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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