I liked the presentation on Lev Vygotsky, especially since it covered the same theory I did 🙂 I would use this theory to some degree because it contains several elements that I like, such as social learning, constructivism, Zone of Proximal Development, and others. As a theory of learning that can guide how we design, I think it is great. But as a theory, I still have to ask if it is an actual instructional design model. How do we know when we have a lesson designed? We can probably evaluate a lesson in order to see if it fits within soci-cultural theory and not, say a behaviorist theory. But that would seem to be after the fact, in a summative matter or even possibly formative if performed right before the lesson as taught. With ADDIE, you have steps to follow that will indicate when you have arrived at having “a lesson” or “a class”. Not so much with socio-cultural theory (and most theories we are looking at). Scaffolding was mentioned in the presentation, and I love scaffolding. But where do you deal with that in the design process? Will you still be accomplishing socio-cultural theory if you leave out any planned scaffolds and just go ultra-constructivist?

Or maybe does all this mean that there really are no true “advanced” instructional design methods – you either have a derivative of ADDIE or a good theory with no design structure? Do we need someone to come along and create one? Or has our class (myself included) just not really accomplished our research very well? We shall see.

But that is still the bigger problem I have with so much that we are presenting (myself included). Where is the design process that produces the lesson/class that accomplishes these theories we are looking at? ADDIE tends to produce an empirically measured lesson with standardized tests and discussion forums and content consumption because it is a “process” based on empirically designing a course with measurable outcomes and goals that can be evaluated empirically. And not that this is bad – there are many topics that need to be taught empirically. If my spleen ruptures, I don’t want the doctor to socially construct a definition of what is happening with me. I want the doctor to know empirically want my organs are doing and why. I don’t even know if spleens can rupture, but the point is that there is a time in education to be empirical and times to be constructivist and times to be relative. But when we come down to needing a lesson or class that is constructivist in nature, how do we know how to design for that? We can identify it at the end for sure – as most of these theories do. But do we have a process that keeps us on track through the whole process and ensures we don’t end up with an empirical lesson instead? ADDIE seems to do a good job of (almost) ensuring an empirical lesson every time.

This is just my overall problem at this time. Hopefully someone will present something that is “more advanced design process” than “advanced learning theory.” But I think that is my emerging definition of advanced instruction design – a design process that creates a constructivist or relativist lesson instead of an empirical lesson. We’ll see how long that lasts.

So, when looking at Dual Coding Theory and Activity Theory, I would have pretty much the same problem. I would lean more towards using Activity Theory because of its Vygotskian roots. Dual Coding theory seems to use some distinctions between verbal and non-verbal that I don’t agree with. Or I guess I would disagree that images are non-verbal communications in all contexts. Images always communicate something – the greatest paintings in the world speak volumes, and many languages use pure symbols to describe scenes and occurrences rather than words and sentences.

Reading Notes:

Click here to read my notes for this week on Evernote

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Component Display Theory made sense to me, but I honestly don’t think I would use it. I just can’t be sure that I would classify it as an “advanced theory” for one, and on top of that it seems mostly focused on “performance.” Overall this theory seems to be very teacher-centric and passive learning in nature, even though I guess you could technically use it for something active and learner-centered. But often in learner-centered design there are no pre-determined content or performance objectives, and it seems those two pieces have to be present in order for CDT to work. Ultimately, if ADDIE is not an advanced theory, then something that just fits inside of one part of ADDIE would be even less advanced. For those that are into lessons that are heavily focused on content and performance, I think they would find a lot to like here. My problem with it is that it seems to just be an expansion of ADDIE and not a stand-alone design model that you can use by itself.

Gagne’s Theory of Learning also made sense, and there are parts I would use. Ultimately there were many parts that closely resembled Dick & Carey, but with a few differences. So is it advanced or not? Well, I guess it depends on if the liberties that Chris took with it are his alone, or if there is evidence in the literature that others also did so. Ultimately you can take liberties with any model and make it work as an advanced method, but how far can you get away from the original intent of a theories’ creator and still consider yourself to be using that theory? Personally, I would say for many of them: not far. Gagne and others were very intelligent and there is probably a reason that they left out certain liberties. So, the biggest problem I have with this theory is that it is a very ordered and specific system that needs mostly of teacher-focused design in order to work as it was originally conceived.

Kolb’s Learning Styles and Experiential Learning Theory – a theory connected with a style? I had the least problems with this one, although I do not subscribe to the idea of learning styles. I agree that people like to learn in certain ways depending on the content, but I just don’t see that as a “style.” When learning styles were first taught to me, I remember they were supposed to be a way to help learners process their own learning. For example, visual learners should take whatever lesson they were given and find ways to process it visually. The focus was on the learner. It seems the focus has shifted on to the teacher now… so you have to wonder about the validity of all of it if they can easily switch focus to a part of the process that brings in more money. Anyways… I like how Experiential Learning is a four step process of watching, thinking, feeling, doing. This seems more “learner-centered” and advanced – to me at least. But I am not sure how you would create a full design for this and take into consideration the data that admin-types usually want out of lessons. Seems like it would be good for apprenticeship-style learning, which we need more of in education in general.

Reading Notes:

Click here to read my notes for this week on Evernote

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The Dick & Carey model makes sense, mainly just because I had to learn about that one in my Master’s Classes. In fact, I probably still have Dick & Carey’s book lying around somewhere. To be honest, I have never been a fan of it. Is it 9 steps? 10? 11? Then when you read the book, there are several steps within each of those bigger steps. I remember doing a design project based on it, and it took a long time to come up with something that was just mediocre at best (you can see it here if you want to click through a billion links). So I would not use this method. A lot of that has to do with the long and detailed process to get through it. But also because I think it would just end up creating the same “rote memorization, lower thinking skills” type of course that we have all over academia. Detail begats detail, so a detailed ID process would turn out a detailed course with many objectives that can ultimately be best assessed with a standardized test. No matter how much interactivity you put in a course, or how much problem-based learning, or how cool of a educational game you put in it… teachers are just going to turn around and slap on some multiple choice questions and dump the good stuff once the pesky ID is out of the way. I know you don’t have to end up with that as a product of Dick & Carey, but that is what seems to happen the most. So that is my problem with it – it just seems to suck the life out of ID in an attempt to simplify it. I think it possibly helps students learn a whole process – I know that I learned the steps well through it – but I think it would be just too cumbersome to use in real life ID situations.

The socio-cultural theory honestly didn’t make full sense to me. And I know I was the one that presented on it. It never really seemed to decide if it was examining culture in learning or designing learning for culture. There is also very little structure around for it to be used as an actual design process. It probably serves more as a set of concepts to consider in designing lessons, or maybe even an overall approach to take to when designing a system rather than a lesson. I would still use it because it is very constructivist in nature and I like that about any model that falls in that realm. But it also seems to take into consideration how an individual connects with their culture – something that often gets lost in a focus on individual grade performance. Another problem I have is that I’m still not sure you can form a system that admins will like. Which of course is a problem faced by everything from Montessori to problem-based learning to anything that does not spit out nice grades and numbers easily – but still remains a problem to be dealt with. There are probably ways to do that with SCT, but they are not as expanded upon in the literature that I was able to find. So how can you get the powers that be on board with stuff like this? Especially after watching The Revisionaries, I know there is little chance in Texas. But you have to find a way to either make The Man happy, or go start your own school and become The Man.

Computer-Supported Collaborrative Learning makes sense as something I would use since it incorporates social aspects, problem-based learning, apprenticeship and situated learning. Epistemologically it seems to be constructivist in nature, but much more structured that socio-cultural theory. The biggest problem would be in the amount of time it would take to design a lesson with CSCL without overdoing it and making it “too scripted.” But that seems to be a common problem in many models of this nature. So it can be dealt with, but it sounds like it would not be as easy a process as ADDIE.

Reading Notes:

Click here to read my notes for this week on Evernote

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So what do I understand about Instructional Design? Some of the basics I feel I understand fairly well. I teach a course on ADDIE, so I get to see a lot about that. Especially about this time of the semester when I get to dig through 16 ADDIE PowerPoint presentations. Well, a bit less since I don’t waste time grading the ones plagiarized from Wikipedia. I am starting to see how the specific ID process that you choose to design with can influence the outcomes of your lesson. ADDIE lends itself to standardized testing more so that others such as LTCA. I know some people will point out that you can come up with any type of lesson in any ID process, but I tend to disagree… just because you never really see that happening. I think that is an interesting topic to research in the very near future – have there been any studies that attempt to see if certain ID models produce certain lesson types?

I will be teaching Socio-Cultural Theory for the class. Why did I choose that? Well, time for a confession. I have been struck in ADDIE mode for so long at my job that I don’t really remember much else outside of that. I was kind of hoping for a list of “Advanced” ID models to choose from, but when the time to post our ID choices, the few advanced models I knew were snapped up before I could jump in there. So I did a search for ID models based on constructivism, read through the results, and socio-cultural theory grabbed my attention. I think what interested me the most is that it expanded upon Vygotsky by focusing on the implications of culture on the construction of knowledge. There is really a find line of difference between the socio-cultural theory and constructivist theory, but that difference will be interesting to study. In many ways, what we are doing for our assignments this month could fall into socio-cultural theory, as long as the student presenters are interactive. Our class counts as a specific culture, and our presentations are a way that we help each other learn something we don’t already know. Zone of Proximal Development inside of a certain culture.

Reading Notes:

Click here to read my notes for this week on Evernote

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