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.

Designers ask a lot of questions.

Designers ask a lot of questions. They need to be able to get accurate answers for those questions and then make sense of the answers in a way that will influence their instruction. They essentially want to ask questions about the learning task and the learners themselves. This weeks chapter was about analyzing the learners.

The designer should ask much as they can about the learners in relationship to the design. It would be helpful to learn what skills and attitudes the learners have. It seems that this is when having a good idea of psychological educational theory would be necessary. A designer should understand the learner, how they learn and what will motivate them. The main things to consider when analyzing the learning context are the site and the "facilities, equipment, and resources that adequately support the intended instruction" (Dick and Carey pg. 105).

I am getting ready to over analyze a purchase on Ebay. I will ask a lot of questions and drive myself nutty by over thinking every minute detail about what and how I am going through the process of buying on Ebay.

Task Analysis is just that.

Today my project group did two presentations. We first presented on Online Learning. Then we led a class discussion on our assigned article about Task Analysis. I have to admit that the presentation on Online Learning was most enjoyable to study and prepare for. The article however was a snoozer to read and we really wondered if we would have any thing intelligent to say about it, let alone interesting. As we prepared our discussion and talked about what the article was trying to say, we concluded that a bunch of "Average Joe" Instructional Designers wanted to be quoted for their profound model on task analysis. However, no matter how you state it, the essential goal of task analysis is the the same - to gather information about a process that will lead to an outcome. How this information is gathered differs slightly from guru to guru, but in my opinion it was nothing to write about as profound discovery of the latest and greatest ID theory.

Online Overkill

This week I am preparing for my group's two presentations this Tuesday which both just happen to be on the same night. I will call it the Ashley, Jenn, and Laura hour. Our Instructional Media presentation is about online learning. We could spend the entire class period presenting on that topic. All of us have had experience with online learning to some degree or another. I feel like I am constantly online working or learning. I use to waste a lot of time browsing but I no longer have that luxury. Sometimes I feel like my life is online overkill. There is a reason I chose the face to face program at the U of U and not the online program at Utah State. There is something to be said for "human interaction".

Is instruction always the answer?

Is instruction always the answer? We learned in class today that if you are an instructional designer by profession, then the answer to that question is always YES. But in reality, no, not always.

After answering this question, I then ask myself these questions:

• Where are we going?
• How are we going to get there?
• How do we know if we've arrived?

These are good questions not only for an instructional design plan, but for any quandary in life. It seems that sometimes I take on too many life pursuits with out a clear goal as to what I want the outcome to be. I am honest in saying that this IDET program was well thought through with a measurable and obtainable goal in mind. However, this is not necessarily the case for many of the other busy purtsuits I take on which make interesting conversation at a social event, but do not lead to an accomplished end.

Now about that ADDIE. She is becoming a friend (or possibly a foe). Whenever a well designed plan of action is needed, I find myself saying "This sound like we need ADDIE."

Sweet ADDIE line

The subject of class today was the systems approach of Instructional Design and what on earth is an ADDIE. I can tell you what an ADDIE stands for, but I think it is going to take me the whole semester to explain this concept of systems approach.

As you might deduce, a systems approach refers to a systematic approach. This term made sense and seemed straightforward and logical to me. However, we have an entire textbook devoted to the phrase and this simple idea became involved and multi-faceted (I wouldn't call it complex).

Some thoughts from class are this:

• The application of technological solutions to one problem may create other problems which may be more serious than the original problems (straight from our notes and so true).

• Expertise - An expert can't tell you how to do something that comes totally natural to them. They can say some common things, but they don't know how non-experts think.
  

This idea of expertise brings a memory to mind of a 7th grade Algebra student I had. She was a conscientious and ambitious student and her parents expected and supported her hard work. She came to me almost in tears one day asking for help with her Algebra homework. She said she asked here father, an Engineer, for help the night before and he started scribbling formulas on her paper and then wondered what her problem was that she couldn't understand something so "straightforward". He said, "You just do this, this, and then this! What don't you get about that?" This describes one difference between an engineer and a math teacher. It's sort of and example of why experts really can't explain the way their minds grasp their subject of expertise.

Incedentally - ADDIE stands for
A - Analyze
D - Design
D- Develop
I - Implement
E - Evaluate

The First Blog that Comes to Mind

This is my first experience Blogging. Even though this Blog was given as an assignment for Ed Ps 6430, I'm always willing to try something new. As soon as I finish reading the material that Dr. Monson assigned to us this week, I will have something a little more profound to say about Instructional Design. Until then, I will tie this Blog over with the story behind Mathamazement.

Mathamazement has become a personal trademark. Some years back when I took some time off from teaching math in public schools, I began teaching hands-on fun math courses for the University of Utah Youth Institute. I had to come up with a catchy name that would entice parents and students to want to enroll. Mathamazement did the trick. I use the expression mathamazement now to refer to any mathematics that is fun and engaging. I also use it as a random title for items such as this Blog.