Monday, February 16, 2004
Instructional Strategies.N/C Effective—and Ineffective—Instructional Strategies - Jackie Dobrovolny, Learning Circuits. Here’s a closer look at the features of self-paced, technology-based training that adults say are useful and the relationship between those course features and the learning strategies adults consistently use. [Online Learning Update] 1:30:31 PM 
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Learning Objects Explained. N/C eLearning and Learning Objects. If you want to learn more about the Learning Objects (LOs) approach read as a first introduction the "Learning Object Tutorial" by Eduworks Corporation (where you can find more papers on "standardization" issues). There is a online book as well that covers the connection of LOs and eLearning in more details: The Instructional Use of Learning Objects. [Peter on eLearning] 1:28:08 PM
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Instructional design issues.(Warning: this is a ramble. Doing weblog entries off the cuff is probably a bad idea. Apologies. Skip this if you don't have time for a long read, or patience for a fumbling attempt to be coherent.) Holly, if I understand her weblog entries correctly, is looking for a way to guide learners without directing or telling them. One of the interesting problems we all run up against is that we use models that other people developed to guide our own work, even though it is clear that those models have their limits. So when I read this, I wondered if Holly is trying to figure out how to modify the constructivist model, to sort out a middle ground (compromising both models), or to create a new model. I am skeptical of models that insist that all learners learn the same way, that all learning tasks demand the same approach, etc. Over the last 35 years, experience has taught me to think about the learners, the learning tasks, the learning economics and motivation, and whether the learner and the sponsoring organization (if any) will be better served by stepwise instruction or by practice in applying principles. Given all this, my job is to pick an approach that is "good enough" (no approach will ever be perfect for everyone) and to build delivery support for that approach in media and method that fit the time and budget available. Even after that, not every learner will "get it" to the same degree. Sometimes there isn't enough motivation in the world to get someone to do something -- I learned this from coaching people in starting businesses, and then watching the majority of them fail because they weren't willing to do what had to be done in order to succeed or because they just didn't stick with it through the pain of getting the business off the ground. On my gloomy days, it seems to me that any task that 100% of the learners can master to perfection every time must be a pretty trivial task. Learning leads to trying, trying leads to failure more often than success at first, and there is no guarantee that repeated trials will lead to success. That's life. On my better days, which are most of them, I remember that my job is just to help people make their lives better, even if only slightly. Just because not everyone who finishes a course in grammar then goes on to become an excellent writer or speaker, does not mean that helping learners become competent in grammar is useless. I have been "learning" to play guitar for almost twenty years now, and I will never be as good as Leo Kottke or even as good as the old guys who play blues on street corners. But that doesn't mean it hasn't been worth the effort. -- BB Constructivism and hands-on exercises. ... most hands-on exercises may not be designed to be constructivist because they are not typically centered on constructivist learning objectives and, consequently, constructivist assessments of outcome. Let's take another look at Wiedenbeck and Zila's "exploration" concept as an example of where this particular line of thinking originates. You might recall that the authors use the terminology "exercise" and "exploration" to distinguish what I consider to be essentially objectivist and constructivist approaches, respectively, to practice within a learning module. In their methodology section, they describe the difference in the instruction sections between the two types of practice in their study:
A specific example of this was given in the paper in the form of a figure that I reproduced in my earlier posting (linked above) discussing their paper. The authors do not use the term "objectives" in their paper, so it is not clear whether or not learning objectives apart from these instructions were provided to the subjects of their study. Would stated learning objectives have made a difference in the choices the "exploration" subjects made in their practice? After all, the focus of constructivism does not preclude the objectivist philosophy of designing instruction to support particular goals and objectives. The key difference between the objectivist and constructivist views of how learning occurs, according to David Jonassen, is that the former posits that "knowledge can be transferred from teachers or transmitted by technologies and aquired by learners," while the latter is based on the premise that "knowledge is individually constructed and socially constructed by learners based on their interpretations of their experiences in the world."2 Since the difference in these theories represents a shift in how learners learn, and thus at least a slight shift in what they learn, perhaps it should also be reflected by a shift in the way learning objectives are stated. [Holly's Research Journal] 11:36:29 AM
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Resource: Interactive simulation as a tool for learning.Holly's weblog may become an interesting resource for developers, or it might just serve as a reminder that we are all struggling with the same problems. -- BB Holly Henry-Pilkington's Research Journal. Holly studies at Columbia University in New York, and her research focuses on interactive simulation as a tool for learning. 11:01:58 AM
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TechKnowledge Conference.Jay Cross: TechKnowledge ConferenceGood coverage of ASTD's TechKnowledge Conference. 10:03:19 AM
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Last update: 10/8/2005; 1:03:01 PM .
