Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:55:29 +0000

Product Description
Text addresses issues of how practices are adapted and applied in numerous environments; emphasizing the constraints on the design process that have been imposed by the timelines, resource distributions, and needs of various systems. Hardcover, softcover available. DLC: Instructional systems–Design–Data processing…. More >>

Instructional Design in the Real World: A View from the Trenches

Tags: addresses issues, constraints, Design, dlc, environments, from, Instructional, instructional design, instructional systems design, Real, real world, resource distributions, Trenches, View, view from the trenches, World

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Following the AB are some excerpts from the reading that I thought were interesting.

In thinking about instructional design, the focus of Chapter 1 is on defining both instruction and design as well as the differences between instruction, teaching, training, and the larger umbrella term, education.  Although I’d considered and used these words for many years now, the chapter provided a good delineation of what each means in the larger scheme of things.  With the definitions set, Chapter 2 goes on to consider both philosophy and theory, the foundations of good design.  Especially useful was (yet another) definition of constructivism.  The one thing I took issue with was the authors assertion that Constructivism is actually a philosophy and not a theory, something I’m not sure I agree with but will remain open for consideration moving forward.

• The term instructional design refers to the systematic and reflective process of translating principles of learning and instruction into plans for instructional materials, activities, information resources, and evaluation” (p. 2).
• “Instruction is the intentional facilitation of learning toward identified learning goals” (p. 2).
• “teaching and instruction may be most often used interchangeably.  In this text, we will use the term teaching to refer to those learning experiences that are facilitated by a human being- not a videotape, text book, or computer program, but a live teaching” (p. 3).
• “The term design implies a systematic or intensive planning and ideation process prior to the development of something or the execution of some plan in order to solve a problem.  Fundamentally, design is a type of problem solving and has much in common with problem solving in other professions” (p. 4).
• “Several of his [Rowland, G 1993] observations of design in general are particularly salient to the design of instruction:
  • Design is  a goal-directed process in which the goal is to conceive and realize some new thing….
  • A basic task of designing is to convert information in the form of requirements into information in the form of specification.
  • Design requires social interaction
  • Designing involves problem solving, but not all problems solving is designing” (p. 5).
• “In their constant querying of a subject matter expert for clarification, designers are standing in the place of the learner, trying to obtain information to make the content clearer to the learner” (p. 8).
• “The process of formative evaluation provides the opportunity to revise instruction to make it more effective, efficient, and appealing” (p. 8).
• “One of the reasons that the quality of much instructional material is poor is because it is not carefully planned” (p. 11).
• “constructivism….This philosophy (some describe it as a theory, but we feel it does not have the explanatory power of a learning theory) and its implications for instructional design have been much discussed among practitioners as well as scholars in the field” (p. 14).
• “Fields of study, such as instructional design, do not have educational philosophies; people who study in these fields do” (p. 8).
• “Constructivism is an education philosophy within a large category of philosophies that are described as “rationalism.” A rationalist philosophy is characterized by the belief that reason is the primary sources of knowledge and that reality is constructed rather than discovered.  Most rationalist would propose that there is not a single reality to be discovered, but that each individual has constructed a personal reality” (p. 14-5).
• “A second philosophical traditional is empiricism, sometimes termed objectivism, and it postulated that knowledge is acquired through experience” (p. 17).
• “Pragmatism might be considered a ‘middle ground’ between rationalist (constructivism) and empiricism….Although pragmatists, like empiricist, believe the knowledge is acquired through experience, they believe that this knowledge is interpreted through reason and it temporary and tentative” (p. 17).
• “The ‘best’ instruction is that which is effective (facilitates learners’ acquisition of the identified knowledge and skills), efficient (requires the least possible amount of time necessary for learners to achieve the goals), and appealing (motivates and interests learners, encouraging them to persevere in the learning task)” (p. 18).
• “Evaluation should include the evaluation of the instruction as well as the evaluation of the learn’s performance.  Information from the evalutation of instruction should be used to revise the instruction in order to make it more efficient, effective, and appealing” (p. 18).
• “A theory is an organized set of statements that allow us to explain , predict, or control events.  The theories from which instructional design draws are of two kinds, descriptive theory and prescriptive theory.  Descriptive theory describes phenomena as they are hypothesized to exist.  Many learning theories are descriptive: They describe how learning occurs.  Prescriptive theories prescribe actions to take that will lead to certain results.  Instructional theories are basically prescriptive in nature: They suggest that if instruction includes certain features, it will lead to certain types and amounts of learning” (p. 18).
• “Information-processing theories …describe learning as a series of transformation of information (i.e., processing) through a series of postulated structures within the brain” (p. 20).
• “Schemata are data structures that represent the generic concepts, such as ‘face,’ ‘restaurant,’ and ‘burglary,’ that are stores in memory and have ’slots’ that are filled with information related to a specific situation” (p. 21).
• “Mental models are similar to schemata but in addition to the concepts and their relationships that are stores in schema, mental models contain information about task demands and task performances that are used for problem solving” (p. 21).
• “While in learning we may experience a feeling of being ‘overloaded,’ this is due to the overloading of working memory or a difficulty in retrieving relevant prior knowledge with which to integrate it , rather than a saturation of long-term memory” (p. 22).
• “The major processes suggested by Piaget are
  • Assimilation. Cognitive process that can fit new learning into existing cognitive structures.
  • Accommodation.  Cognitive processes that modify existing cognitive structures based upon new information that will not ‘fit’ into existing structures.
  • Disequilibrium.  A cognitive state of confusion, dissonance, or discomfort when new information cannot be integrated within existing structures.
  • Equilibration.  Cognitive processes that create major restructuring of knowledge to accommodate or assimilate information that caused disequilibrium” (p. 23).
• “Piaget clearly perceived that development preceded learning.  In other words, learners must be cognitively ‘ready’ before they can achieve certain kinds of tasks….In contrast to Piaget, Vygotsky (1978) proposed that learning precedes development” (p. 23).
• “Contrary to Piaget, who perceived development as preceding learning, and Vygotsky, who perceived development as following learning, Case and Siegler appear to perceived learning and development as almost concurrent” (p. 24).
• “Are the cognitive processes of children and adults qualitatively different, or are the difference that we often see between how adults learn and how children learn more an artifact of prior learning (strategic, domain-specific, and world knowledge” (p. 24).
• “An instructional system that adheres to a master model sets a minimum level of competence for all, or most, students.  The system is developed to provide the remediation and reevaluation necessary to bring learners to this level of competence and has developed a scheme for grading that accommodates the mastery model” (p. 25).