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).

September 21 - Merrill and others

Pebble in the pond theory (Merrill’s design theory)

Start by defining the problem than moving on to smaller problems. As the learner solves the problems they learn the skills needed.

Similar to the 4-CID model – take a skill. Break it down into parts, figure out the information needed for these parts and then how teach it.

First principles of Instruction (Merrill’s instructional theory)

Dr. Merrill – basically he took all the theories and said that they had commonalities.

1 - Demonstration

2 – Application

3 – Task-Centered

4 – Activation

5 - Integration

4 Phase cycle of Instruction

** Need to be careful with this – if we focus too much on the formula, the approach, the

system/steps, we may lose some of the creativity that comes with design.

** His two ideas were more for the high-volume designer. He wanted to make a easy-to-follow

set of steps that anyone could follow as they were instructional designers.

**May not work for high-end products, for very picky customers, for very custom designs.

ANCHORED INSTRUCTION

Take learning concepts and ‘anchor’ them in real-world contexts.

Give them a real-life situation where they learn a specific principle in a real-life context.

Think of the old westerns – a lot of the values that the older generation embraces were learned in the old John Wayne westerns.

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? – This is a perfect example of these type

of anchored instruction.

**The story poses a problem that the learners have to solve. It’s not the actual story –

it’s the task/question that is presented that anchors the learning.

September 18 - Mirror Neurons, and other thoughts

The danger in becoming complacent:

Some monumental theorists have been so good in their arguments that all of the sudden everyone who wanted credibility had to refer to the ideas of these men. The problem was we were marching forward, but looking backward at these theories.

Thorndike – very influential theorist in educational psychology

Gagne – very influential theorist in instructional theory

** The best ideas don’t always have a powerful advocate. Be careful to not get caught in a paradigm – there is no secure argument that sums up the whole world at once.

Gospel relation – in eternity we will keep learning and learning – we can’t encapsulate it all in one theory – the second we think we have it figured out, we are wrong.

The learning social ladder:

Social scientists are at a disadvantage when they study because when physicists or chemist research they can separate whatever they are studying from the rest of the world. Social scientists cannot – they are dealing with humans, they are complex, they are irrational, and they can’t be taken from the world.

There is a hierarchy of snobs in the academic world – they physicists are at the top while we are at the bottom with the sociologists. We can’t back up our findings the same way they can so we get pushed to the bottom.

Technology doesn’t try to figure out what happens naturally – they try to figure out how humans change what happens for their own purposes.

A possible problem we have today is that we are spewing forth a chain of meaningless research that isn’t answering the big questions – people are just playing off of each other and supporting each other’s research while avoiding the big topics.

Mirror Neurons

When we see something happen certain neurons fire in our brain – these same neurons fire when we perform the same action ourselves. This is especially applicable when we teach things like language, motor skills, etc.

Focus on demonstrations – creating an opportunity for them to ‘experience’ something before they ever do it. They will be more comfortable if they have already seen something happen before – as you do it they will be visualizing themselves do it as well.

**This is so true – I have had this experience at the MTC many times – there are few things that I can do as a teacher that will be as effective as modeling for them what I would like them to do. They watch me do it, they imagine themselves do it, they visualize it as I do it, and then they are more comfortable practicing it themselves.

**This was my experience in ASL – there is no other way to learn it than to see it done. It’s just not effective to learn ASL from a book – you need to watch someone do it and then you need to do it again yourself.

**Think of movies – you can experience so many emotions while watching a movie – even if you aren’t experiencing it yourself, it’s as if you are still having those emotions and that experience.

September 16

Micro-Worlds

My favorite presentation of the day today was the one on Micro-worlds. At first when she was explaining them I thought, “Well, yeah – duh.” But, I loved her example of the ski hills and then the baseball playing (starting first with tennis balls and a machine, and then moving to real balls, and a real field). That’s what life is all about – it’s all about slowly moving from a smaller micro-world to a larger one (whether that be in the sense of the gospel or just life in general).

I was thinking about my life and how the older I get the more I can expand my microworld to include more and more of my surroundings. I think that one thing that comes with more knowledge is an automatic expansion of our microworld – one of the greatest blessings I can think of that I have received from coming to college is an increased understanding of everything around me – and with that I think comes an automatic shift in micro-world.

As teachers it is so crucial to not only have an understanding of the micro-world the student is living in but to also constantly seek to push that and enlarge it. The implications that come with the proper understanding of a micro-world are also huge to an instructional designer. We need to start with the world they currently reside in and consistently create experiences that will place the learners in larger and more complex micro-worlds. The key is to constantly build on the knowledge and experiences gained in the previous experiences or micro-worlds (like scaffolding) so they are not overwhelmed.

I liked the idea as well that was shared in class about Gagne’s 9 steps. I think that they are all good and important to follow, but as we come to an understanding of each one we will naturally gain the ability to take artistic license in which order we use them in and which we chose to admit. As was said in class – just as Mozart had a firm understanding of what it took to make music and was able to work around and within those parameters, we as instructional designers can take artistic license and work around and within the steps shared by Gagne.

I like learning about all the theorists and seeing how I can use that knowledge in my own life or in the future – for example, the VoiceThread application that we were shown – that was great. I can very well see myself using that in the future as I prepare to become a teacher.