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September 12th, 2007
NOTES TAKEN BY S. MISTRETTA DURING MY INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN COURSE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY TEACHERS COLLEGE. THE BOOK IS TRENDS AND ISSUES IN INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY BY REISER/DEMPSEY
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Trends and Issues Chapter 1:
Examines the evolution of the definition of the field of Instructional Design and Technology.
First Decade of the Twentieth through the 1920’s:
* film, pictures and lantern slides – the “visual instruction movement” “The enrichment of education through the seeing experience.”
Late 1920’s through the 1940’s, sound recordings. “The focus shifted from visual instrction to audiovisual instruction”.
1950’s – the growth of television.
First half of the twentieth century – “individuals involved in the field of instructional technology were focused on instructional media.”
Much attention today is still paid on design, production and use of instructional media.
1960’s and 1970’s – Instructional Technology Viewed as a Process.Finn – instructional technology should be viewed as a way of looking at instruction problems and examining feasible solutions to those problems.
1963 Definition – “the design and use of messages which control the learning process.” Association for Educational Communications and Technology. This definition was the first to place an emphasis on learning rather than on instruction.
1970 Commission on Instructional Technology – Two definitions of Instructional Technology, an older version describing hardware and software. An new definition describing technology as a process.
1977 Definition – AECT – Association for Educational Communication and Technology – “Educational technology is a complex, integrated process involving people, procedures, ideas, devices, and organization for analyzing problems and devising, implementing, evaluating and managing solutions to those problems, involved in all aspects of human learning.” – First to mention analysis.
1994 Definition – cognitive and sonstructivist learning theories began to have a major influence on design practices. – “Instructinal Technology is the theory and practice of design, development, utilization, management and evaluation of processes and resources of learning.” (Five Domains) This definition does not separate teachers from media, incorporating both into the phrase “resources for learning”
2006 Definition – “Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitation learning and improving performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technological processes and resources.” This is a departuture from the other definitions because it will “facilitate learning” rather than to “cause or control” learning. It also denotes that it will “improve performance” which will help learners apply knowledge.
Definition developed by this text: “The field of instructional design and technology (also known as instructional technology) encompasses the analysis of learning and performance p0roblems, and the design, development, implementation, evaluation and management of instructional and noninstructional processes and resources intended to improve learning and performance in a variety of settings, particularly educational institutions and the workplace. Professionals in the field of instructional design and technology often use systematic instructional design procedures and emply instructional media to accomplish their goals. Moreover, in recent years, they have paid increasing attention to noninstructional solutions to some performance problems. Research and theory related to each of the aforementioned areas is also an important part of the field.
Trends and Issues Chapter 2
What is Instructional Design?
A systematic process that is employed to develop education and training programs in a consistent and reliable fashion.
A complex process that is creative, active and iterative.
Systems Analysis approach to Instructional Design:
System – an integrated set of elements that interacts with each other.
Interdependent – no element can be separated from the system since all elements depend on each other to accomplish the system’s goals.
Synergistic – together, all the elements can achieve more than the individual elements alone.
Dynamic – system monitors its environment and elements within the system can be adjusted in light of changes in that environment.
Cybernetic – the elements efficiently communicate among themselves, an essential condition for a system to be interdependent, synergistic and dynamic
1960’s – ID process was applied in military, industrial and commercial training applications.
Behaviorism – the philosophy and values associated with the measurement and study of behavior, commonly associated with B.F. Skinner’s stimulus-response theory.
A variety of behaviors can be observed, measured, planned for and evaluated in ways that are reasonably reliable and valid.
Systematic design procedures can make instruction more effective, efficient and relevant than less rigorous approaches to planning instruction.
The Core Elements of Instructional Design – ADDIE – Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation
Analysis often includes an needs assessment.
Design includes writing objectives in measurable terms.
Development – preparing student and instructor materials
Implementation – delivering the instruction in the settings for which it was designed.
Evaluation – formative – collecting data to identify needed revisions to the instruction.
Evaluation – summative – collecting data to assess the overall effectiveness and worth of the instruction.
Revision – making needed changes based on the formative evaluation data.
There are several ID models, but few ID case studies.
Insructional Design is:
1. learner centered – no initial assumption that a live teacher is even needed to achieve the stated objectives. Learners can select their own objectives or learning methods. This shift to the student is a “paradigm shift of immense power.”
2. goal oriented – Goal step is often skipped, but is crucial for a “common vision”
3. focuses on meaningful performance – prepares learners to perform meaningful and complex behaviors including solving authentic problems. High degree of congruence between the learning environment and the setting in which the actual behaviors are performed.
4. assumes outcomes can be measured in a reliable and valid way. – Assessment must be consistent
5. empirical, iterative and self-correcting – Guidance and feedback ensures accuracy and relevance of the skills and knowledge taught.
6. a team effort – skills of a variety of individuals.
Chapter 3
A History of Instructional Design – The use of systematic instructional design procedures and the use of media for instructional purposes have formed the core of the field of instructional design and technology.
History of Instructional Media:
Instructional Media – the physical means via which instruction is presented to learners. Live instructions, textbooks and computer.
Three primary means of instruction prior to the twentieth century – the teacher, chalkboard and textbook.
School Museum – distribution of portable museum exhibits, stereographs (three-dimensional photograph) slides, films, study prints, charts and other instructional materials. Intended as supplementary curriculum materials.
The Visual Instruction Movement and Instructional Films – lantern slide projectors, stereograph viewers. Motion picture projector (1910)
1913 – Edison – “Books will soon be obsolete in the schools…It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture. Our school system will be completely changed in the next ten years.” – Didn’t happen
The Audiovisual Instruction Movement and Instructional Radio – 1920’s and 1930’s radio broadcasting, sound recordings and sound motion pictures. 1932 – merger of professional organizations into Department of Visual Instruction as part of the National Education Association.
Visualizing the Curriculum – Hoban (1937) – audiovisual material – a degree of realism.
1930’s – Radio – National Education Association – “tom9orrow they will be as common as the book and powerful in their effect on learning and teaching.” – Very little impact (Cuban, 1986)
1946 – Dale – Cone of Experience
World War II – a/v devices used extensively in the military and in industry.
1945 – German Chief of General Staff – “We had everything calculated perfectly except the speed with which America was able to train its people. Our major miscalculation was in underestimating their quick and complete mastery of film education” pg 19 Overhead projector introduced as part of training.
AV devices – successful in helping the US solve a major training problem – how to train effectively and efficiently large numbers of individuals with diverse backgrounds.*****
Post WWII AV research programs were among the first concentrated efforts to identity principles of learning that could be used in the design of AV materials. Educators either ignored or were not made aware of many of the research findings. *****
Media comparison studies (compare how much students learn from AV or from live) have usually revealed that students learned equally well regardless of the means of presentation.
Theories of Communication – The Communication Process – involving a sender and a receiver of a message and a channel or medium.
Instructional Television – 1952 – the FCC set aside 242 television channels for educational purposes.
1950s to 1960 – Ford Foundation spend 170 million on educational television. Closed circuit TV in school system of Washington County Maryland, junior college curriculum presented via public tv in Chicago, College courses via closed cirquit at Penn State, and Midwest Program on Airborne Television – transmitted televised lessons from an airplane to schools in six states. Televised instruction abated – teacher resistance to use of television in their classrooms, and expense.
Shifting Terminology – educational technology and instructional technology replaced audiovisial instruction.
Computers 1950 – 1995 CAI – Computer Assisted Instruction – IBM
Adaptive teaching Machines – Gordon Pask
CAI – very little impact on education
1980’s microcomputers – relatively inexpensive, compact for desktop use, could perform many functions performed by large comuters. 1984 – Papert – computer was going to be “a catalyst of very deep and radical change in the educational system.” By 1995 – impact of computers on instructional practices was minimal. Substantial number of teachers with little or no use of comuters for instructional pruposes. Primarily used for drill and practice or word processing.
Recent Developments – Internet – rapid increase in interest and use. Military uses it for online courses. Increased presence of technology does not mean increased use.
Internet has interactive capabilities.
1. Interaction between learners and instructional content
2. Interaction between learners and the instructor
3. Interaction among learners themselves.
Advances in computer technology – increased multimedia capabilities.
Allows users to easily link to various content
History of Instructional Design
Origins of Instructional Design – World War II – training materials for the military developed by psychologists and educators.
Military screened candidates for skill set to be successful in particular program.
Detailed task analysis – Psychological Principles in System Development by Miller, edited by Gagne
The Programmed Instruction Movement
B.F. Skinner – “The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching” – increasing human learning and the desired characteristics of effective instructional materials.
Behavioral Objectives – “Preparing Objectives for Programmed Instruction” by Mager how to write objectives
Criterion-Referenced Testing Movement – intended to measure how well an individual can perform a particular behavior or set of behaviors, irrespective of how well others perform. This is opposite to the norm-referenced tests which are designed to spread out the performance of learners, resulting in some students doing well on a test, and others doing poorly.
Criterion referenced testing:
1. assesses the student’s entry level behavior
2. determines the extent to which students had acquired the behaviors an instructional program was designed to teach.
Domains of Learning, Events of Instruction and Hierarchical Analysis:
1965 – The Conditions of Learning by Gagne
Gagne – five domains of learning outcomes (each requires a different set of conditions to promote learning):
1. verbal information
2. intellectual skills
3. psychomotor skills
4. attitudes
5. cognitive strategies
Gagne – nine events of instruction or teaching activities essential for promoting the attainment of any type of learning outcome
Sputnik – Indirect Launching of Formative Education – 1957 – US response was to pour millions of dollars into improving math and science education in the US. The materials were written by subject matter experts and without tryouts with learners *****
Formative evaluation – the tryout and revision process while the materials were still in the formative stage.
Summative evaluation – the testing of instructional materials after they are in their final form.
1970’s Systems Approach – US military
1980’s Growth and Redirection – instructional design – little impact on instruction in the public schools. Growing interest in cognitive psychology.
Twenty-First Century – Changing Views and Practices – human performance technology movement. Growing interest in constructivism. Emphasizes the authentic learning tasks that reflect the complexity of the real-world environment in which learners will be using the skills they are learning.
Chapter 4 – Psychological Foundations of Instructional Design
In most psychological theories, learning is defined as, “a persisting change in human performance or performance potential.
Learning comes about as a consequence of the “learner’s experience and interaction with the world.
What differs among particular learning theories is how they describe the observed outcomes of learning and how they explain the learning process.
Behavioral Learning Theory – B.F. Skinner – reinforcement, feeback, behavioral objectives and practice. Learning can be understood, explained and predicted entirely on the basis of observable events, namely, the behavior of the learner along with its environmental antecedents and consequences.
Antecedents – refer to the cues occurring in the environment that signal the appropriateness of a given behavior.
The consequences of a behavior then determine whether it is repeated and thus considered to be learned.
A learner who tries a new strategy for finding information on the Internet is more likely to keep using it if it proves to be successful.
Principles of behavior modification had a significant impace on the ID field.
Emphasis in this theory on the behavior of the learners also contributes to concepts such as behavioral objectives and the importance of practice in instruction.
Need to ensure that learners have sufficient opportunities to practice these behaviors as they learn.
Feedback was assumed to be essentially equivalent to reinforcement.
Designers employed instructional strategies such as linera programmed instruction, which broke instruction into small steps and required learners to respond frequently. These designs were boring to learners.
Cognitive Information Processing Theory – regards the environment as playing an important role in learning. Where it differs from behaviroal theory is in its assumption of internal processes within the learner that explain learning.
Stimuli became inputs, behavior became outputs. And what happened in between was conceived of as information processing.
Atkinson and Shriffin (1968) proposed a multistage, multistore theory of memory that is generally regarded as the basis for the information processing theory. Three memory systems – in the learner (sensory, short-term, and long-term memory) are assumed to receive information from the environment and transform it for storage and use in memory and performance.
Sensory memory – learners perceive organized patters in the environment and begin the process of recognizing and coding these patterns.
Short-term or working memory permits the learner to hold information briefly in mind to make further sense of it and to connect it with other informatin that is already in long term memory.
Long-term memory enables the learner to remember and apply information long after it was originally learned.
Processes such as attention, encoding and retrieval act on information as it is received, transformed and stored for later recall and use.
Learners who fail to pay attention will never receive the information to be learned in the first place.
Encoding provides a means for learners to make personally meaninful connections between new information and their prior knowledge.
Retrieval enables learners to recall information from memory so that is can be applied in an appropriate context.
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Feedback serves two functions during learning:
a. it provides the learner with knowledge about the correctness of his response or the adequacy of his performance.
b. it provides corrective information that the learner can use to modify performance.
Feedback completes a learning cycle where the feedback can be used to continually modify what is stored in memory and used to guide performance.
A learner with little prior knowledge can make few connections between what is already known and what she is being asked to learn.
Strategies of Instructional Design to assist learners in processing information that direct attention, facilitate encoding, and retrieval and provide practice in a variety of contexts:
1. boldface and italic print in text materials can draw learners attention to important information
2. the use of color in diagrams or slides can help them distinguish inportant features of visual information
3. graphical diagrams and imagery strategies can help learners make meaningful connections between their prior knowledge and the new information they are learning.
4. providing many different kinds of examples or problems in different contexts can help learners apply the knowledge they are acquiring to situations where it is relevant.
Schema Theory and Cognitive Load Theory
Schema Theory – knowledge is represented in long-term memory as packets of information called schemata. Schemata organize information in categories that are related in systematic and predictable ways. Automation is important in the construction of schemata, because learners have only so much processing capacity.
Humans are particularly poor at complex reasoning unless most of the elements with which we reason have previously been stored in long-term memory. More sophisticated and automatic schemata free a learner’s working memory capacity, allowing processes such as comprehension and reasoning to occur.
A high cognitive load is put on learners when they do not have appropriate or automated schemata to access, or when the learning task imposes a heavy demand on working memory processes.
Reduce extraneous cognitive load:
1. provide worked examples and partially completed problems that learners review or finish solving.
2. multimedia instruction – narration, rather than onscreen text should be used with animation or diagrams so that learners’ attention is not split between two sources of visual input.
3. split attention effect can also be reduced in text-based instruction by integrating explanations within diagrams instead of requiring learners to mentally integrate text and pictures.
4C/ID model for complex learning – learning tasks to be sequence in ways that reduce cognitive load. Learners are gradually introduced to a series of task classes, each ow which represents, on a simple to complex continuum, a version of the whole task. Supplemented with just-in-time information and part-task practice, depending on the learners growing expertise and the need for automaticity.
Situated Learning Theory – also called situated cognition theory is a work in progress. Unlike behaviroal and information processing theory, situated learning theory relies more on social and cultural determinants of learning than it does on individual psychology. Knowledge is presumed to accrue in meaningful actions, actions that have relations of meaning to one another in terms of som cultural system.
Wenger (1998) – learning as participation can be defined:
1. Individually, as members engage in practices of community.
2. Communitywide, as members refine the practices of a community and recruit new members.
3. Organizationally, as members sustain the interconnected communities of practice through which “an organization knows what it knows and thus becomes effective and valuable as an organization.
CSILE – Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environment – enables students to engage in the discourse of a subject matter discipline in a scholarly way. They focus on a problem and build a communal database of information about the problem. Capable of linking experts in the field with students in the classroom.
Anchored instruction – The Cognition and Technology Group at Banderbilt (1990) proposed anchored intruction as a means of providing a situated context for problem solving. Video adventure story provides a realistic situated anchor for activities such as identifying problems, making hypothesis, proposing multiple solutions. Students engage in authentic practices.
Gagne’s Theory of Instruction – an integrated and comprehensive theory of instruction that is based primarily on two foundations: cognitive information processing theory and Gagne’s own observations of effective teachers in the classroom.
Gagne’s Theory of Instruction – Three components:
1. A taxonomy of learning outcomes that defined the types of capabilities humans can learn
2. Internal and external learning conditions associated with the acquisition of each categyr of learning outcome
3. Nine events of instruction that each facilitate a specific cognitive process during learning.
Gagne’s five major categories of learning:
1. Verbal informatioin
2. Intellectual skills – applying knowledge
3. Cognitive strategies – employing effective ways of thinking and learning
4. Attitudes – feelings and beliefs that govern choices of personal action
5. Motor skills – executing precise, smooth, and accurately timed movements.
Nine events of instruction as learning conditions to support internal processes such as attention, encoding, and retrieval:
1. Gaining attention – a stimulus change
2. Informing the learning of the objective
3. Stimulating recall of prior learning
4. Presenting stimulus
5. Providing learning guidance
6. Eliciting performance
7. Providing feedback
8. Assessing performance
9. Enhancing retention an transfer
Constructivism – an epistemology, a collection of views sharing a fundamental assumption about learning that contrasts sharply with the assumptions underlying theories such as information processing.
In Information Processing Theory, learning is mostly a matter of going from the outside in. In Constructivist approaches, learning is more a matter of going from the inside out. The learner actively imposes organization and meaning on the surrounding environment and constructs knowledge in the process.
Constructivist researchers focus attention on high-level, complex learning goals.
Individuals do not all learn the same things from instruction.
Constructivist Complex Learning Environments:
1. Engage learners in activities authentic to the discipline in which they are learning
2. Provide for collaboration and the opportunity to engage multiple perspectives on what is being learned
3. Support learners in setting their own goals and regulating their own learning
4. Encorage learners to reflect on what and how they are learning.
Trends and Issues – Chapter 5 – Constructivism and Instructional Design: The Emergence of the Learning Sciences and Design Research
Constructivist thought has also served as one of the underpinnings for the emergence of a new academic discipline – the learning sciences.
A constructivist epistemology has significantly impacted instructional design.
Constructivism is a philosophy that underlies theories from which pedagogies and models are derived. Constructivism is primarily an epistemological and ontological conception of what reality, knowledge, the mind, thought and meaning are.
Constructivists believe that reality is constructed by individuals and social groups based on their experiences with and interpretations of the world.
Knowledge, according to constructivists, is embodied in human experience, perceptions, imaginations and mental and social constructions.
Comparing behaviorism to constructivism represents a category error. Constructivism should be contrasted with objectivist or positivist epistemologies that underlie hehaviorism and a fair amount of cognitive psychology.
The nature of instructinal activities also have changed dramatically. A shift from emphasis on instructional communication to an emphasis on practice based learning.
support learning about content.
Constructivist learning environments engage students in activities applying content.
The sense that any student makes of any instructional communication depends mostly on prior knowledge, which depends on previous experiences. Situated cognition. Constructivists have argued that meaning is situated or embedded in authentic contexts, and when we abstract ideas from their context, the ideas lose their meaning. Constructivists argue that knowledge is both individually constructed and socially co-constructed from interactions and experiences with the world. Meaning emerges from practice.
Meaningful learning involves willful, intentional, active, conscious, constructive practice that engages reciprocal intentioin-action-reflection cycle.
Constructivism has changed the emphasis of the instructional design process. It has resulted in a shift from attempts to communicate to students about the world in efficient ways to attempts to create learning situations that promote the engagement or immersion of learners in practice fields and project, inquiry and problem based activities.
Changes have resulted in the emergence of a new discipline, the learning sciences, which provides a theoretically rich set of assumptions for the deisgn of meaningful learning experiences.
The learning sciences apply theories to the design of technology-enriched learning environments that engage and support learners in accomplishing more complex, authentic (contextually mediated) and meaningful learning activities and conceptual change.
The learner is an intentional, active and reflective agent who is responsible for constructing personal mental models.
The learning sciences apply theories to the design of technology-enriched learning environments that engage and support learners in accomplishing more complex, authentic (contextually mediated), and meaningful learning activities with the goal of meaninful learning and conceptual change.
The learner is an intentional, active, and reflective agent who is responsible for constructing personal mental models.
The instructional sciences usually emphasize the acquisition of behaviors and discrete skills. In contract, learning outcomes in the learning sciences tent to focus on knowledge building, conceptual change, relfection, self-regulation, and socially co-constructed meaing making.