Fostering Dedicated Practice as eTeaching Philosophy

While my approach to pedagogy, both in the classroom and in a digital context, incorporates many conventional theories of learning including, behaviourism, cognitive theory, constructivism, etc., my own teaching philosophy could best be described as neoConfucian:

不闻不若闻之，闻之不若见之，见之不若知之，知之不若行之；学至于行之而止矣

I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand.*

This quote by the Confucian philosopher Xunzi (荀子, 312–230 BCE) reflects a very early appreciation of the direct relationship between comprehension and retention, and levels of engagement. Today’s digital tools provide learners with so many possibilities beyond the traditional ‘industrial model’ of education. My own current passions with regard to the use of technological tools allow for engaging and interacting through digitally simulated or enhanced learning environments.

To give this philosophy a more current analogy, I prefer to describe it as culminating ‘dedicated practice’ on the road to mastery. This term, ‘dedicated practice’, normally appears in language regarding athletics and is applicable to all areas that involve the development of competence.

Furthering this sports analogy of the learner as athlete, today’s teachers should play roles more akin to coaches than dictators of knowledge. This represents a departure from a foie-gras approach of ‘stuffing’ learners with information. Through the addition of new and emerging technology as learning and teaching tools, ‘dedicated practice’ represents enormous potential for guided and self-directed learning that requires ongoing and constant exploration and development.

Beginning with an analysis of the students and the subject matter being taught, teachers assist individual learners in establishing educational goals in terms of specific and identifiable learning objectives. Instructor/coaches can create learning solutions for each objective and arrange these constructively, if not always in a linear fashion, to meet the educational goals of the learners. Many of the features of dedicated practice are intrinsic to eLearning in general and game-based learning can sometimes even make it fun! These features include, and are reinforced by, repetition of tasks that replicate and simulate situations with immediate feedback and auto-recording of progress to both assess the efficacy of learners and to evaluate the course itself.

Hannah Arendt once wrote, “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them”. 

At first glance, this reads like a paradox but through the effective use of eLearning and specifically through simulations, we see how it would be very possible, by today’s technological standards, to allow someone to practice in a safe learning environment, before having to practice in a ‘real-world’ setting. Being able to craft and deliver ever-increasing levels of contextualized pedagogy, to me, is the promise of our age offering vast improvements in the potential for learning and instruction.

* This is a common and familiar translation but it is not a very accurate one. A more accurate translation would read: "Not listening is not as goos as listening. Listening is not as good as seeing. Seeing is not as good as knowing. Knowing is not as good as doing."

Instructional Design: The ADDIE Model

ADDIE infographic from http://extension.oregonstate.edu/eesc/instructional-technology/instructional-design

On Thursday March 7^th, 2013, I lead a seminar on Instructional Design for Trade School Toronto at the University of Toronto’sHart House .  It was a great opportunity to address an interesting mix of attendees. Present were some education majors with a pretty strong theoretical background in the topic as well as learners who admittedly were hearing about instructional design for the first time. All seemed quite engaged and I think/hope that we all took a lot home from the experience.

The presentation began by scaffolding theoretical approaches to learning.  The second part of the seminar looked at a case study to showcase the practical and procedural application of the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) model as a generic and simplified instructional design model.

While unfortunately unable to share the powerpoint deck with attendants (proprietary content issues with the graphics), I’ve drafted this entry to the NEOPAIDEA blog to provide those interested with a high level synopsis of the theoretical content of the discussion followed by a more detailed ADDIE model in table format (there is also a paragraph regarding the future of instructional design that was never a topic in the seminar but added for interest's sake).

Theories of Learning

Behaviourism: is a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge.  It is based on observable and measurable outcomes in changes in behaviour. In education, it means repeating a desired behavioural pattern until it becomes automatic.

Instructional design formally first appears in the US during WWII applying behaviourist principals to teach thousands of young recruits how to operate, maintain and repair some of the worlds most sophisticated machinery in a short period of time. This was done by analyzing and breaking down specific behavioural objectives into learning content. Next, devise the steps necessary to achieve these objectives by establishing and testing procedures.  Upon validating the programme against the attainment of objectives, any revisions that are necessary are made and repeated as part of the ongoing refinements to the training. This type of programmed instruction succeeded in creating small but effective self-instructional systems. (Heinich, 1970)

The ADDIE model is an essentially behaviourist approach to producing vocational education systems as reinforced modular segments of learning.

B.F. Skinner was the behaviourist highlighted in the seminar.

Cognitivism: is important to instructional design because it involves the internal management of information. Behaviourism focuses on external stimuli whereas cognitivism focuses on what happens to information inside the mind.

In instructional design, a very simple example of where cognitivism is applied in terms of organisation of information is present at the outset when we establish the process of introducing the course content and in the design of the interface and many of the interactivity design decisions.

Jean Piaget was the cognitivist highlighted in the seminar.

Constructivism: is concerned with meaning and problem solving. It's focus is on the construction of knowledge through engagement rather than the regurgitation of information as taught in more traditional rote learning education environments.

Constructivists argue that knowledge is constructed from experience; that learning is a personal interpretation of the world; that learning is an active process in which meaning is developed on the basis of experience; that conceptual growth comes from the negotiation of meaning, the sharing of multiple perspectives and the changing of our internal representations through collaborative learning and; that learning should be situated in realistic settings; testing should be integrated with the task and not a separate activity. (Merrill, 1991)

From the perspective of instructional design this means there are many conciderations to be made in order to successfully draw from the theoretical approaches of constructivism. The main aspect of this theory that is employed most regularly is the idea of generating and presenting content in story driven, or narrative based structures.

Lev Vygotsky was the constructivist highlighted in the seminar. He is also more preeminently a social constructivist.

Summary: While behaviourism is concerned with how we acquire knowledge, cognitivism addresses how that knowledge is organized and constructivism informs how we add meaning to that knowledge. These three systems provide us with a conceptualization of what we understand to be learning employed throughout the ADDIE model.

Supplementary theories of learning:

Humanism: the role of humanism in education is not so much theoretical as it is aspirational.  The goal is to maximise human capacity and engagement for learning by placing the focus of the learning squarely on the learner (as opposed to the instructor in more classical approaches to education) and provide room for the learner to direct some of their own learning.  

While the learner is the main design consideration during the analysis phase of the ADDIE model when the characteristics of the learner are determined, this information is later still mostly used prescriptively. Outside of the availability of different learning paths made possible through interactivity, and because the focus is usually on outcomes rather than on the learner, there are few considerations or even opportunities for a humanist approach in instructional design.

One of the challenges we work with is in finding ways of increasing the role of the humanist approach in instructional design.

Maria Montessori was the humanist highlighted in the seminar.

Critical pedagogy: was mentioned only because, though it permeates most post-graduate programmes in education in Ontario, it is not at all present in most models of instructional design.  Critical pedagogy rejects the notion of the learner as a blank slate or “tabula rasa”, a principle that early behaviourism was based upon.

Designing for critical pedagogy in eLearning would be quite difficult because the limited options of most interactive learning programmes mean that learners are confined to work “within the box” of the constrained parameters as established by the design. A critical post-learning that identifies and examines these parameters outside of a digital context would add a critical element to a blended learning-solution (uses both eLearning and face-to-face) however presenting a critical strategy within a digital context remains a challenge.

One answer may be in combining approaches from ludology (the study of games) with pedagogy.  Enough small numbers of variables allowed to interact in a diverse enough way could create room for nearly unlimited options and outcomes in an interactivity model. In chess for instance, Claude Shannon's calculation uses the game-tree complexity of chess and places the number of possible moves in chess in the120th scientific notation (a number followed 120 zeroes).  All this from 32 play pieces and an 64 squared playing surface.  

Successfully employing chesslike complexity to eLearning while still coming from and maintaining position of operant simplicity is an example of a unique and challenging instructional design problem.

Paolo Frere was the critical pedagogue highlighted in the seminar.

The Future: Adding these missing elements of learning theories into instructional design will probably become more available as the learning technology itself becomes more "smart".  

An aritificial intelligence that can learn from the learner what information and tasks to provide and in what sequence etc. would create a more student centred digital learning environment and in this way, better provide for the missing humanist element. Additionally, a more powerful computer would be better capable of managing the complexity of information required to host the gamification and game-based learning solutions that could be used to satisfy a call toward a more critical approach to eLearning.

The ADDIE Model

Phase	Objectives	Tasks
Analysis	Identify and clarify instructional challenges	•    Determine learning characteristics of audience •    Establish educational goals and objectives- “current reality”; “desired future outcomes”; What is the gap? •    Identify content •    Identify learning environment and delivery strategies •    Form instructional strategies •    Form assessment strategies •    Formative evaluation •    Determine project constraints •    Establish project timelines •    Draft high level course design
Design	Design instructional strategies including choice of media	•    Determine and name individual learning modules •    Identify content and strategies for each unit of instruction •    Draft design document •    Write script and draft storyboard •    Determine media look and feel, graphic design, user-interface/interactivity
Development	Produce learning solutions	•    Build course structure •    Build content and material, assignments, pre/post learning and ongoing assessments •    Create prototype •    Upload content
Implementation	Learning solutions put into action	•    Test prototype •    Provide course overview and expectations •    Train learners and facilitators on use of product •    Initiate instruction •    Collect early stage feedback (formative evaluation)
Evaluation	Examine course outcomes	•    Determine if expected learning outcomes were achieved •    Formative evaluation (present in each stage) •    Summative evaluation (tests for criterion-related referenced items) •    Look for opportunities to improve the course •    Make revisions

References:

Heinich, R. (1970). Technology and the management of instruction (Association for Educational Communication and Technology Monograph No. 4). Washington, DC: Association for Educational Communications and Technology

Merrill, M. D. (1991). Constructivism and instructional design. Educational Technology, May, 45-53.

Online Instructional Design blogs, tools and resources:

Pedagogy:
Sloan Consortium - Research, Best practices
Seven Principles of Effective Teaching
Instructional Design Checklist (pdf) | Rubric for Online Instruction (California State University, Chico)
Principles of Online Design | Checklist for Online Course Design (Florida Gulf Coast University)
Course Design Tips 
Instructional Design Principles:
http://eduscapes.com/instruction/3.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Principles_of_Instruction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructional_design
Addie Models:
http://www.itrc.wvu.edu/coursedev/preproduction/addie.html
http://www.outsource2india.com/LearningSolutions/articles/ADDIE.asp
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~jlambrec/CI5336/Spring2001/Addie-Model.htm
http://www.tzanis.org/Courses/ADDIE/
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/
http://www.codeconnoisseur.org/it/edit6100/task3/intro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADDIE_Model
http://ed.isu.edu/addie/
Faculty Training for Online Teaching:
http://campustechnology.com/articles/49570/
http://www.worldwidelearn.com/online-courses/teaching-online.htm
Copyright Issues
http://www.ion.illinois.edu/courses/catalog/index.asp

Niall Ferguson disses Media Studies in the City of Marshall MacLuhan

Media studies guru and one of Canada's favourite sons, Marshall McLuhan

The Munk Debates were held at a packed Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto last Friday where the motion to be resolved was 'Does the 21st Century Belong to China?' Henry Kissinger, 88, took this opportunity to promote his new book and debated in public for the first time in his long career.  Joining him in the 'con' position was CNN personality Fareed Zakaria. The statesman and the journalist squared off against the scholars, Harvard economic historian Niall Ferguson and his partner, Tsinghua University international economist David Liu (李稻葵). As is standard for Munk debates, a pre-debate tally of audience opinion was taken with 21% undecided on the motion and the 'cons' at 40% were only one percentage point above the 'pros' at 39%. The audience was overwhelmingly open-minded with 96% stating they would be willing to change their outlook based on the outcome of the debates. It was going to be interesting.

And it was. All the main issues were brought up, the widening gap between rich and poor as the downside of China's meteoric rise, China's recent military activity, demographic problems, growing geopolitical importance, domestic infrastructure challenges, African investment etc.. The interaction was engaging, professional and scholarly. At one point though, Ferguson may have gaffed and gaffed badly.

In driving home his point regarding increasing innovation in China (which he gauged by the increasing number of patent applications) he also mentioned the vast population of Chinese students that are studying abroad.  Ferguson paradoxically tried to defend the Chinese nation as innovative by implicitly claiming that Chinese will learn innovation through their careers at Western universities. He then began listing the types of degrees that would be of benefit to China, engineering, and hard sciences mostly, and finished off before sitting down by stating dismissively, "And not a PhD. in 'media studies'".

The tone seemed to suggest that media studies as a field was somehow not useful when it came to promoting innovation. Worse yet, he said it in such a way as though he were passing off the idea of 'media studies' as a joke unto itself. Ferguson laughed a little at his own joke as he took his seat but I think even he was aware that the Toronto audience my have been clapping but it was not laughing with him.

It's safe to assume that Ferguson is not particularly aware of the history of media studies (though he borrows the distinctly techy term 'app' in his new book) or he may have known that Toronto has played a major role in that history since its beginnings. In 1963, the grandfather of media theory, Marshall "the Media is the Message" McLuhan established the world's first ever media studies programme at the Centre for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto (where the charitable foundation of event host, Peter Munk, established the Munk School for Global Affairs in addition to the Munk Debates).  Doubtless some members of the audience studied at that institution. Some may even have had PhDs. and they are acutely aware of and proud of the role both the University of Toronto and the city itself have had in forwarding media studies as a respectable academic endeavour. Famous for his research skills, Ferguson really ought to have known this about media studies before slighting its capability of contributing to practical innovation and doing this in the city where it first became an academic field.

When Zakaria offered his rebuttal, there were several points he could have addressed but it seemed he had read the crowd's non-reaction to Ferguson's attempt at humour and only discussed that point. He mentioned research and development expenditures of Microsoft and compared it to that of Apple. The R&D expenditures at Apple are significantly lower in both absolute and relative terms because rather than hiring strictly software engineers and computer scientists, Apple's approach is all about design and focuses on how humans interact with the machine interface. "Exactly the kind of thing one learns with a PhD. in media studies," concluded Zakaria before sitting down to thunderous applause. So, in addition to possibly offending members of the audience by poo-pooing media studies in general, Ferguson was also apparently wrong about the source of innovation in the IT industry and Zakaria took both factors and went straight for the jugular with them.

Though the debate was argued well on each side, an initially very undecided audience voted heavily in favour of the 'con' position in the end. It's impossible to say how much an effect Ferguson's mini-slight on media studies may have had on that outcome but if it cost the 'pro' side even a little bit, it does prove McLuhan's own axiom that "A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding."

On The Importance of Ritual in Time Management for Today's Student

Confucius 孔夫子- one of the greatest educators in history.

How relevant is a word like 'ritual' to college students when less than 30% of them in the US don't sleep regular hours and the vast majority don't eat a well rounded breakfast. The short answer is, not relevant or important enough.

As important as it is for us here at Neopaedeia to make sure the most appropriate educational solutions are found and applied to reflect the needs of today's students, this is not something that is done by reinventing the wheel or actively ignoring the past. In fact, many of the most important lessons are found in the oldest of texts. The value of these texts have proven themselves if only by their ability to withstand the test of time if nothing else. These are ideas that are as relevant to the human condition (of which education has always been a large component) when they were written thousands of years ago as they are today.

Being able to effectively use time has been an issue for some members of the population since the invention of the plough ushered in the agricultural revolution freeing large parts of the population from the burden of food production so they could do other things like invent writing systems and the State as well as philosophies and legal systems and wage war. In China, the Confucian scholar gentry class (士- shi) would have been one of the first to deal with the problem of a flexible work day as the nature of their work was different from the other social classes in ancient China. Peasants (农- nong) had their work day dictated by the rising and setting of the sun. Their work was physical and honest as was the work of the artisans (工- gong). The reviled merchant classes (商-shang) shared in common with the gentry, a work day that was not physical but the biggest distinction between these two occupations, respectively at the top and the bottom of the Confucian social hierarchical system, would have been on the importance of 'li' or rituals observed by the Confucian scholar and barely understood by the merchant.

The Confucian classics dedicate much space to the importance of 'li' (理) or 'rituals'. Much of it does not necessarily read in a way that is immediately accessible to the modern student but as old ideas are recycled and repackaged as they are in this article in a Harvard Business Review blog, the most immediate benefits to developing rituals become more obviously applicable to people in the 21st century.  The examples of rituals provided in the article are set up for business people with families but the principle of developing "highly specific behaviors, done at precise times, so they eventually become automatic and no longer require conscious will or discipline" are as important to the 21st century student as they are to the business person. In fact, they become doubly important to students because they are important to business people.

Education should not only be seen as the epistemic transfer of knowledge in its most abstract sense, it should be about the incorporation of practice for developing skills and behaviours required to be successful in the professional, cultural and social climates of our times. Though it requires discipline to develop these rituals into habits, once they have become behaviours as such, the rituals are observed as a matter of course. Like drilling in sports, ritualised elements in other facets of life become effortless and automatic when applied. They are the basis upon which civilisations grow and make possible what otherwise might not be.

"People's natures are alike, it is their habits that carry them far apart."
- Confucius (551-479 BCE)