This lab, in contrast to the ID doctoral lab which followed, dealt with producing portfolio items: journal articles and presentations at professional conferences.
My Deliverables
Relevant papers and journal articles
Blurton lists and describes instructional uses of e-mail, listservs, using e-mail to locate and receive texts from other file servers, telnet, anonymous ftp, but not the WWW. Barriers to use are lack of access, instructional materials with discipline-specific examples of available resources, lack of standards, lack of generalized services, and multiplicity of interfaces. Search engines like Archie and Veronica help. Clearly, with Netscape and Mosaic, and standard html links, these problems are now overcome.
CoVis Collaboratory
Edelson, D. C., Pea, R. D., & Gomez, L. (1996). Constructivism in the
collaboratory. In B. G. Wilson (Ed.), Constructivist learning environments:
Case studies in instructional design (pp. 151-164). Englewood NJ:
Educational Technology Publications.
The authors start by defining a learning environment, consisting of information banks, symbol pads, construction kits, phenomenaria, and task managers. (Perkins, 1991). They also start with a constructivist belief in the importance of an active learner interacting with a variety of resources to develop his/her own understanding through a mixture of experimentation, experience, and expert guidance.
The CoVis learning environment combines constructivist-inspired tools for open-ended investigation (the scientific visualization software) with communication and collaboration tools that support both expert guidance and multi-learner collaboration (desktop vidconferencing and remote screen sharing, see Ishii). Thus, learners collaborate in a shared virtual learning space. There are also asynchronous communications like e-mail and newsgroup discussions, and a groupware application called the Collaboratory Notebook. This latter idea is similar to other hypermedia collaboration environments such as CSILE.
Philosophically, this is based on Pea's transformative communication model, in which the act of communication transforms all parties involved. The acct of speaking requires an individual to place a structure and a coherency on his/her understanding that may lead the individual to recognize gaps in that understanding or forge new connections between formerly disconnected knowledge. The interaction between speaker and listener(s) in a conversation amplifies this process as they attempt to reconcile the differences in their perspectives, opinions, and experiences. The result of such conversations for the participants can be new knowledge, reorganized knowledge, or simply the awareness of a need for additional understanding. In each case, the social act of attempting to share and reconcile the knowledge of different individuals motivates learning in a way that is much rarer among solitary learners (p. 3).
They also want to facilitate the students to become members of a community of practice, like Brown, Collins & Duguid's cognitive apprenticeship: authentic participation in the activities of the community at a level appropriate to their current competence. As competence increases, they participate more centrally, and less peripherally in scientific communities of practice.
This significantly alters the role of the teacher. The teacher must establish a culture of communication about matters of substance that includes the teacher as both participant and facilitator. His/her expertise is not limited to the subject area, but includes fostering and guiding conversations which involve a diversity of participants: students and global communities of practitioners alike.
REALS
Grabinger, R.S. (1995). Rich Environments for Active Learning.
Document submitted for publication.
REALS are based on constructivist values and theories including collaboration, personal autonomy, generativity, reflectivity, active engagement, personal relevance, and pluralism. They engage students in a continuous collaborative process of knowledge-construction in an environment which reflects the context in which that knowledge will be used. They are not delivery mechanisms, learning systems, or Microworlds, which simulate or mirror authentic environments. Key factors of REALS are:
CSILE
Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. Computer support for knowledge-building
communities. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3(3), 265-283.
The conceptual bases of CSILE (computer supported intentional learning environments) come from research on intentional learning (student ownership of goals), process aspects of expertise (progressive problm-solving), and discourse in knowledge-building communities (COL, see Brown). Construction of knowledge is a collective goal. Electronic conferencing enables the learning community to participate in virtual space. Because this activity increases the collective knowledge, continued adaptation requires contributions beyond what is already knkown, thus producing nonasymptotic learning. Accomplishments in second-order environments (see Pea, contrast with didactic and constructivist) allow the accomplishments of participants to keep raising the standard that the others strive for. Schools should be restructured as knowledge-building communities. One way to do this is to use cognitive apprenticeship. Another is peer-review of students' electronic publications. Key points of knowledge-building discourse are
Problem-based Learning
Savery, J.R., & Duffy, T.M. (1995). Problem based learning: An
instructional model and its constructivist framework. Educational
Technology, 35(5), 31-38.
This paper relates the theoretical principles of constructivism to the practices of ID and teaching. It begins with a summary of constructivism:
Situated Instructional Design
Wilson, B.G. (1995). Situated Instructional Design. Paper presented at
the meeting of the AERA, San Francisco CA, April 1995.
Situated ID has two facets: it rests on a situated cognition view, and it adapts itself to particular situations where traditional ID models do not. Major points are:
Some guidelines for the ID process are listed. Key ones are given here. All major constituencies should be represented on the design team. Solutions should be close to the performance context. Expertise develops progressively, and in multiple ways. Learners should be supported in pursuing their own goals; there are different goals for different learners. Authentic assessment is necessary for authentic tasks. Stress giving guided control to the learner, stimulating metacognition.
Constructivist learning environments
Wilson, B.G. (1994). What is a constructivist learning environment? To
appear in Constructivist learning environments: Case studies in
Instructional Design, Brent G. Wilson (Ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Educational Technology Publications.
Introduction to Brent's book. Contrasts info. transmission, cognitive psych, constructive, and enculturation viewponts of instruction. A constructivist learning environment is a place (real or virtual) where learners may work together and support each other as they use a variety of tools and information resources in their pursuit of learning goals and problem-solving activities. An individual's tool-using and information-using activities need to be complemented by the powerful resources presented by other people and by the surrounding culture, including language and rules for engaging in dialog. Key components are information banks, symbol pads, phenomenaria (simulation areas for manipulating phenomena), construction kits (pre-packaged, e.g. cuisinaire rods), task managers (people or assignment/assessment devices). The environment can be minimalist or rich. Examples are computer microworlds, (Sherlock project), classroom based learning environments (REALS), and virtual environments (CoVIS).
Learning Theory & ID
Wilson, B.G. (1995). Maintaining the ties between learning theory and
instructional design. Paper presented at the meeting of the AERA, San
Francisco, April 1995.
Learning theories serve as a foundation for instructional prescriptions, yet they are often inadequate as guides for practice. Dialog between designers and psychologists must continue.
There are 4 ways of looking at instruction:
History of ID:
Psychologists develop a teaching model in order to try out or validate a particular learning theory. ID theorists develop a model for its own sake.
Prototypes: when researchers become interested in the problem of how people learn complex subject matters in realistic learning settings, practical tryout of programs and methods fills a role that no amount of theorizing or isolated-factor research can provide.
Cognitive load theory states that when multiple information elements interact, they must be presented simultaneously. Do not overload working memory. To accomplish both of these objectives, there must be simple content and a simple presentation, so that students don't have to put in extra work to decode and translate among various types of presentation. I.e., just enough detail to accomplish the purpose. Keep number of elements small. Use single, coherent representations. Eliminate redundancy. Provide for systematic problem-space exploration, also worked examples as an alternative to repeated practice.
Sweller's work closely grounds his prescriptions in both learning theory and supporting empirical research. It gives good guidelines, which must be then matched to the context.
Clancey studied intelligent tutoring systems. He developed the Guidon_Manage tutor and reflected upon it, saying that researchers must participate in the community they wish to influence. Participatory design, global view of the context, providing cost-effective solutions for real problems, facilitating dialog, relating expert knowledge to everyday practice, and viewing the group as a psychological unit (social construction of knowledge): these are crucial.
In conclusion, the moment the ID theorist makes a choice about how to gather data, interpret it, and use it, some kind of implicit theory of knowledge and learning has to come into play, whether it relates to a formal theory or not.
Cognitive teaching models
Wilson, B.G., & Cole, P. (1995). Cognitive teaching models. To appear
in the Handbook of research in instructional technology, David H.
Jonassen, Editor.
This is a fully fleshed-out book chapter with much the same import as the Learning Theories & ID proceedings paper. Brent starts with a historical overview of learning theory and ID. He then discusses Sweller's cognitive load theory, and then goes into depth on the subject of using worked examples (cf. Chi & Bassok). Next, he discusses the Collins-Brown-Newman cognitive apprenticeship model, in which instruction must be placed within problem-solving contexts. As examples, he describes Sherlock (a computer coached practice environment for AF electronics technicians), goal-based scenarios (the student plays a role, like in Sim City), and problem-based learning (cf. Savery & Duffy, PBL).
Brent points out some of the learning mode mismatch problems that can occur with PBL. Reluctant learners need to be monitored. PBL is time-consuming. Vociferous members may lead reticent members of the group into ideas they don't really agree with.
Next, Brent discusses Pea's transformative communications model, and Collins & Ferguson's epistemic games. As an example, he cites Tabletop: a computer-based tool that allows users to manipulate numerical databases. Then he goes on to discuss CSILE, showing how it emulates the activites of scholarly knowledge-building communities.
Key points of reflection on these diverse models are offered. These are the exact same points he made in the Situated ID paper:
Lorraine Sherry