[Fwd: Instructional Design]
Philip Duchastel (duchaste@fcae.acast.nova.edu)
Mon, 17 May 1999 11:02:10 -0400
Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 11:02:10 -0400
From: Philip Duchastel <duchaste@fcae.acast.nova.edu>
Subject: [Fwd: Instructional Design]
Forwarding a note from Mark Nichols...
--
Philip Duchastel, Ph.D.
http://www.nova.edu/~duchaste
954 / 262-8561 [office]
954 / 202-0230 [home]
attached mail follows:
From: Mark Nichols
Subject: Instructional Design
Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 12:41:06 +1200
I subscribe to both ITForum and IFETs... I wonder if you sent a message to
the wrong list? My thoughts on your message are included below. Please pass
these on to the correct forum - I didn't want to send them to ITForum just
in case your message was intended for IFETs
You wrote:
Good day dear colleagues in instructional design (ID) and welcome to
this discussion!
I look forward to some interesting interchanges with all of you over the
next two weeks. This type of forum encourages open discussion of
out-of-the-box ideas and I encourage you all to not be bashful in
putting forth your opinions. You will see that I am far from bashful
myself.
Some issues and questions to start us off (in addition to the formal
discussion piece itself):
We are seeing a diversification of forms of education and approaches to
instruction - viz. online, just-in-time, distance education,
project-based, constructivist, etc.... The old traditional instructor-led
3-credit course is likely to take on a minority status. So how do we
design for this diversity?
I believe that we should develop some core pedagogies and principles of Web
use that can be modified for use by different practitioners. A resource
(perhaps Web-based) showing some of the interactive possibilities and design
issues associated with Web-assisted education would be a good start.
The traditional ID approach needs to be tuned
to the new realities of the cyberspace age. What's involved?
That depends. What was the old ID approach? What new realities are facing
us? Perhaps we need to be far more flexible with ID design and more willing
to regularly update our resource base?
The fundamental basis of learning is interacting with information. The
core ID function is then to select and organize information so as to
engage the learner in that interaction. What is the difference between
information design and instructional design? None!
I do take exception to your last statement. In my message to the IFETs forum
regarding your paper, I gave my reasons. "Information" can be extremely raw;
"instruction", to continue the analogy, cooks it to taste. Perhaps
instructors are like chefs...? People today have incredible access to
information, but that does not necessarily make learning efficient or
effective. Good instructional design can be used to motivate and challenge a
learner in new ways that would otherwise not be possible, and get them to
interact with the information.
The two strong forms of cyberspace are web sites and virtual worlds. How
do we design with these in mind?
Web site design principles are readily available - I think that theory
outweighs practice here! Virtual worlds... now this is worth looking into.
Don Tapscott (1997), Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation,
McGraw-Hill and Sherry Turkle (1996), Life on the Screen, Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, Great Britain show that there are some real issues involved here.
Turkle highlights the personal identity issues associated with virtual
interaction, while Tapscott believes that the children who will soon attend
our tertiary institutions will be comfortable with IT and be able to
contextualise the on-screen and off-screen parts of their lives. I believe
that future students will expect great things from ID. Perhaps virtual
worlds will be the lecture rooms of the future; for the moment, text (IRC)
seems to be the most available and practical medium.
Why is it so hard to learn? Why is instruction (and hence instructional
design) needed?
Because students need a structure. If a student has no background knowledge
or experience to hinge ideas on, of course learning is going to be hard. If
I just give my diploma students a pile of hypertext readings at the start of
a semester and say "come back when you've learned it all", I probably won't
see any of them again - even if the readings reflect good information design
practice. As a lecturer, my role is to highlight key ideas and principles,
challenge assumptions, encourage critical thinking. I need to get them to
process the information into knowledge that is meaningful to them. These are
design issues, not information issues.
Why don't people just naturally learn? Is instruction
foul-tasting medicine for the mind?
Hmmm... reminds me of my earlier analogy... sometimes medicine doesn't taste
good, but if someone tells you it's good for you...
Just what is it then that we design when we do ID?
We create opportunities for interaction with the information and one
another.
I look forward to your thoughts.
I hope they generate further discussion.
Cordially,
PD
--
Philip Duchastel, Ph.D.
http://www.nova.edu/~duchaste
954 / 262-8561 [office]
954 / 202-0230 [home]
Mark Nichols
Marketing and Communications Lecturer
Senior Lecturer, Business Studies
UCOL (Universal College of Learning)
Phone: 06 - 952 7001 ext.7311
http://www.ucol.ac.nz
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