributes and relationships?”
“A second aspect of immersion is the conceptual congruence between user actions and their understanding of the concepts embodied in the learning context. Much educational software doesn’t link the response of the user to progress toward the goal… Within the interactive multimedia environment the action of the learner will lead to a conceptual understanding directly about the context in which they are learning”
“…there has to be a learning environment which intrinsically motivates the participant to work within the context”
Avoid the “pedestrian point and click strategy”
“Active participation in Exploring the Nardoo has been supported through the user “guides” that directly address and challenge the user from the initial entry to the package. This challenge to actively participate in problem-solving and investigation is based around a group of researchers, who advise users on problems to investigate and provide graded hints on how to investigate specific case-based problems”
“Cognitive apprenticeships – using the terms modelling, coaching and fading to explain a sequence of activities beginning with the apprentice repeatedly observing the master who models the target process. This is followed by an attempt on the part of the learner to execute the process with guidance from the master (coaching) and finally a reduction in participation of the master (fading) as the apprentice demonstrates a grasp of the skill “
Harper, B. (1997) Building Technology Supported Learning Environments. Paper presented at the Techno Expo, Professional Development Day, Catholic Education Centre, Parramatta. 2 May, 1997.
At first glance there’s not a lot new in this paper – a reasonably well argued pitch of constructivist philosophy and the need to embrace new learning strategies to make best use of new technologies. From there though it does stimulate some interesting thought about the kinds of learning environments we can now create with technology.
Unfortunately, like a lot of the papers we seem to be reading in this class, 10 years of internet time has passed (which is like 30 years of real time) and it become necessary to extrapolate current tools (such as wikis) to the ideas in the paper, which aren’t able to dig into the potential of these things.
Harper (looking into the research) found that learning environments making use of technology had more use of:
more project work
more extensive projects
more motivation for the writing process
more group work and cooperative learning
more interdisciplinary activities
more opportunities for students to make choices
teachers with a different philosophy of teaching.
He draws some interesting points from Dwyer (1995):
“…technology plays a catalytic role in opening the minds of teachers to new ideas about children, learning and their own role in the education process.”
This makes me think that the key to selling eLearning to resistant teachers is by showing how teaching with technology is different, new and exciting. (Useful for the 916 case study)
Harper goes on to talk about visual metaphors for learning environments -
“With graphical and vidusal display coupled with large databases of resources, it is possible to explore an information space in whatever sequence appeals as appropriate to the user or to the specific task”
Which makes me ask – what if the learning space itself was customisable or at least selectable? – learners could choose their own metaphor from a set e.g a circus or an office or a swamp or a castle. Where is (or is there) the balance point between a “fun” metaphor vs a useful, authentic re-creation of a learning context. How much more useful/engaging is an office vs a castle?
Another question raised is that of giving learners access to rich multimedia resources but then always expecting them to construct their assessment items as text document.
What if learners had options to present their project products in a number of different multimedia forms. – not just the actual multimedia project components but their reflection elements? Why shouldn’t a podcast be as relevant as an essay?
Harper sums up the constructivist push part of his paper by saying:
“… the key to success will be developing opportunities and situations where children can gather information, analyse the information collected, construct new knowledge from this information and then reflect on the outcomes”
In looking at how we can develop technology supported constructivist environments, Harper looks at some instructional design goals from Marcy Driscoll. The following one sparked a question in me about feedback:
2. Provide for social negotation as an integral part of learning to allow insights to emerge through the group process that may not come about otherwise
Is there a difference between the feedback provided by a group to people’s work as individuals compared to their contributions to team projects. Are they less inclined to be critical in a group project as it means that they will have to redo something or will they be more critical as it can impact on their mark. I’ve noticed that the handful of comments that appear in our course forum are generally entirely positive and encouraging – is this because everyone’s right, noone wants to get into a stoush or people are more comfortable providing feedback when they agree with something.
Harper goes on to examine some case studies as good examples of learning environments – Exploring the Nardoo raises some interesting approaches:
“In order to offer these facilities to learners, a sophisticated personal digital assistant was developed, allowing users to collect and save the full range of multimedia resources in the package including video, audio and graphic resources. Additionally genre templates were included to support students in their knowledge construction endeavours”
“The information landscape uses a geographic metaphor based upon a Water Research Centre and a navigable river environment”
The PDA tool allows the learner to assemble their resources in a way that makes the most sense to them – be they text, images, audio or video. There is also a capacity to create their own text notes. The logical next step is the ability to create image, audio and video resources.
Providing templates offers learners guidance on structure for their presentation, which seems pretty sensible.
This model sounds a bit like a Wiki precursor and makes me think that there might be new ways to approach the use of wikis.
What if you had a wiki where everyone had ownership of a particular area and others could make suggested edits but these would have to first be moderated by the area owner? Might you have a reputation system allowing the community to vote on who provides useful additions or suggestions? This is potentially rortable but worth considering.
This also makes me think of something on a slight tangent – a scoring system for online debate. Points for logical arguments, new ideas, expresssion, etc, points against logical fallacies, abuse and so on.
So yeah, there are some interesting ideas here but more in the way they’ve helped me to wander down a few sidetracks.
Harper does manage to move on a bit further though after a couple of pages
Florin, F. (1990) Information Landscapes. In S. Ambron & K. Hooper (Eds) Learning with Interactive Multimedia. Microsoft Press. pp. 27-49.
“As you visit an information landscape, you can merely walk along pathways and look at roadside attractions, or you can choose from many different options. Some of the options take you on linear trails, which you experience passively from start to finish, as you would ride in a bus. Other activities give you local control – similar to driving a car. Maps can show you a bird’s eye view of the territory and guides can take you on tours or give you more conversational assistance.”
Fabice Florin presents a range of different models for presenting information – broken into five essential structures:
Collections of data
Interactive documentaries
Annotated movies
Networks of guides
Hands-on activities
“I have referred to raw images, sounds, text, and film clips as data, regardless of media type. Meaningful arrangments of such data into thoughtful presentations are referred to as information”
collections of data:
“the simplest way to present knowledge is to break it down into collections of similar data or materials” Should that be information?
Data could be organised in a cube shape, with an x, y and z axis to define it in different ways (eg data could be presented chronologically along the x – width – axis, thematically along the y – height – axis and alphabetically along the z – depth – axis)
This system has limitations in that it may be necessary to categorise data in more than 3 ways and it may be difficult to create meaningful connections between the data in this manner.
Florin reached these conclusions about this approach:
“Clusters of tightly interconnected materials focused on specific topics are more satisfying that thin layers of data covering broad subjects. For example, isolated pictures are not as interesting as sets of five or more, where each picture in the set adds meaning to the others, exposing relations hidden in the single shot
In most cases, pictures with no good captions or data are not very useful
Still pictures and text can ofter be perecived as lifeless unless they are combined with sound or motion footage. I highly recommend that great care be given to the selection of a rich audio track and, if possible, film or video clips that bring a subject to life.”
interactive documentaries:
“a more elaborate structure for an information landscape is the interactive documentary, which centres all data around modular presentations. These presentations can be short stories or interactive diagrams linked to related materials. By focusing on such presentations as building blocks of an information landscape, more meaning is given to the materials, connecting data points to each other along specific lines of thought. These nodes of informations can now be browsed as integrated documents, rather than as disconnected data. Moreover, users can choose the order in which these presentations appear and interrupt them at will”
(e.g a sequence of video clips set up like a storyboard, with a brief explanatory title below each one)
The important aspect is that the information is connected but democratically accessible and learners can dig down into related collections of data from the starting point.
“It is a collection of experiences and ideas about a given subject, available to users in either linear or nonlinear modules, story modules organise materials against a temporal axis, whereas place modules arrange them in a spatial layout.”
“A clear drawback however is that often no easy way exists for first-time users to know which modules to try first, and some time needs to be spent poking around and playing clips at random before discovering what is available”
annotated movies
“In this structure, a feature-length movie is the main backbone of the landscape. Unlike the free-form browsing approach of the interactive documentary, the annotated movie has a strong linear structure. Viewers are encouraged to view the entire movie and then to use the interactive information environment surrounding the movie to revisit it and explore the issues that it raises”
This is one of many examples in which this print based article really suffers from the lack of a supplementary website, where we can actually experience the material being discussed. I think I understand it but I’m not sure if this means that the whole movie is clickable, providing interactivity all the way through or if it is a menu that offers this option. As far as I can see, it’s the former, but being able to see this in action would be a tremendous help.
“One of the main advantages of the annotated movie is that the narrative provides a common thread that ties together all subject in the information landscape. Having to build around a specific storyline encourages the interactive developers to go for depth rather than breadth, which makes for a richer environment”
networks of guides
“Looming on the horizon is a fascinating challenge, that of building information landscapes containing individual guides who provide users with personalised assistance”
Perhaps something like the internet – making use of real people and computer mediated communications? (Ah, ok, he comes to this as an option)
“The best way for an information landscape to grow is through live channels of communication to and from the outside world, allowing for feedback, editing, updates and so on. In such a scenario, the process becomes more important than the actual product. The system becomes a focal point for the development of a community of interested users and authors who collectively extend the shared knowledgebase.
This requires a simple but powerful set of composition tools that allow content experts and novice users to mark, annotate, link and otherwise interconnect various parts of the information landscape. Such tools would let users compare different points of view and develop their own through essays, diagrams, tours and other custom presentations. Ultimately, any user could become a guide to the environment.
To illustrate this concept, I have added guides to the landscape in my diagram. These guides add their knowledge to the environment by connecting various information nodes and data points; the webs they weave reach deep within the shared landscape, but they also extend out into the real world.”
Ok, well this impresses me a fair bit – certainly for something written in 1990. It seems to predict Wikipedia and the social webby quite a few years. (It is very much in keeping with Tim Berners Lee’s initial vision for the World Wide Web)
“As larger user communities gather around our information landscapes, different classes of guides are likely to emerge, including:
System operators, information brokers and editors – who provide general services to help connect users with what they are looking for (i.e. Search engines, RSS? )
Specialists and content experts – who concentrate on specific subjects and report on their particular knowledge domain (websites)
Interdisciplinary authors – who provide editorial commentaries and personal insights across a wide range of subjects
Other users – who share tips with each other about interesting information they have found or added to the system (the blogosphere, social web news sites like Digg, Wikipedia)
hands-on activities
“the guiding principle is that they be fun and that they help users gain new insights”
“these activities are very compelling because they let users participate as players in the environment, not merely as spectators. The locus of control is shifted from the designers back to the users. Rather than absorb someone else’s ideas, users now determine the outcome of their individual experiences. The make choices and reach their own conclusions. This deepens their understanding of the subject, because that knowledge was discovered “hands-on” and is now theirs”
“The reason such activities seem so important is that they suggest different modes of interaction between users and their information environment. An activity provides an arena for people to play in and materials to play with; most importantly, however, it gives people ideas of what to do in that context”
Ok, so he thinks that games and scenario based activity is good – I’m hardly going to argue with that.
design factors to consider
“The first step in designing an information resource is to define it’s primary purpose:
Is it meant as a generic resource or to teach a specific topic?
How broad does it have to be?
Who is the intended user group?
How will users interact with it?
Where do they need the most help?
The next step is to identify the materials available for that project:
How much data is provided for each item?
Are the items catalogued?
Are they cross-indexed?
Have they been annotated or edited together with a single commentary?
Are they disparate documents or have they been carefully researched and sorted?
You now have to select a particular structure as the main framework of the landscape. The purpose of the project and the nature of the materials may suggest one but more often it is a creative call. This process feels somewhat like landscaping or urban design:
What primary features do you want to build around?
Which secondary features do you want to emphasise?
How do you balance these different elements?
How do people move from one to another?
I like to think of the different structures presented above as different types of space in a rural landscape. For example, collections could be fields of raw materials, a documentary could be seen as a small town, a movie might flow like a stream through the landscape, guides might be shown as figures on a hilltop and activities might be represented by a playground.
Like a city planner, you are designing not only the structure of the information landscape but also the flows and processes that take place in and around that environment. In the end, you really are shaping the culture of a user group, not just its database. “
I think this is one of the most useful things I have read in this course so far. Looking forward to seeing how I can put it into practice.
In the field of instructional design it can be seen that there are two fundamental approaches – the prescriptive and the democratic. These tend to align fairly closely with the contrasting educational philosophies of behaviourism/cognitivism and constructivism respectively.
As education attempts to address a broad spectrum of knowledge, organisational and learner needs, there can be no single perfect approach – in some instances a prescriptive strategy such as lecturing is the most appropriate and in others, a more democratic strategy such as scenario based learning is more effective. Whichever approach is taken however, it is possible to enhance the learning experience with the use of technology. In this paper I will examine the different approaches, identify useful strategies and offer some suggestions as to the implementation of technology in providing a better teaching and learning experience.
In the prescriptive approach, “information is concocted and delivered to the learner.”(Schwier & Misanchuk, 1993, p.19). The underlying behaviourist philosophy is that knowledge exists in the world in the form of facts and that this knowledge can be transferred directly to the learners brain through exposure to it from a teacher. (Robyler & Havriluk, 1997). This can be enriched with cognitivist strategies such as advance-organising or matrices which make the information/knowledge more digestible. (Bednar, Cunningham, Duffy & Perry, 1995)
The prescriptive approach is therefore considered quite teacher-centric and is generally also quite rigidly structured. “There are usually specific objectives the learner is expected to learn and in most cases learning is evaluated in accordance with the specified objectives.”(Schwier & Misanchuk 1993, p.20). Learners are often required to individually demonstrate adequate knowledge of one facet of the subject before they are allowed to progress to the next. New information is presented to the learners, they practice using it (which reinforces the information), their understanding of it is assessed and they move on.
In areas which focus on foundation knowledge and skills, such as Vocational Education and Training or learning a musical instrument, this can be a practical approach. Each new skill or piece of information adds meaning to the next and makes them easier to process and retain.
When learners have developed this foundation or scaffolding knowledge, the limitations of the prescriptive approach become more apparent. Higher level problem solving, analytical, collaborative and cognitive skills that enable the learners to think more creatively and transfer knowledge from one situation to another aren’t highly emphasised in this approach. This is when a more democratic approach might be considered.
The democratic approach has its roots in constructivist philosophy, which takes the position that knowledge must come from within and as a result of the right activities in the right context (Jonassen, Peck & Wilson, 1999). While undertaking these activities, the learner accesses the information necessary to achieve them which creates meaning. A process of reflection on the activities, the information, past experience and external feedback leads to knowledge.
Learner control, therefore, lies at the heart of the democratic approach. Schwier and Misanchuk (1993) make the point that “democratic environments permit the learner to influence what is learned, or how it is learned, or at least the order in which it is learned” (p. 23). This sense of ownership of the process can enhance a learner’s motivation as it feels more relevant to their needs.
The use of relevant and authentic activity, often in the form of problem or scenario based learning, encourages the learner to identify and find the information they need to perform a task. This shifts the role of the teacher to a more supportive one, acting as a guide and offering supplementary resources.
This is where it becomes apparent that the democratic approach is best employed when there is a foundation level of existing knowledge. According to Schwier and Misanchuk (1993) “Supplementary instruction either reinforces what has already been taught or it attaches new instruction to what has been taught… the difference is that supplementary instruction is voluntarily undertaken; the locus of decision-making rests with the learner.”(p. 24) This need for foundation knowledge brings us back to the prescriptive approach.
Lectures are probably the most obvious example of a prescriptive learning strategy. “In a tertiary context, a lecture has come to be understood as a public presentation by a teacher to a large group of students. In its most common form… a teacher speaks without any changes of activity for the whole allotted time.”(TEDI, 2006)
Lectures aren’t highly regarded for “stimulating active learning and higher order thinking” (TEDI, 2001) however in combination with tutorials and other learning strategies, they can still be beneficial. One of the primary reasons that lectures are used by organisations is the simple economic efficiency of teaching large numbers of learners at one time.
In my work for the Flexible Learning Solutions team at CIT (Canberra Institute of Technology), we will sometimes give lectures on new developments in educational technology to educators as part of broader e-learning events. I’ve also provided technological advice to teachers in the department of Communications, Media and Music who run a single weekly Mass Media Studies lecture to students from a range of subjects.
When considered in its own right, a lecture is a highly prescriptive learning activity as the information is delivered in a particularly structured manner. The learner has to attend a specific location at a specific time and the flow of information is largely one way.
It is nonetheless possible to use technology to enhance lectures. At the simplest level, the lecturer could provide paper handouts with relevant diagrams and space for learner notes which would allow them to spend more time focused on the material being presented and less time trying to copy it down. (TEDI 2001)
A lecturer could incorporate multimedia presentations, anything from an overhead projector to PowerPoint to video for more “stimulating and entertaining delivery” (TEDI 2001). Audio and video samples are used in the Mass Media Studies lectures at CIT to illustrate concepts being discussed.
Social Web technology could radically reshape the structure of a lecture by making a wiki available for students to create collective notes during a lecture, accessed from a wireless network with their laptop computers or mobile devices in a lecture theatre. This could even be displayed on a screen in the theatre. (There would be a number of practical issues of distraction and moderation of content to deal with in this instance however.)
The issue of learners being prescribed to attend a set space at a set time could be avoided if the lecture was made available either synchronously as a web conference or asynchronously in the form of a podcast or vodcast.
A final option – although not a likely or practical one – would be for all seats in a lecture theatre to be equipped with voting buttons of some description – allowing the lecturer to ask a question and have a graphical display of learner responses appear instantly.
Interestingly, most of these options would shift the lecture from the prescriptive domain towards the democratic in one way or another by making the learners more active participants.
Scenario based learning is a strategy in the democratic approach that is primarily focussed on learners being active participants. It gives the learner a large degree of control over the decisions they make and the information resources they choose to access in the process of undertaking activities based on authentic tasks and problems in the area being studied.
Brown and Voltz (2005) describe scenarios as “usually provided by a story, role play, or simulation, within which the activity plays a pivotal role in helping the students to contextualise content”. Learners are presented with a problem or task in the context of a fictional story which is relevant to the field of study. They are given access to useful information resources and collaboratively or individually find appropriate solutions.
The scenario may be structured so that it comprises a series of increasingly complex activities that build on each other as the learner develops their knowledge.
I supported the implementation of such a scenario based approach in my work at CIT while working with a teacher in the Nursing department on a competency called Practice within legal and ethical parameters. This teaches nurses about some of the legal and ethical issues within nursing practice, the law and their responsibilities. In the past, it had been taught in a fairly prescriptive manner as a list of laws and policies that nurses needed to be aware of.
Together we created a detailed scenario in which nurses make decisions based on developments in a particular patient’s case, consultation with colleagues and other available information.
As the nurse progresses through the story, ethical and legal complications arise with the patient which highlight content in areas including negligence, euthanasia and patient consent. This adds relevant hospital and nursing culture issues to the learning and allows nurses to connect more personally with the course content, which to that point was considered fairly dry by the nursing students and teachers.
While scenario based learning is structured by the story, it is democratic in approach in that learners are able to choose the information they access and their knowledge is informed by the socially constructed meanings they develop by working collaboratively to solve the problems.
The potential of technology in enhancing scenarios is of interest to me as I have a broader fascination with game based learning and the role of engaging stories to provide motivation and develop authentic and relevant contexts is highly pertinent.
There are a range of accessible software packages and web platforms now available that make the creation of immersive 3D environments easy and affordable. In the game creation sphere, FPS Creator and The 3D GameMaker (both from www.thegamecreators.com) are but two. There are also of course the increasingly popular Massively Multiplayer Online Game platforms such as Second Life, Croquet and Multiverse, which all offer opportunities to create spaces for learners to play out scenarios, access information and communicate with each other and the broader online community.
I’m aware that the use of whiz-bang technology in scenario/game based learning doesn’t guarantee “”cognitive realism” to the real-life task” (Agostinho, Meek & Herrington, 2005, p.231) but the wealth of research on games in learning suggests it doesn’t hurt. (Prensky, 2001)
As we can see, there is no single approach for all learning contexts – it’s important to look at the content, the learners and the context in the process of designing instruction and choose the most appropriate one.
Robyler, M. D., Edwards, J., & Havriluk, M. A. (1997). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (pp. 54-79). New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Bednar, A. K., Cunningham, D., Duffy T. M. & Perry J. D. (1995). Theory into Practice: How do we Link? In G. J. Anglin (Ed), Instructional Technology: Past, present and future. Englewood, Co: Libraries Unlimited, pp 100-112.
Jonassen, D. H., Peck K. L. & Wilson, B. G. (1999). Learning With Technology: A Constructivist Perspective. New Jersey: Merril. pp 2-11.
In the constructivist philosophy, meaning is derived from the experiences gained while undertaking activities/tasks which are scaffolded by course content. The process of reflecting on these experiences and contextualising them with existing experiences helps to develop knowledge.
Feedback is a vital part of the reflection process as it introduces external ideas and extends the range of experiences and information that the learner is exposed to. It stands to reason then that the broader the range of feedback that a learner receives, the richer their reflection will be. Social web tools offer the possibility of feedback from a global audience.
Oliver (2004) points out that “Students involved in self evaluation are more interested in the criteria and substantive feedback than the grades achieved. The interest is piqued by the need for honesty in the application of the criteria for others (peer assessment) and to their own work as well as being able to defend opinions through evidence over subjective judgements.”
Brown & Voltz (2005) go on to say that “Experience becomes knowledge through reflection, which is enhanced by timely and appropriate criticism”.
On a practical level, “the range of available feedback strategies is vast, including reflective responses to prescribed questions, semi-automated responses by the system to student actions and work, shared comments in online forums and blogs and personal responses via email, telephone and post.”(Brown & Voltz, 2005).
It can be used in such a way that learners complete an initial draft of assessment work, post it publicly as an RFC (request for comment) and then incorporate feedback from the community into an updated final version.
Networked based learning offers opportunities for feedback from beyond the usual teacher and fellow students spectrum. The growth of the social web adds the notion of audience to the pool of sources of feedback – learners can now publish the work that they produce in class to the world and receive unvarnished feedback instantly which expands the range of knowledge being drawn on exponentially.
This notion of audience has been used in the Schools News Project. “The feedback from the community will inform the student teams of the quality of the product, its story telling qualities and its social responsibility in terms of ethical treatment of those whose stories have been included in the news items.” (Lockyer, Brown & Blackall, 2003).
The addition of information from the real world is one of the most exciting things about using the social web in education as it brings greater authenticity to the learning experience which heightens motivation.
It also has a useful side effect of developing greater levels of information, technological, critical and media literacy.
Practitioners (particularly those in the K-12 schools sector) considering making use of the social web will need to be mindful of the fact that it is a relatively uncontrolled environment and conscientious moderation of communication may be required. School and government policies may also determine the level of access learners are given to social web sites.
Lockyer, L., Brown, I. & Blackall, D. (2003). A learning design to support multi-literacy development in K-12 contexts. In A. Rossett (Ed.). Proceedings of E-Learn 2003 World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare and Higher Education. (pp.1703-06) Norfolk, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
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
