I've moved

I'm now blogging at http://blog.damonregan.com. I'm hosting a Web site at GoDaddy where I can play a bit more with new tools such as Wordpress (my new blogging software). I must say thanks to Blogger, which has treated me well. Perhaps the new thoughts with the new tools will give rise to some discussion at the new site.

Please come visit me! Take care, Damon

Quote: Aldrich

In his book, Learning by Doing, Clark Aldrich recalled a conversation he had about what games can help us learn:

At a vineyard outside of Redmond, Washington, I talked to Xbox^® game designer Howard Phillips about the educational potential of console platforms. I was all excited about the complex systems that could be taught. "That's all true," he acknowledged. "But the biggest opportunity is to teach all of the introductory buzz words and rules of an area."
   "Why?" I asked. "That seems like low value content."
   "Don't look at it that way. People do great on their own learning the big concepts. Once someone gets into a discipline, then the real challenges and issues keep them engaged. But what keeps someone out of a discipline is the simple stuff. If we can get someone past that hurdle in a fun and engaging way, then he can learn the more complicated material" (p. 37).

Thoughts on LETSI

Mike Rustici wants to get concrete about LETSI talk. I do too. If all we cared about in learning technology was that learning content was available, we could focus on improving the quality of that content and its accessibility. There are plenty of tools and platforms available for creating content.

But we care about something else. We use words like harmonize, standardize, and interoperate. This gets abstract quick. Aaron Silvers suggests we technologists focus on data mashups. This sounds more concrete, but isn’t this another way of saying tracking. Lisa Groton asks: what are we tracking?

The wikipedia model has contributed to the notion that people can collaborate without strict rules, vetting, validation, and still produce useful information. So maybe the tracking moves away from the content to the learner's capabilities in context. Track the learner, assess what s/he can do. Don't worry about how s/he got there. Maybe we need sharable learner data.

“Don’t worry about how s/he got there.” You mean to tell me we’re just going to let someone show up to an assessment? Just walk up and prove whether or not they have the capability? This makes the instructional designer inside of me gasp and choke. Jacqueline Haynes responds with what I hear inside: good learning design is the key element. That means aligning objectives, methods/activities/strategies, and assessments.

The assessment (or typically just completion status) seems to be what we’re after. Not to say this is all we’re after. But this is paramount. Assessment data is the sine qua non of learning data. We may argue about how you got there, through my careful design or your circuitous creation, but your documented arrival is what we’re after. How we get there hopefully comes down to a healthy debate among efficiency, effectiveness, and appeal considerations.

Assessment data is not all we’re after. Even if we don’t end up on an adaptive instructional path from objectives to to assessments, we still want to provide what Richard Van Eck (2006) calls contextual pedagogical advisement or coaching. Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) systems (or good teachers) are currently responsible for doing this. I believe this is the future of sequencing – contextual pedagogical advisement -- based perhaps on service oriented architectures to allow lots of platforms and tools to play. It is noteworthy what Van Eck found about the instructional effectiveness of this coaching approach (p. 170):

Studies by Tennyson and his associates (Johansen & Tennyson, 1983; Tennyson, 1980; 1981; Tennyson & Buttrey, 1980) found that designing computer-based lessons using learner control with advisement increased performance when compared to lessons designed with either adaptive (program) control or learner control without advisement. In most cases, performance increase was accompanied by a decrease in total instructional time compared to adaptive control methods (Gray, 1988; Tennyson, 1980, 1981).

While it is true that content is king. It is also true that we are losing control over that content as it shifts from digital formats to digital platforms. It is important for LETSI to get concrete about what it wants. I recommend a focus on assessment data and contextual pedagogical advisement. The plumbing for this data flow and contextual advice will need to make minimal assumptions about the content increasingly being locked in various platforms. I’m going to start reading more about Web services and service oriented architectures.

References

Van Eck, R. (2006). The effect of contextual pedagogical advisement and competition on middle-school students’ attitude toward mathematics and mathematics instruction using a computer-based simulation game. Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching, 25(2), 165-195.

Content Management

I'm interested in setting up a personal website in addition to my blog. I've looked at various web hosting companies and am evaluating options. I'm also debating approaches to content management. It looks like a lot of folks are using Drupal and Joomla. I'm also just considering creating my own content management using PHP per the guidance at a list apart. However, I'm wondering if that is so 2002.

What hosting solution do you use? Are you happy with it? Do you use a Web content management system or do you go it alone?

I'm afraid I'm a generalist

There are so many interesting topics to read and write about. I feel overwhelmed. I know I owe an updated reflection post, but I'm not ready to reflect.

I'm organizing my thought and embracing my fears that I'm a generalist. Yes, some may call me a jack of all trades and master of none, and I'm okay with that. While I fear a life without sufficient specialization, I feel compelled to accept my lot in life and make the most of it. Although I must admit I'm envious of the specialist.

The specialist has the benefit of using his or her skills on ever increasing challenges. I imagine the enjoyment the specialist feels and the desire to lose himself in his work, which might as well be called play.

The generalist must find enjoyment through challenges as well. The generalist's challenges require reaching out wide and bringing back chaos, unfamiliarity, and confusion. He or she must make meaning out of that confusion in some form.

I'm dedicating myself to a challenge as a means to find enjoyment and develop new skills. It is an e-learning challenge and its based on a question I read on the e-learning circuits blog asked by a student of instructional design like me: do you have any suggestions where to start [learning about e-learning tools]? At the DevLearn 2008 conference, Robby Robson and I argued standards and design should be considered in addition to tools when folks are getting started in e-learning.

I want to reach my arms out wide and bring back all the designs, standards, and tools related to e-learning. I'm not yet sure what form the meaning will take. And while I hope the form is useful to others, it is meant to be a personal journey that I welcome visitors to join me on.

Reflecting on 2008

I've begun reflecting on what I've learned about learning in 2008 in response to the Learning Circuits December Big Question. This might explain my reflection on the Religious Education post I recently made. The other reflection that comes to mind is a presentation I heard at BYU back in February. Russell Osguthorpe, Director Center for Teaching and Learning, Brigham Young University, presented his findings on what learners complain about and what "lights a learner's fire." While the lack of alignment between objectives, activities, and assessments is a key complaint, what do you suppose lights a learner's fire?

Aligning Instructional Design and Technical Standards

I wrote a paper with Dr. Robby Robson on aligning instructional design and technical standards. It is included in the proceedings of the recent I/ITSEC 2008 conference. I presented the paper at the conference this past Thursday.

The paper attempts to make a clear and tangible bridge between instructional design concepts and SCORM concepts. Specifically, it argues for aligning lessons with content packages.

Aligning Instructional Design and Technical Standards

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: isd scorm)

I originally didn't add the slideshare because the PowerPoint didn't convert correctly. However, slideshare seemed to convert the PDF nicely.

Religious Education

There is a lot of discussion on educational blogs about teachers and teaching as we transition to the Obama administration in the United States. One area I haven't heard much discussion about is our approach to religious education. This topic and the goal of religious harmony seems important in the wake of terrorist events based on religious extremism. Dr. Charlene Tan (2008) described the problems of religious education in the plural society of Singapore and argues for a suitable alternative to current practice. While her article is based on experiences in Singapore, I believe they are relevant to other plural societies.

In the United States, the controversial Supreme Court case of Abington School District v. Schempp ruled against the teaching of religion in favor of teaching about religion in public schools. Tan identifies problems with this approach:

Given the informational and emotionally detached treatment of religion under the phenomenological approach, it is questionable whether this approach is effective in bringing about moral conviction in the students (p. 185)

Tan also suggests that current approaches typically produce religious tolerance based on ignorance and fear rather than an appreciation of different faiths (p. 186).

So what is a suitable alternative? Tan argues for what she calls Spiritual Education, which aims to "help students acquire insights into their personal existence which are of enduring worth, attribute meaning to their life experiences, and value a non-material and transcendental dimension to life" (p. 186).

"There is a close relationship between [Spiritual Education] and religion as the search for a wider framework of meaning for [Spiritual Education] usually leads one to explore religious beliefs and practices" (p. 187).

Is moral development and religious harmony an aim of education?

References

Tan, C. (2008). The teaching of religious knowledge in a plural society: The case for Singapore. Interational Review of Education, 54, 175-191.

Wrapping up...

As I wrap up my research seminar focused on the problem solving literature, I'm excited and humbled by what I read over at Bridging Differences and the Core Knowledge Blog. There seems to be a lot of discussion around what is the required knowledge and skills we should be accounting for. My thinking on this question is evolving this semester after reading some of the problem solving literature.

I began the semester with a desire to resolve the conflict in my mind surrounding the direct instruction vs. minimally guided instruction debate as characterized by Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006). I focused on ill-defined problem solving -- an ability that seems important to educational aims. I arrived at three areas of thought that I plan to refine into arguments: 1) the ability to clarify ill-defined problems, 2) far transfer and domain specificity, and 3) cognitive and affective skills.

I plan to refine each area of thought in future blog posts to see connections to the present discussions about required knowledge and skills. Such a discussion seems necessary before arguing how to account for it (Kuhn, 2007).

References

Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75-86.

Kuhn, D. (2007). Is direct instruction an answer to the right question? Educational Psychologist, 42(2), 109-113.