Month: November 2017

LRNT 524 -Taking Making: A Toolkit for the Classroom

My thoughts, questions, and concerns after reading : Crichton, S. & Carter, D. (2017). Taking Making into Classrooms Toolkit. Open School/ITA. 

SECTION 2: MAKING THE CONNECTION: DESIGNING, MAKING, AND A NEW CULTURE OF LEARNING

  • It was promising to read that on a global, national, government and non-government level, ALL parties agree that learning needs to be more engaging, experiential, and authentic.
  • This toolkit was very specific to teaching children in a classroom setting. Although I do not discredit the content for the workplace or dismiss the fact that that it may also be transferable to adults, I do think tapping in to that exploratory way of learning would yield far better results when starting at a young age.
  • Further to that note, how can minds that have been programmed in a static way of learning be molded or changed in adulthood? Is it really worth trying to “retrain the brain” to the think?
  • The point that discussed turning everybody into knowledge workers was interesting because throughout all of these readings, that thought has been the biggest question I’ve had, how does all of this emotional, collaborative, cultural probing etc. really matter for tactical mindless work? It seems like that’s the point, for innovation to occur, people need to see and think beyond their task. No difference between white and blue collared workers.
  • Design thinking encourages learning by doing, I completely agree with this when referring to tactile skill development, but how do you learn by doing when you are faced with digital methods of learning? Does it mean having students sit in front of a computer to build things or will there always be a need to get your hands dirty in the design phase?
  • By fostering play, how does this work in a corporate culture that is moving towards data driven EVERYTHING?
  • The biggest takeaway from this chapter was the concept of creating a passion for learning instead of a hunger for approval. This concept triggers a thought for me in my own workplace. Training has always been a “get it done and over with” kind of approach, with employees looking for a “pass” on their saturation reports so they can put it behind them. If we as an organization could explore what it means to encourage a passion for learning, this could shift the mindset and inspire a more empathetic approach in our course designs with the goal of creating enhanced enjoyment of our training programs.

SECTION 3: DESIGN CHALLENGES: PROMPTS FOR LEARNING AND HARD FUN

  • This helped to really explain the rationale behind the activities/assignment and brought clarity to why we are doing this and to “trust the process”.
  • This has prompted me to incorporate the term “Hard Fun” in my vocabulary as well. I like the way it quickly sums up how to incorporate learning with fun. It brings further understanding to why for leaners, it’s not worth thinking about unless there is a challenge or incentive or a problem worth solving.

SECTION 6: WHY WE NEED OUR STUDENTS TO BE DESIGN THINKERS

  • Education is essential to remaining competitive in the modern world.
  • With technology advancing faster than ever before, the workplace demographics are changing. Some workers are too young to retire but too old to easily go back to school. If we know this of the current situation, is it really worth trying to retrain this specific demographic? Is it easier to use them as a lesson learned and try to develop systems to avoid this happening for future generations?
  • Something that stood out for me was from the list of traits of a design thinker by Tim Brown. He states that optimism (among other traits) is essential for design thinkers. This is interesting as I often feel like it’s easy to be pessimistic when you don’t understand something, or things are moving and changing too fast. The idea of focusing on the potential solution or viewing problems with an optimistic outlook seems obvious but not always practiced in the workplace.
  • Lastly, it seems like the movement is more towards that of a web or process of inquiry, to encourage learners to be curious and ask questions in a way that provokes more conversation and further opportunities to ask question. I wonder if this will trigger the end of linear learning.

Crichton, S. & Carter, D. (2017). Taking Making into Classrooms Toolkit. Open School/ITA. 

LRNT 524 – What Happened To Empathetic Design?

My thoughts, questions, and concerns while reading “What Happened to Empathetic Design” (Mattelmaki, Vaajakallio & Koskinen, 2014).

General Thoughts:

  • I find it interesting that research is moving in the direction of considering emotion in design. In my experience, specifically with the company I currently work for, we are actually moving away from the “gut feel” or emotional response planning that we’ve done in the past and focusing more on data and pure metrics to determine design methods.
  • There seems to be significant ambiguity with designers trying to identify or relate to the ways or feelings of others. It seems like there is a cross between psychology and design, something I would have initially believed to be two very separate areas of expertise.
  • This article left me with the impression that designers will have to be a “jack of all trades” in the future, they require collaboration skills, they need to be able to relate and understand the emotional needs of others, while still being an expert in instructional design.
  • A moment where it “clicked” for me, was when the author described how the designer must become an empathetic designer of their own (aka they need to trigger that part of themselves while doing activities like the one we did with the gift giving), to help put into context what it means to tap into those feelings, and ultimately determine how to use that in a design form.

Questions/Concerns:

  • If empathetic design is rooted in more face to face interactions, how can this live in an online world?
  • How are user’s emotions or feelings interpreted through writing instead? Does this mean that you can only achieve empathetic design if you use technology that enables visual interactions between the designer/user?
  • If you always do what the learner thinks they need or want, are you providing them a disservice if they “don’t know what they don’t know”?

Mattelmäki, T., Vaajakallio, K., & Koskinen, I. (2014). What happened to empathic design?. Design Issues, 30(1), 67-77

 

LRNT 524 – A Debrief of ADDIE, Learning, and Instructional Systems Design

My thoughts, questions, and concerns when reading  Is the ADDIE model appropriate for teaching in a digital age? Bates (2014)  and Learning and instructional systems design. Thomas (2010):

When I started the readings for this week, my first thought was “Wow, all of these design methods seem to assume one way for everybody”, especially the ADDIE model. However once I read further and dug deeper in the research from Thomas (2010), it became clear to me that that was the exact reason why the report by Thomas (2010) was done. It was to challenge the status quo and not make assumptions based on one way of learning.  

Many observations, questions, and concerns came up for me while reading both articles this week and I have outlined my thoughts and points for further discussion below.

It seems like design methods or processing models have to be based on learning styles and theories. With that in mind, if learning styles are becoming a hot topic of being debunked – is it still fair to say that they are essential in instructional design? I’m curious to know if the new discussion of learning styles being a “myth” and how so many of these systems are built or said to “customize” to learning style, what that will actually mean going forward?

It appears that many designs assume retention or mastery, there doesn’t seem to be a strong sense of understanding how effective the learning actually was, and how to truly evaluate it more than just adding a step to the design called “evaluation”. I noticed this with the ADDIE model and believe this is one reason as to why it is not ideal for the rapidly changing world. 

Many of the designs are organized in lists or systems to follow, however there doesn’t seem to be a significant emphasis on what it means for example, to “evaluate” or “analyze” the leaner or the process.

It was made clear throughout the readings, that the learning experience is becoming more subjective and in line with the constructivist perception of learning with more contextual and less objective learning designs.

Many points throughout the constructivist view to learning, state that evaluation should happen as more of a knowledge retention process rather than criterion-referenced evaluation.

Concerns that arise for me with this method are:

  • How would this work for areas that require saturation reports (like health and safety)?
  • How can one “self-analyze” whether they know how to do CPR for example?
  • If we move away from assessments, or that the assessment transitions to the form of self or peer assessment, how does that really work for concrete skill development, like how to do surgery for example?
  • In my opinion, not everything can be evaluated through qualitative measures like interviews or observations etc.
  • This makes it all the more valuable to look at the “blended” approach suggested by this article.

There seem to be many definitions of Instructional Design and none of them really outline “HOW” to determine what content goes when and how to set up the process. They state more about a process that should be followed but not the why behind it. My assumption is that it is left to the subject matter experts to oversee this aspect. However, what happens when the environment is different than the higher education field described in this article? What if in a corporate setting the subject matter expert is also expected to be the instructional designer?

There was high emphasis on the need for interactivity, collaboration and interaction. The general consensus seemed to be that collaboration (teacher-student as well as student-student) and dialogue between these relationships should be very open.  In this context, the teacher or instructor becomes more of the coach or mentor rather than knowledge expert.

Willis’s Constructivist design principles suggest that using participants from the beginning of the design process is helpful for proper process building. I would love to know how other designers in the course seek out focus groups or involve their participants to contribute to the design, especially during the beginning of the course design process.

The article states that most designers don’t use a single strategy, model, or theory and often use elements of them all. How can companies for example, develop a method of consistency and sustainability when that is the case? It seems like the move is towards less structure and more complexity offering less consistency to the learner.

It is stated that different kinds of learning requires different kinds of instructional strategies, but how does that work when you’re building a course that is not meant for one specific audience, you don’t necessarily know the type of learner you’re dealing with. On this note, something that was interesting to me was the whole “performance” piece. For example, if the result of the learning/training was for a concrete skill to be developed or just general knowledge, how would that instructional design process change?

Interest for Further Discussion:

I was intrigued by David Merrill (2004) where his Instructional Transaction Theory describes how the SAME subject matter can be used in different strategies based on decisions made by the LEARNER as they interact with the computer program. This is an important thing for organizations like mine to consider when creating training content. Our training delivery method is often a “one way or no way” approach, and shifting towards a learner centric strategy could bring forth more engagement, information retention, and enjoyment for our employees.

For me, the ICARE model was the most beneficial literature within this article. It really helped break down EACH and every stage that a learner goes through while they are participating in an eLearning course. This was very relevant as it even outlined things like giving the learner space to really digest (even outside of the on-line platform) causing learning to be an active, not a passive, experience.

I also like the ASSURE model as it outlines how to really “analyze” the learner through a list of characteristics that would influence learning. I also like how it shares how to properly choose the media and method. The focus was shifted to more of a “focus on the student learning as opposed to just teaching them” approach.

Overall it seems like the constructivist theory is all over the future of Instructional Design. This makes sense to me with the need to evolve, be learner centric and to be less rigid in the process. However I fear the ability to be consistent and clear with direction over time.

How can technology really change from being a vehicle to deliver training, to a tool to actually influence and change the way we learn?

Overall it seemed like most ISD models share similarities, however the names or steps were slightly different between them all. They all focused on the need to provide instruction effectively in the end they are generally prescriptive, systematic, and linear.

The point of it being more “efficient but not as effective” really struck me. It made me wonder how in the future, can we find a balance using a design process that still captures all of the content required to teach somebody effectively, while evolving the methods to adapt to the needs of the learner and give them more control of our their learning journey.

It is very evident that RRU uses the 7 principles for good practice in online courses (pg.219) through peer reviews, to portfolios like our blogs. There were many times throughout these readings that I recognized methods I have seen used in our program so far.

 

Thomas, P. Y. (2010). Learning and instructional systems design. In Towards developing a web-based blended learning environment at the University of Botswana. (Doctoral dissertation).

Bates, T. (2014, September 9). Is the ADDIE model appropriate for teaching in a digital age?