Sunday, August 23, 2009
blearning system
bLearning is a learning tool developed by Beyondinno, incorporating ideas and elements in the Instructional Design Performance Support System, a series of learning theories, and cutting-edge e-learning technology.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
8. Relating TL, TI to ID
ID activities should be informed by theories of learning and instruction (TL & TI) closely.
The following two graphs can illustrate the relationships between ID and TI, TL.
The following two graphs can illustrate the relationships between ID and TI, TL.
7. The consilience map--a few learning theories
1. Cognitive Information Processing Theory
2. Active Repection Theory
3. Scheme Theory
4. Situated Cognition Theory
5. Bruner's Theory
6. Vygotsky's Theory
6. The consilience map-synthesis of learning outcome
The same color box represents similiar type of learning outcomes.
5. Learning outcomes and learning conditions
In Driscoll's (2005) textbook, in the comprehensive theory matrix, there are a few dimensions: outcomes, preconditions/inputs, the role of students, the role of teachers, and the process.
I analyze it from a few points:
First, why outcomes come first?
1. Like what Gagne has done: first identify learning outcomes, then determine the learning conditions and instructional events/methods. It is a way that we, as instructional designers or teachers, often use when practice informed by learning theories.
2. Compared to other dimensions in the matrix, outcomes might be the column that is easier to indentify and include all components and categories. In other words, learning outcome might be the least fuzzy component.
3. Through comparing the learning outcomes, what each major group of learning theories emphasize differently becomes more obvious.
Second, can conditions be categorized?
Gagne's classification of internal and external conditions can be borrowed to group the themes of words used to describe learning conditions:
Internal Condition: memory, schemata, well-prepared mind, prior knowledge, maturation, presence and participation in activity, ability of self-directed, orientation toward meaningful learning etc.
External Condition: stimuli, sensory information, material, activities, tools, ill-structured problems, conditions to support becoming self-directed etc.
In-&-Ex Conditions: for some conditions, they really can not be defined simply as internal or external conditions, such as meaningful material and cognitive conflicts. They must be defined and determined by both internal and external conditions: the same material might be meaningful for one learner, might not for others, which is determined by the learner's prior knowledge, goal, or attention brought into the task. Or prior knowledge is a relative concept too, the enough prior knowledge, or the well-prepared mind is relevant to learning tasks.
Internal condition is more about learner, for what learner can bring into the learning situation, and external condition is more about learning environment and task.
Third, Who is in charge of ensuring that the learning inputs and preconditions are there?
It is obvious that teachers/instructional designers can control the external conditions rather than the internal conditions. And the goal of education might be empowering the learner with better internal conditions. In this way, the change of internal conditions should be equal to outcomes. The outcome in previous learning phases should become internal condition for the current learning phase.
The arrangement of equipping of external condition is up to the designer/teacher's evaluation of internal conditions.
To various degrees, the efforts might be embedded in textbook, digital tools, or classroom activities.
Learning material, tools, and tasks pre-designed by designers can empower teachers.
However, often, it is up to the capability and efforts of teachers to ensure the quality of educational practice. The dynamical teacher-student interaction cannot be completely replaced by pre-designed material.
Finally, what are the relationships between five dimensions?
The entrance components are: precondtions/inputs.
The processing dimensions are: teachers, students, and precondtions/inputs interact with each other; therefore, the learning processes happen; or stated in other words, the learning conditions are satisfied.
Then, the learning outcomes happen.
Reference:
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education Inc.
I analyze it from a few points:
First, why outcomes come first?
1. Like what Gagne has done: first identify learning outcomes, then determine the learning conditions and instructional events/methods. It is a way that we, as instructional designers or teachers, often use when practice informed by learning theories.
2. Compared to other dimensions in the matrix, outcomes might be the column that is easier to indentify and include all components and categories. In other words, learning outcome might be the least fuzzy component.
3. Through comparing the learning outcomes, what each major group of learning theories emphasize differently becomes more obvious.
Second, can conditions be categorized?
Gagne's classification of internal and external conditions can be borrowed to group the themes of words used to describe learning conditions:
Internal Condition: memory, schemata, well-prepared mind, prior knowledge, maturation, presence and participation in activity, ability of self-directed, orientation toward meaningful learning etc.
External Condition: stimuli, sensory information, material, activities, tools, ill-structured problems, conditions to support becoming self-directed etc.
In-&-Ex Conditions: for some conditions, they really can not be defined simply as internal or external conditions, such as meaningful material and cognitive conflicts. They must be defined and determined by both internal and external conditions: the same material might be meaningful for one learner, might not for others, which is determined by the learner's prior knowledge, goal, or attention brought into the task. Or prior knowledge is a relative concept too, the enough prior knowledge, or the well-prepared mind is relevant to learning tasks.
Internal condition is more about learner, for what learner can bring into the learning situation, and external condition is more about learning environment and task.
Third, Who is in charge of ensuring that the learning inputs and preconditions are there?
It is obvious that teachers/instructional designers can control the external conditions rather than the internal conditions. And the goal of education might be empowering the learner with better internal conditions. In this way, the change of internal conditions should be equal to outcomes. The outcome in previous learning phases should become internal condition for the current learning phase.
The arrangement of equipping of external condition is up to the designer/teacher's evaluation of internal conditions.
To various degrees, the efforts might be embedded in textbook, digital tools, or classroom activities.
Learning material, tools, and tasks pre-designed by designers can empower teachers.
However, often, it is up to the capability and efforts of teachers to ensure the quality of educational practice. The dynamical teacher-student interaction cannot be completely replaced by pre-designed material.
Finally, what are the relationships between five dimensions?
The entrance components are: precondtions/inputs.
The processing dimensions are: teachers, students, and precondtions/inputs interact with each other; therefore, the learning processes happen; or stated in other words, the learning conditions are satisfied.
Then, the learning outcomes happen.
Reference:
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education Inc.
4. Two versions of consilience tool
A Simplified Version of Consilience
Step1: To list all major learning and instructional theories, Then draw sound implications from each theory by discarding the unreasonable part.
Step 2: To figure out the possibilities and constraints in the given instructional context, from the perspectives such as: teacher’s capability, students’ prior knowledge, the nature of learning task, the time constraint, the available technology etc.
Step 3: To relate and tailor each theory implication to the specific context, and then add them up together.
A More Sophisticated Version
1. Each learning theory illuminates some aspects of learning while obscuring others.
2. By taking the illuminated aspects as a set for each theory, various sets might overlap or not.
3. For those aspects covered by more than a set, theories represented by these sets might explain learning in three ways: consensus, contradicting, or paralleling.
4. In the case of consensus, there might be only one choice. In the cases of contradicting and paralleling, the choice could be context-dependent.
However, the difficult part is to define and identify aspects of learning: an aspect might be a status, a process, a combination of two, or something else. In order to figure this out, I analyze the comprehensive theory matrix (Driscoll, 2005) from a few perspectives.
Reference
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education Inc.
Step1: To list all major learning and instructional theories, Then draw sound implications from each theory by discarding the unreasonable part.
Step 2: To figure out the possibilities and constraints in the given instructional context, from the perspectives such as: teacher’s capability, students’ prior knowledge, the nature of learning task, the time constraint, the available technology etc.
Step 3: To relate and tailor each theory implication to the specific context, and then add them up together.
A More Sophisticated Version
1. Each learning theory illuminates some aspects of learning while obscuring others.
2. By taking the illuminated aspects as a set for each theory, various sets might overlap or not.
3. For those aspects covered by more than a set, theories represented by these sets might explain learning in three ways: consensus, contradicting, or paralleling.
4. In the case of consensus, there might be only one choice. In the cases of contradicting and paralleling, the choice could be context-dependent.
However, the difficult part is to define and identify aspects of learning: an aspect might be a status, a process, a combination of two, or something else. In order to figure this out, I analyze the comprehensive theory matrix (Driscoll, 2005) from a few perspectives.
Reference
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education Inc.
3. Why a consilience tool, and what is it?
In my IDPSS, TI+TL=the Consilience Tool. (instructional theory+learning theory)
The term of "consilience" is drawn from Wilson's (1998) book Consilience: the unity of knowledge. In the context of this project, consilience represents the synthesis of learning theories.
Driscoll (2005) adopted Reigeluth's definition of instructional theory:"identifying methods that will best provide the conditions under which learning goals will most likely be attained"(p.352). By contrast, a learning theory explains the relationship between specific learning conditions and desired learning goals.
In order to inform practice, teachers or instructional designers may either adopt design principles from instructional theories or draw implications from learning theories. Driscoll deplored the fact that few comprehensive instructional theories exist, and that practitioners have to rely more on drawing implications from learning theories than following a good ID (instructional design) theory.
If there were an ideal instructional system theory that is comprehensive enough, teachers and designers' work would become less difficult and complex, and the quality of education would be improved. Unfortunately, there is not yet an ideal instructional theory. Gagne's instructional theory is a fairly comprehensive one (Driscoll, 2005), but his theory fails to consider some perspectives, such as that of social constructivism. Therefore, we have to rely more on drawing implications from various learning theories.
Each learning theory illuminates some aspects of learning while obscuring others. So, fully understanding of learning requires a synthesis of learning theories. This is a difficult, yet very important task. I design the consilience tool for the above reason. I am expecting that my instructional design practice can be informed by a complete model in a more systematic way.
The key function of a consilience tool is to assit learning analysis through the following processes:
1. Identifying the synthesis of learning outcomes.
2. Determining an optimal combination of learning conditions:
(a) to make decision based on the synthesis of learning outcomes,
(b) to link to all relevant learning theories through the theory matrix
3. Determining instructional strategies:
(a) Start from the optimal combination of learning conditions;
(b) For each condition, can I deductively draw new implications beyond what is mentioned in the textbook?
(c) Determine the strengths and weaknesses of available experimental tested implications (prescriptive instructional strategies);
(d) Decide whether the strategies can be modified by introducing new elements or modifying existing elements;
(e) Determine whether all the strategies can be integrated together without any conflicts;
(f) Examine again whether all learning conditions are likely to be satisfied by adopting these strategies;
(g) If any condition is omitted, work on this condition by repeating the above steps.
Reference:
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education Inc.
Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience: The unity of knowledge. NY: Knopf.
The term of "consilience" is drawn from Wilson's (1998) book Consilience: the unity of knowledge. In the context of this project, consilience represents the synthesis of learning theories.
Driscoll (2005) adopted Reigeluth's definition of instructional theory:"identifying methods that will best provide the conditions under which learning goals will most likely be attained"(p.352). By contrast, a learning theory explains the relationship between specific learning conditions and desired learning goals.
In order to inform practice, teachers or instructional designers may either adopt design principles from instructional theories or draw implications from learning theories. Driscoll deplored the fact that few comprehensive instructional theories exist, and that practitioners have to rely more on drawing implications from learning theories than following a good ID (instructional design) theory.
If there were an ideal instructional system theory that is comprehensive enough, teachers and designers' work would become less difficult and complex, and the quality of education would be improved. Unfortunately, there is not yet an ideal instructional theory. Gagne's instructional theory is a fairly comprehensive one (Driscoll, 2005), but his theory fails to consider some perspectives, such as that of social constructivism. Therefore, we have to rely more on drawing implications from various learning theories.
Each learning theory illuminates some aspects of learning while obscuring others. So, fully understanding of learning requires a synthesis of learning theories. This is a difficult, yet very important task. I design the consilience tool for the above reason. I am expecting that my instructional design practice can be informed by a complete model in a more systematic way.
The key function of a consilience tool is to assit learning analysis through the following processes:
1. Identifying the synthesis of learning outcomes.
2. Determining an optimal combination of learning conditions:
(a) to make decision based on the synthesis of learning outcomes,
(b) to link to all relevant learning theories through the theory matrix
3. Determining instructional strategies:
(a) Start from the optimal combination of learning conditions;
(b) For each condition, can I deductively draw new implications beyond what is mentioned in the textbook?
(c) Determine the strengths and weaknesses of available experimental tested implications (prescriptive instructional strategies);
(d) Decide whether the strategies can be modified by introducing new elements or modifying existing elements;
(e) Determine whether all the strategies can be integrated together without any conflicts;
(f) Examine again whether all learning conditions are likely to be satisfied by adopting these strategies;
(g) If any condition is omitted, work on this condition by repeating the above steps.
Reference:
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education Inc.
Wilson, E. O. (1998). Consilience: The unity of knowledge. NY: Knopf.
2. What is my IDPSS?
In my IDPSS, there are a few components: 
TI: Theory of Instruction
ID: Instructional Design; DBR: Design-Based Research
TL is the function of learning conditions and learning outcomes:
TI is the function of learning conditions, learning outcomes, and learning strategies: 
ID is informed by TL and TI
DBR is aimed to enhance TL, TI, and ID,
and document the processes of ID
1. Can instructional designers self-build an HPT solution?
Instructional designers, whether working as human performance technologists or as educational technologists, need professional growth throughout their whole career. In other words, they can benefit from a flexible human performance technology (HPT) solution for supporting gains in their own expertise. When designing HPT for others, instructional designers' goal needs to be explicit and their efforts should be systematic; however, for one's own learning, there is a tendency to carry on in an ad-hoc manner without actually systematically utilizing instructional design (ID) principles.
I am going to compare two approaches of gaining expertise.
Approach 1 is defined as: Instructional designers gain expertise while designing instructions for other learners in their daily jobs. During the practice, they might read instructional design literature, collaborate with other designers/experts, and reflect their practice and learning.
Approach 2 is defined as: there are three sub-phases in each period of gaining instructional design expertise: (a) Instructional designers self-design an instructional design performance support system(IDPSS); (b) In their daily jobs, they collaborate with the IDPSS to design instructions for others, and they enrich the IDPSS by recording their ID activities in a structured way; and (c), and they might refine the IDPSS based on their evaluations and reflections.
In Approach 1, the goal of developing instructional design expertise is Less explicit and self-orientated, and the efforts tend to be unsystematic and discrete; therefore, the speed of growing might be slower.
By contrast, in Approach 2 the goal of developing instructional design expertise is more explicit and self-orientated, and the efforts tend to be systematic and continuous; therefore, the speed of growing might be faster.
I am going to compare two approaches of gaining expertise.
Approach 1 is defined as: Instructional designers gain expertise while designing instructions for other learners in their daily jobs. During the practice, they might read instructional design literature, collaborate with other designers/experts, and reflect their practice and learning.
Approach 2 is defined as: there are three sub-phases in each period of gaining instructional design expertise: (a) Instructional designers self-design an instructional design performance support system(IDPSS); (b) In their daily jobs, they collaborate with the IDPSS to design instructions for others, and they enrich the IDPSS by recording their ID activities in a structured way; and (c), and they might refine the IDPSS based on their evaluations and reflections.
In Approach 1, the goal of developing instructional design expertise is Less explicit and self-orientated, and the efforts tend to be unsystematic and discrete; therefore, the speed of growing might be slower.
By contrast, in Approach 2 the goal of developing instructional design expertise is more explicit and self-orientated, and the efforts tend to be systematic and continuous; therefore, the speed of growing might be faster.
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