Bear with me as I try and combine some thoughts that came to me as I read through the readings for the first two weeks of this course. I am suffering from the mid-autumn cold/flu that has struck my family and I feel that my thoughts are interesting, but I am struggling to make them clear.
Albert Einstein spent a lot of time in Gedankenexperimente, or Thought Experiments. It was in this space of free thinking, without being under the influence of any particular instructional design model, that he realized the General and Special Theories of Relativity, which are the most beautiful scientific theories ever developed (Isaacson, 2015). He also had a spirited exchange with another scientist, Erwin Schrödinger, about quantum superposition using a thought experiment called “Schrödinger’s Cat”, which has been described in popular culture and remains important in my work. Both of these thought experiments dovetail beautifully with the readings from this first two-week period.
One of the hallmarks of Einstein’s work in Special Relativity was how he approached his view of the nature of light. According to the famous equation E=mc2, it is basically impossible for matter to travel at the speed of light (Jones, 2021). We can get close, but we cannot do it. One of the things that is important to consider when selecting design methods is how no method will be perfect and so we need to choose one and try it out. Dron (2014) noted that, as we learn, we are moving “towards a peak of fitness that forever moves as we approach it”. As with matter approaching the speed of light, we can never quite get there. It is therefore important to note that, even as we get better at refining and developing design models, we will never achieve a perfect model. We will never be perfect at learning.
The next question is how we should make design decisions and what role design models and innovation play in the process. Well, choosing a design model is choosing your preferred method of change. By choosing a design model, you are choosing the future path of your organization, whether that is for incident investigation, as Rothwell et al. (2015) said, or to hopefully make a lasting impact on learners, as Veletsianos (2011) said. You are choosing where you think you want to go next, but you can only set an intention. It is impossible to know how it will turn out. As Veletsianos (2011) said, “it is not possible to construct transformative experiences but, to provide opportunities for transformation”. An organization or even an individual can choose a design method, but can never choose what the learners learn. Similar to the thought experiment between Schrödinger and Einstein, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. As we make design decisions, our learners are both learning and not learning at the same time. I would argue that design models and innovation are both less important than we make them out to be. Veletsianos (2011) took some pains in his paper to point out that learning is not something that we do TO learners. It is their experience, not ours as the instructor or instructional designer. The model therefore matters less than the learner.
Finally, for the question about which models I have found particularly effective, I think I have been a victim of my own industry. The classic ADDIE basis (Analysis, Design, Implementation, Evaluation) is the most common in the nuclear industry and so it is the one that I have been forced to work with. I fit with the models that Göksu et al. (2017) described as most common, given that I am in North America and I work in science. I look forward to learning about more methods but recognize that my experience so far is quite narrow. From what I have seen in my career, that type of design model is justified by the nature of the risk posed by nuclear technology. From the readings for week two, I am curious to see how Gagné’s “behaviorist-turned-cognitivist” (Heaster-Eckholm, 2020) method might work in my work to focus on the learner. In my experience, the organization protecting themselves from liability in the event of an event is the usual reason for choosing a particular design model.
References:
Dron, J. (2014). Chapter 9: Innovation and Change: Changing how we Change. In Zawacki-Richter, O. & T. Anderson (Eds.), Online distance education: Towards a research agenda. Athabasca, AB: AU Press.
Göksu, I., Özcan, K. V., Çakir, R., & Göktas, Y. (2017). Content Analysis of Research Trends in Instructional Design Models: 1999-2014. Journal of Learning Design, 10(2), 85-109.
Heaster-Ekholm, K. L. (2020). Popular Instructional Design Models: Their Theoretical Roots and Cultural Considerations. International Journal of Education and Development Using Information and Communication Technology, 16(3), 50–65.
Isaacson, W. (2015, October 30). Opinion | The Light-Beam Rider. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/sunday/the-light-beam-rider.html
Rothwell, W. J., Benscoter, B., King, M., & King, S. B. (2015). Chapter One – An Overview of Instructional Design. In Mastering the Instructional Design Process: A Systematic Approach. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Alternate link
Sutter, P. (2020, July 16). Why is the speed of light the way it is? Space.Com. https://www.space.com/speed-of-light-properties-explained.html
Veletsianos, G. (2011). Designing opportunities for transformation with emerging technologies. Published in Educational Technology, 51(2), 41-46.