Lifting Burdens

Elder Holland's Testimony of the Book of Mormon

Layers revisited

Representation

What the user sees, hears, feels, etc.

Sensory experience – guides the user through learning

Control

The user input – how they are interacting with the instruction

Message

This is what comes back to the user in the representation layer.

Depends on their control – what they input

Strategy

Contains events (reads the control and sends the appropriate message)

Event: combination of time, space, goal, and activity

Content

Related to the actual goal – what it is that you are trying to teach

Operational principles – how does it work?

These can be socially constructed (think of the connotations that come with specific words, etc.)

What is the set of cause and effect relationships at work here?

Execution (Media Logic or Data Management)

How everything works together (from the instructors point of view)

What if they do the wrong thing at the wrong time? It may damage the students learning experience.

**You can tie it all together by revisiting the instructional design theories we have discussed. Their theories fit into different pieces of the layers-model we have created here. Theorists treat certain layers and ignore other layers.

October 2 - Designing Instruction

EXAMPLE IN CLASS (BOOK)

Representation

Pictures

Sounds

Words on the page

**Notice difference in representations

--Touching a word can say the word, spell it off, or tell you the sounds of the letters

Control Layer

The buttons you can push

Volume, go, stop, etc.

**Notice different levels

STOP GO VOLUME (represents a higher level)

WORDS LETTERS SAY IT (sub-level)

“TOUCH A LETTER TO…” (message layer)

Message Layer

The things the program is saying to you.

Prompts, instructions, hints, etc.

The music speeding up.

**The messages were tailored to his responses

Generating representations according to the users needs/responses

CONVERSATION STRUCTURES

Anything that creates a representation experience is representation. The message that is conveyed to the user comes from the message layer.

Strategy Layer

Hold all the event descriptions & the master plan for instruction

Tells the message layer what kinds of messages/transactions are appropriate depending on the circumstances

Interprets the control layer (input from the user) and then makes a decision of what the next course of action will be

EVENT STRUCTURES

GENERAL STRATEGIC PLANS – event ordering, conversation ordering

**Notice the difference between instructional goals and strategic goals

Instructional goals – what learning you want to take place.

Strategic goals – how you will influence that – how you will get it done.

**The interesting problem/challenge arises because the learner’s instructional and strategic goals may or may not be the same as the instructors goals. As an instructor you must learn what the learners goals are if you hope to adapt your strategy and instructional goals to them.

Content Layer

It’s possible to learn from a model – but it’s more efficient and effective if the model is accompanied by a strategy. The strategy has a plan to help the learner interact with and understand the model.

**Engine Model

Things they could learn:

The order of relations, how parts move

Things they could not learn:

The WHY of the engine – why does it move? What makes it happen?

**Problem with models – we can learn certain things, but we also miss certain things as we look at it.

**Relation to life: how often do we do this? We have some experience and make some connections – but without the bigger pictures (what God can see) we run the risk of coming to the wrong conclusions.

|||||| As instructional designers this is our job. Take a content and design the augmentation – the strategy that will help them have the learning experience with the content. ||||||

TRANSACTION THEORY

Used in computer assisted instruction.

Transaction shell – the actual structure that makes up the actual transaction.

Transaction instance – when you add the information to the shell it becomes an instance.

Transaction Family – all the transaction instances needed to teach a student a particular knowledge or skill to complete a task.

Sept 30, 2009 - Expectations & Other Things

EXPECTATIONS Russell T. Osguthorpe

Learning over time – not learning that decays or fades with time, rather, learning that is constantly growing.

People seldom exceed their own expectations – if they do, one might argue that their expectations were too low.

3 D’s of learning:

1 – Desire

Thinking about learning, wanting to learn a new skill

2 – Decision

Actually making the decision to learn something – to do it

3 – Determination

Actually doing it – putting forth the effort to accomplish something

**Sometimes the instructor needs to provide the impetus – the motivation to begin the cycle. Many times people don’t have a desire, they don’t want to make the decision, and they have no determination to learn something. If as teachers we can ask them to do something that will help move them onto the cycle then that can start the ball rolling.

DESIGN LAYERS (architecture)

Buildings – as the layers of a building age they slip past each other.

Things are designed semi-independently. The people who designed the lights speak a different language than the people who installed the wallboard. They al worked on the same building, but they all have their own specialties. Any technology as it gets more complicated it splits into specialties.

A layer is the natural evolution of a technology. As the technology grows so do the specialties. You have to know more to work in a particular layer.

How do we balance it all?

The battle between knowing a little bit about a lot of things and knowing a lot about one thing. This is the hardest thing for me because as a teacher of all these things (photoshop to java) I have to know about all of them, as a result I don’t get to really dive deep into any one category.

How Buildings learn – Brand

Educating the reflective practioner – Schon

Design Rules – Baldwin and Clark

DOMAIN	DEFINITION	EXAMPLES
Siting	Relations of the building site	Slope, hill, gully, contour
Building Elements	Components of buildings	Gym, offices, stairs, ramps
Organization of Space	Kinds of spaces and relations	Hallway, open area
Form	Felt-path of movement through space	Carry the gallery through here and look down into here
Structure	Technologies / processes used in building	Constructions module for these classrooms
Building Character	Kind of Building	Warehouse, beach cottage
Precedent	Reference to other kinds of buildings	The sort of thing an architect would invent

** You have to consider the constraints at each level – these determine what you do as you design in a particular layer.

** The more layers that you can see and use and utilize as you design the better. It will make your design more effective and useable.

**Instructional technology is not after absolute truth – we are after utility.

**Whenever you say the word ‘layers’ you need to say the word ‘function’ as well.

As the sophistication of your design increases so does the sophistication of your layers.

REPRESENTATON LAYER

This is the only layer that has an actual sensory experience for one or more layers.

CONTROL LAYER

This is where the student makes a response.

You ‘speak’ into the system and the system ‘speaks’ back to you.

** I.E. when you rollover something your mouse turns to a finger – if you click it takes you somewhere.

MESSAGE SUB-LAYER

The substance behind the representation and the control. Why is it important – what is it driving at here? This seems to be the list of steps (the messages given to the student so they know what to do)

I.E. name of step, action of the step, what you see or hear at each step, what happens when it’s finished.

September 28 - Class Thoughts

DAMASIO

Descartes error – separation of body and mind. He separated them and said that learning is not affected by outside influences.

Damasio – learning is emotional. Emotions and feelings are part of the learning process.

Instructional designers must take this into consideration – emotions and feelings are an integral part of the learning process.

** History of Creativity class – when the professor dressed up I remember I couldn’t help but pay attention. I remember that it was ridiculous and looked really funny but, he didn’t care. And when all was said and done I got a lot more out of that class than others.

Somatic Markers – our bodies create a response option to real or simulated decisions. I.E. if every time we try a math a problem our teacher makes fun of us and we feel bad – we begin to associate that bad feeling with math.

Smells, sounds, tastes, etc. are all tied to emotions. Many times I have been walking down the street and smelled something that has ‘taken me back’ to my mission. Anytime we have a strong emotional experience with something we create somatic markers that are triggered when we experience similar emotional stimuli.

PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING

Origins in the medical field. Students presented with problems – they then assess their current knowledge and figure out how to solve the problem or find the necessary information to come to a solution.

**The idea is – since there is more than one right answer students will learn more information than otherwise.

**Don’t structure it too much – there needs to be more than one right answer

**Don’t use this too much with younger learners – may not be effective.

What is the difference between Guided Learning & Problem-Based Learning

PBL is a decision strategy – the tutor has very specific roles and responsibilities. The tutor’s job is to help the group become aware of their own problem solving progress. The instructor in guided learning takes a more proactive role in guiding, asking questions, leading, and pointing to discovery for the students. The tutor is more concerned with the following the process – doesn’t give them any answers.

**Learning how to find out what you need to know is just as important as actually learning the information they need to learn.

**Test group they did this with in medical school – when it came to actual practice the group that went through PBL performed better. Why? Because they had been working on solving problems for years. They learned the process rather than just memorizing facts.

---Need to be careful – if we don’t follow the process precisely we may throw the system off or undermine the operational principle at work.

HOW TO FIND THE OPERATIONAL PRINCIPLE

Take things away from it until it breaks.

When it breaks – add something again – repeat until you find the principle.

ISTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

ADDIE / ISD

ADDIE: analysis, design, development, implication, evaluation

ISD: instructional systems development

1 – Define objectives

2 – Create test items

3 – Develop Instruction

4 – Implement Instruction

5 – Evaluation

Design – making a plan

Developing – putting that plan into action

**Develop Instruction – what does that mean? How do we do it?

What happens inside the miracle box? Meaning: how do we develop the instruction? What does it look like? Why?

--We all know what the output should be (instruction to be implemented) but how do we accomplish this?

DECISION MAKING CYCLE

Process that rationalizes the steps and intelligent person goes through while making a decision. A design is (very simply stated) a bunch of decisions.

September 23 - Class Thoughts

SCHEMA THEORY & MENTAL MODELS

Learning theory

Schema theory – how we connect information and experiences together; information is connected in a node-like manner.

Mental Model – the way we organize and connect our schemas together

**When we learn something we try to connect it to a previous experience and form our schema from that knowledge. If we were to experience something new or out of the ordinary we then reorganize our mental model (reconnecting different schemas together or adding new schemas) to fit what we now know.

OPERANT CONDITIONING

Learning Behavior

Associating stimuli with responses.

People associate certain behaviors with certain rewards or punishments.

** As a teacher we can utilize operant conditioning as students learn to continue to raise their expectations. When they do well we reinforce their good behavior (their behavior = stimuli; our praise = response) and they learn through operant conditions to keep doing the good behavior.

Skinner Box

Animals learned how to get food by pressing a lever. He also tried this with his daughter. Possible outcomes of an action can either enforce or discourage the continuance of the action.

STIMULUS(a) > RESPONSE(b)> STIMULUS(c)

A – tells the organism it’s time to respond

B – they respond

C – enforces or discourages the response

RECIPROCAL TEACHING

Instructional theory

1 – Questioning

2 – Summarizing

3 – Clarifying

4 – Predicting

**Good for reading comprehension.

Students and teachers take turns reading and then following the 4 steps.

Students are assigned a particular kind of question they will ask and then help answer. The questions will be specifically designed for reading comprehension – this creates an almost visible model of how reading comprehension happens.

--Takes some time for the students to catch on, but when they do they begin to learn how to comprehend reading for themselves.

COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY THEORY

How do we learn in ‘ill-structured domains’ (very complex domains like medicine).

Domains with high variability and very complex issues (lots of things involve, multiple factors, no single-right-answer).

Give the students a high # of “mini-cases”

They learn to recognize the subtle differences

They see that there are multiple perspectives and multiple “right answers”

**Teach in the context of cases – customizing a singular answer for each case

-Individuals construct their own version of knowledge from different sources and then come together and discuss each view/piece of information.

** Need this to be a effective facilitator. You take so many people, with so many different circumstances and viewpoints, and you need to combine them all to help find the truth. Think of the application to being a Gospel Doctrine Teacher.

It's all about using knowledge in a variety of ways - how can we learn knowledge in highly-complex and ill-structured domains (i.e. REAL LIFE).