Discovering Instructional Design, Part 1
At its heart, learning is about growth. The single, central reason for learning, training, and education is to facilitate peoples’ need to acquire and develop new skills, knowledge and expertise.
The E-Learning Curve Blog focuses on the development and deployment of educational technologies, and in the past I’ve been known to discuss approaches to learning, cognition and Constructivism at great length. For one reason or another, I haven’t really discussed the bridge between the theoretical and the practical aspects of education – the twin pillars if you like – so over the next few weeks, I’m going to spend some time discussing this domain, in a series of twenty articles on instructional design.
Instructional Design (ID) is the practice of maximizing the effectiveness, efficiency and accessibility of instruction and other learning experiences. The ID process can be said to have a number of steps:
- determine the current state and needs of the learner
- define the end goal of instruction
- develop a learning intervention to assist in the acquisition of new skills, knowledge or expertise.
Before we dive in to ID with much gusto, I want to begin by briefly outlining the theoretical basis for pretty much all contemporary approaches to instructional design.
1. Behaviorism
Based on observed changes in behavior, Behaviorism focuses on a new behavioral patterns being repeated until they becomes automatic. The theory emerged from work done by Ivan Pavlov in associative learning and classical conditioning. The theory of behaviorism concentrates on the study of overt behaviors that can be observed and measured (Good & Brophy, 1990). It views the mind as a “black box” in the sense that the response to a stimulus can be observed quantitatively, while totally ignoring the possibility of thought processes occurring in the mind.
In his 1953 text Science and Human Behavior B. F. Skinner developed the concept of operant conditioning and its application in education and training through the use of positive and negative reinforcement techniques. A behaviorist approach to learning was first implemented in educational technology in the 1960’s.
Main characteristics:
- Behavioral objectives (performance, condition, standard)
- Programmed instruction
- Individualized instruction
- Computer assisted instruction
- Systems approach
2. Cognitivism
Based on thought processes governing behavior, the theory of Cognitivism emerged from the inability of the Behaviorist Model to explain how children do not imitate all behavior. Similarly, the Behaviorist Model could not account for certain types of learning.
Bandura and Walters’ 1963 text Social Learning and Personality Development led to Social Cognitive Theory, a concept further developed by Jean Piaget.
Main characteristics:
- schema
- 3-stage Information Processing Model (sensory register / short term memory / long term memory)
Cognitivism began influencing technology in education in the 1970’s. Its adoption led to a shift from measuring external behavior to focusing on the internal mental processes behind behavior, leading to a greater emphasis on task- and learner analysis. According to Cognitivists, tasks are broken down to move from simple to complex, based on previously-learned mental models, or schema. Cognitivism is currently the principal theory used in instructional design.
3. Constructivism
Based on individual perspectives addressing the demands of the real world, Constructivist theory emerged from work undertaken by Frederic Bartlett in the 1930′s. M. David Merrill and David H. Jonassen further developed the theory in the 1990′s to postulate that our reality is perceived through a process of social negotiation. A Constructivist approach to instructional design was first implemented in educational technology in 1980’s and 90’s. It led to a shift from objectively- to subjectively-focused learning, and the development of more open-ended tasks where the results of learning are not so easily measured, and are not the same for each learner. Constructivism is not compatible with simple Systems Approach, and outcomes of learning are NOT predetermined.
Main characteristics:
- Use of realia (real-world objects)
- Authentic tasks – task-based learning
- Reflective practice – learning to learn
- Use of hypertext and hypermedia – branched learning rather than a linear learning path
Next: Aligning Learning Theory with Instructional Design
___________
References:
Bandura, A., & Walters, R. H. (1963). Social learning and personality development. New York: Holt
Bartlett, F.C. (1932). Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. Cambridge University Press
Good, T. L., Brophy, J. E. (1990). Educational psychology: A realistic approach (4th ed.).White Plains, NY: Longman
Jonassen, D. H. (1991). Objectivism versus constructivism: do we need a new philosophical paradigm? Educational Technology Research and Development, 39 (3), 5-14.
Merrill, M. D. (1991). Constructivism and instructional design. Educational Technology, May, 45-53.
Skinner, B.F. (1953). Science and Human Behavior. New York: Macmillan.
–
May 19 2009 01:55 pm | e-learning
I see value in many of...
Podcasting for E-Learning: Introduction to Audio Production | E-Learning Curve Blog on 11 Aug 2009 at 4:44 pm #
[...] I’ll return to that subject in a later series of blog posts, but if you have a look at my series of articles on instructional design to understand my orientation on theoretical and pedagogical approaches to this [...]
Open Source E-Learning Development 7: Freemind | E-Learning Curve Blog on 26 Oct 2009 at 2:32 pm #
[...] series of articles beginning here only a few months ago, so there’s no need to reiterate my views on ISD here. I also strongly recommend Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (1956) as a [...]
The E-Learning Curve Blog is Two Years Old | E-Learning Curve Blog on 27 Nov 2009 at 3:44 pm #
[...] Discovering Instructional Design (series of posts from May-June 2009) [...]
Aligning Learning Theory with Instructional Design | E-Learning Curve Blog on 08 Dec 2009 at 2:13 pm #
[...] Learning Theory with Instructional Design As you will know if you read yesterday’s post, the proliferation of learning theories over the last century or so has led to a broad range of [...]
E-Learning Development Project Lifecycle 1: Introduction | E-Learning Curve Blog on 07 Jan 2010 at 3:31 pm #
[...] Project Lifecycle 1: Introduction In 2009, I wrote frequently and at length about the “twin pillars” of e-learning, that is, learning theory and content development, bridged as it were, by [...]
Constructivism in Workplace Learning and Development | E-Learning Curve Blog on 10 Mar 2010 at 3:46 pm #
[...] upon the work of Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget, Bruner developed a number of cognitive and constructivist psychological approaches “not to [...]