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

—