Wonder at the meaning of instructional design! At our workplace it means very talented people who have both technical and educational skills who produce complex multimedia resources for others (this also requires high level project management skills). George’s presentation implies instructional design is more akin to teachers planning lessons and courses. Wonder if there’s a cultural difference here – an Aussie thing? It again highlights for me the importance of assumptions around terminology.
I enjoyed Wendy’s summary of the the Grainne Conole papers. I was interested in her questions related to the desire to move students from one quadrant to another in Grainne’s Pedagogy framework (Conole, figure 1). Does this assume learning most effectively takes place in the bottom right hand corner?
George, in his presentation this week, talks about the importance of context for the design process. The ecology needed for a fireman is different for a poet. So perhaps learning design needs to vary according to the context. Different situations/contexts/outcomes require different quadrants. Think this may become part of my next paper on the Changing Role of the Educator
In another piece supplied by a colleague, (MY) Three Principles of Effective Online Pedagogy, Bill Pelz emphasises the importance of the learner being at the centre of the learning process. The more the learner is engaged with the content, with the teacher as the “guide on the side”, the more learning occurs. His three principles very clearly mirror Stephen and George’s notion that learning is about making connections. Pelz structures his “teaching” around allowing students to make as many connections as possible to allow collaboration and problem solving to give them control over their own learning.
The Pelz paper gives some terrific examples of specific strategies to achieve his aims as well as a lovely quote about traditional lectures: “One of my education professors put it this way: “A lecture is the best way to get information from the professor’s notebook into the student’s notebook without passing through either brain.” (Pelz, p.33)
October 24, 2008 at 6:28 pm
While I attended only part of Grainne’s presentation, and I could not see the slides, I did a little sleuthing afterward the Wednesday session and I read the paper, etc.
It looks to me that Grainne has mapped the learning space. I think that at times learners prefer to be social and interactive and at other times, they prefer to actively engage with information and texts. It seems to me that to learn effectively a learner would have to move around in the learning space.
I wonder about the passive-active continuum… Are learners ever passive? I prefer the receptive and expressive myself…
Thanks for your post and thank you for sharing Bill Pelz’s paper.
October 25, 2008 at 11:15 am
Hi Mary, thank you for your comments. I was speaking to a colleague yesterday who has some engagement with this course but finds herself doing less each week. One reason was the sheer volume of information and a sense of being “lost”. But perhaps more importantly she said she didn’t have an emotional or social connection with the members of this course – the social interaction was critical to her.
November 15, 2008 at 6:44 am
Hiya Mary
I agree with you i think learning occurs ‘across’ the whole space – there is no one perfect quadrant! Different learning situations are needed for different context, for different learners. In terms of the ‘passive’ thing – not the best label i agree – i meant more ‘immersive’/indirect/in context …. very aware of the importance of this myself as a language learner! being in spain for a week without ‘actively’ learning takes my language skills on by leaps and bounds because i am immersed and passively soaking the environment i am i up!
grainne