AHA moments and more.

Let this post be a collection of thoughts that have been scattered and gathered throughout the semester. What were some of my "AHA" moments? The concept that learning theory is all about the learner and really has little to do with the teacher's method of choice. It's preparing for a class by thinking "How can my students best learn this concept?" rather than "How do I want to teach this concept?" Another AHA moment is about the bells and whistles of technology. It is still yet to be proven that technology raises student achievement. Technology can help engage the learner and thus support learning, but modes of technology can become as routine as a pencil, paper, and calculator in my field and it really does come down to assessing student understanding at the core. These are just a few insightful learning moments. Obviously most of my learning was more than an AHA experience. Rather it has been an accumulation of gradual understanding about how the instructional design process works. It all comes back to our first friend in instructional design - ADDIE.

Project Wrap-up

As a wrap-up comment on last Tuesday's presentations - amazing. We have spent a semester in the same class reading the same materials, and learning the same content, yet the instructional projects were so different and unique to each individual group. It was fun to watch how an instructional design could be created around just about anything, as long as you define your target audience and explain why they need to learn what it is that you are developing for them. As I observed all the different delivery methods, I am still not sure what the easiest method to use in a design would be. Honestly, when we planned our project, that wonderment continually went through my mind because I wanted to make the design as simple as we could manage to do without compromising on the end product. Although this is a Ed Tech field of study, the best delivery of instruction is not always about technology and sometimes has very little to with it at all. Well I am babbling - time to sign off!

Time to Restructure

I made a few connections as I read "Restructuring Education Through Technology" by Theodore Frick. The first thing I really connected with is that a 'teacher is one who guides or leads. To guide does not necessarily mean to instruct directly'. Even though I deliver a great deal of direct instruction in my teaching environment, I believe that some of the best learning comes from the ability to design your instruction so that you facilitate the learning and not always directly teach it - although there is a balance to be maintained.

Another connection was the story telling section. I just read the book "A Whole New Mind" and one of the author's key ideas is to teach through stories. Stories capture interest and engage the learner. I hadn't even thought of it as a sort of technology until I read this article. When you think about what you can design around it, it really expands on the possibilities.

The Olympic Spirit

Our visit to the Olympic Cauldron park at the Rice Eccles Stadium brought nostalgic memories of the SLC Olympic glory days. I was reminded of how fired up we all were. Every night I watched the events on TV because they were relevant to my environment. As far as design goes... I thought it was reasonably well designed and achieved its goal of bringing back the emotions of that era. For me, because there was that emotional tie, it could have been poor design and I would have still have enjoyed the experience and rated it high.

In class, we talked about the usability factor in our formative assessment. This is a huge factor in user level of engagement. We like to use text to create our designs, yet most people do not like to read text. Think about our in-class discussions. There are a number of factors that draw us to respond to a particular post, but most of us will likely confess that we are more likely to respond to the shorter posts that have some substance to respond to. Short, interesting, and concise.

My side kick comment on the great media debate.

We wrapped up the class debate on Media vs. Method - Are you a Clark or a Kozma follower? I found it interesting... Given that the class consists of Instructional Design Ed. Technology majors, it only makes sense that most of us would lean toward the Kozma side of the debate - which is to say that yes, media does influence learning. Ultimately the class saw some logical truths from both sides of the argument and comments came up questioning if the two side could even be defined as a debate in the first place.

But...in the initial stages of the debate, the Clark supporters didn't want to commit. The class was assigned who they would initially side with. Whether or not we actually stood on that side, we were to pretend as if we did and try to argue in favor. The Clark defenders waffled and wishy washed at first. They wrote as if they really didn't want anyone to think they actually believed Clark's purist opinion so they provided disclaimers - i.e. "since I have to take the Clark side, I have to say it this way ... but ..."

As more people contributed to the article, greater ideas opened our minds to what each theorist was really saying. The written defenses started to get more fervent regardless of which side the defender was on. So who won the debate? I don't think we ever really decided, which is probably why it still remains the great debate.

Folding Flowers

A fabulous object lesson on visual media was presented in class last week by one of the groups. We learned to make a lotus flower out of a folded napkin either by video, audio, screen shots, or text. I am no paper folder, but I can see how two medias do a better job than one at teaching a procedure. I wonder if the same results would be evident if the content was more conceptual, rather than procedural. Anyhow, I can see why my son enjoys origami so much!

21st Century Testing

During the last class attended, we enjoyed a guest lecturer who talked about assessment. He brought clarity and interest to the subject after reading the chapter in the text book. The chapter in the text book had been labeled by many as "long and boring".

I must admit, I enjoyed the chapter in the text book and I find the whole notion of assessment to be interesting and fascinating. So many questions arise: What type of assessment is most effective for learners? And what about all this assessment lingo? What does it all mean? ... formative, summative, criterion referenced, norm referenced, multiple choice, adaptive, short response, extended response, comprehensive, standardized, quantitative, qualitative, ... and then some.

We tend to become more interested in subjects that we have an interest in which is why I am probably one of the few in the class who did not snooze through Chapter 7 on assessment. I think it is fascinating how a good test item evolves. Nobody realizes the work and money that go into developing a single item. The objective must match perfectly. The level of difficulty and Blooms level of thinking must be stated and evidenced. The distractors must measure not only common errors that a student would make, but they must be common errors within the realm of the objective measured. So next time you look at that CRT and want to spit, instead appreciate the strategic and crafty thought that went in to create it.