Friday, October 10, 2014

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Thursday, September 4, 2014

Thoughts on "New Paradigm of Instructional Theory"



Reigeluth (1996) articulates a vision for a new instructional design theory consonant with the information age.  His list of ‘key markers’ of this new theory reflect the broad technological and economic shifts that have prompted innovation in how learners should learn.  These key markers reflect the concerns of social constructivists.  Learners need to be focus of instruction, not the content of the course.  In centering instructional design on learners, each learner should have individualized instruction plans, the educator becomes a ‘facilitator’ of learning, and learning is done in a community of learners.  Reigeluth suggests that learners should use variable methods for learning, such as using a variety of technologies to learn a concept and document their learning.  

While this article is nearly twenty years old, I find it oddly prescient.  In my recent research on the flipped classroom, I found these sentiments echoed by educators like Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams; innovative educators value students as ‘content creators’ and embrace the fact that most students do not learn with traditional lectures and printed learning materials.  It is uncanny to read essays like this on how learners should choose how to learn and document their learning long before technologies like YouTube and Prezi were invented, technologies that allowed students to create content and learn in individuated forms.  While I’m excited about the prospect of a user-centered instructional design, I’m also a bit cynical that these new instructional design theories will be adopted on a large scale by a variety of educators.  While we have free and inexpensive tools that could transform education, most schools and colleges are also saddled with the additional demands of assessment.  It seems that accrediting agencies like SACS are clamping down on schools that churn out graduates who don’t actually learn.  The ‘culture of assessment’ that many schools tout might cause educators to retreat to basic instructional methods, methods “which have been scientifically proven to consistently increase the probability of learning under given conditions” (Reigeluth, 1996, p.2).  The need for hard data, in my opinion, often squeezes out the desire to adapt experimental forms of learning and assessment in favor of predictable, if often superficial, data.  Having worked at several colleges that offer online courses and degrees, I have observed that the online teaching environment is more homogenous than the traditional classroom.  The syllabi are pre-written and the textbooks and pre-selected in many schools, reducing the instructor to the role of facilitator and grader.  The instructor in this setting is encouraged to ‘play by the rules’ and deliver a consistent, if sub-par, product.  This conservative approach means often rules out the individualized instruction and alternate forms of assessment that educational technology has paradoxically made more accessible.  Do I believe that a new instructional design theory is impossible in this setting? No.  I do think, however, that instructors will have to be very intentional in permitting alternate forms of learning and assessment while producing demonstrable evidence of student learning.  

Work Cited:
Reigeluth, Charles M. (1996). What is the new paradigm of instructional theory [White paper]. Retrieved from http://itforum.coe.uga.edu/AECT_ITF_PDFS/paper17.pdf
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Saturday, August 30, 2014

How I learn conceptual knowledge

I created a mind map of how I learn conceptual knowledge.

The second map is an actual example.  I recently wrote an article for Tennessee Libraries on the 'flipped classroom' and I did not understand social constructivism related to flipped instruction, which several of the article mentioned.  This is how I gained an in-depth of this concept. 

These maps apply to conceptual knowledge - I'm not sure how I would apply them to other types of knowledge, like doing kinesthetic tasks or learning soft skills like reading body language. 
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