Reflections

Write a reflection about class overall. What did you learn? What would you like to learn more about in the future? Did the course have any real impact on your life and your professional work as you see it going forward?

I learned a lot about different philosopher and their philosophy of learning and teaching in Dr. Warren’s class last semester. In this class I have learned about social constructivism in depth. I have learned about different instructional design (ID) models and their underlying guiding theories, prototype development, and instructional design document.

I have enjoyed each of my classmate’s presentation of their instructional design models. My favorite instructional design models are LTCA, ASSURE, Cognitive apprenticeship, and 4C-ID. I have written my reflections on these ID models in my weekly blog. Here is brief about these model.

My most favorite is the LTCA which I have used to design an ethics course in health science. LTCA is an advanced instructional design model because “LTCA theory helps to augment student learning experience through more active communication and increased content sharing among students to build a social learning community (Warren and Wakefield, 2011).”

ASSURE is consisted of six stages such as analyze, state, select, utilize, revise and evaluate. This instructional design is a step-by-step process to analyze the learner’s characteristics, state objectives, select design method and materials and utilize these. It also requires learner’s participation. Finally it evaluates the performance and revises the outcomes. The presenter clearly explained how he will use this model and Gagne’s nine events learning. I enjoyed the whole presentation.

Cognitive apprenticeship emphasizes four building blocks that constitute any learning environment are content, method, sequencing, and sociology. In cognitive apprenticeship design principles, providing appropriate scaffolds to support the students’ own efforts is essentials.

4C-ID is an instructional design model developed by Merriënboer and others that is characterized by four components: (1) Learning Tasks, (2) Supportive Information, (3) Procedural Information or just-in-time information and (4) Part-Task Practice. According to Merriënboer et al. (2002), this model addresses on the integration and coordinated performance of task-specific skills rather than on knowledge types.

I would like to know more about these models and how to tie these models into practice in designing different types of learning activities. Also, I have realized that it is very important to connect any model with underlying theory for complete understanding of the design process and its implications.

This course has impacted me directly to clear my conception about designing instructions, basic and advanced ID and connecting underlying theories with the design. I am confident now on how to use a design model in practice. My personal project and group projects work processes help me building my confidence. I feel this course directly impacted in my learning and professional work process.

Other important thing that has positively impacted my learning through this course is how to engage in group works with constructive critique and be respectful to peer learner to improve understanding, evaluating effectiveness of any work process, and ultimately construct knowledge effectively.

References

van Merriënboer, J.G, Clark, R, E. & de Croock, M. B. M. (2002). Blueprints for complex learning: The 4C/ID-model. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 50 (2),39-64.

Warren, S. J. and Wakefield, J. S. (2011). Instructional design frameworks for Second Life virtual learning. Cutting-edge Technologies in Higher Education, 4, 115–163.

 

Write a reflection about your instructional design project. What are you excited about? Nervous about? What is your personal vision for the project?

My instructional design (ID) project is about Learning and Teaching as Communicative Action (LTCA) model. Interestingly this has been chosen by my group members as well to work on as group project. So, I am excited about my selection of LTCA as an advanced model as my personal project and as a group project as well. More interesting is that this LTCA model is first posited by our instructor, Dr. Warren and his colleagues at UNT. I am nervous about how Dr. Warren feels and evaluates my personal vision about the scope and limitation of the LTCA model. I am confident about Dr. Warren who is a great teacher and is an open minded philosopher and will provide positive feedback if there is any conflict of understanding about the model.

This project is about LTCA model as an advanced model and how it can be used in practice. I have used the LTCA design principles in a clinical ethics course at health science curriculum. I believe it is a good model to use in particularly the course that I have mentioned because LTCA instructional design principles provide the guidelines to design and implement student learning activities that will give the opportunities for students to work individually and in groups to construct knowledge. It is great to work as a group in this project because we were able to discuss and debate about different principles of LTCA specifically constative and dramaturgical actions.

LTCA is a pragmatic theory first posited by Warren and Stein (2008) in their article, “Simulating teaching experience with role-play.” Its main objective is to advance human communication towards instructional and learning goals through students’ discourses. “Learning constructs in this theory come from Habermas’ four communicative actions: normative, strategic, constative, and dramaturgical actions (Warren, et al., 2010).” It encourages particular forms of discourse in a class towards a goal of engaging in a critique of existing knowledge and constructing new understandings among learners (Wakefield, Warren, & Alsobrook, 2011). Research supports LTCA as an advanced instructional design (ID) model because it proposes that the interplay among the four communicative actions function as a basis for human learning. Meaningful learning stems from communicative actions and interactions, ardent inquiry, and critical thinking, leading to knowledge construction.

Student discourse is an important part of learning process. LTCA provides the depth and breadth of learning opportunities for students. Knowledge is constructed when students engage in higher cognitive strategies, develop stronger social networks, and thereby strengthen their learning. The weaknesses of implementing this model are some institutional and regulatory constraints prevent students to fully negotiate learning expectations and norms. But limitations do not outweigh the benefits of the constative and dramaturgical actions elements of LTCA.

References

Wakefield, J. S., Warren, S. J., & Alsobrook, M. (2011). Learning and teaching as communicative actions: A mixed-methods Twitter study. Knowledge Management & E-Learning: An International Journal, 3(4), 563–584.

Warren, S.J., Bohannon, R., & Alajmi, M. (2010). Learning and teaching as communicative actions: An experimental course design. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting. Denver, CO.

Warren, S. J., and Stein, R.A. (2008). Simulating teaching experience with role-play. In D. Gibson & Y. Baek (Eds), Digital simulations for improving education.Learning through artificial teaching environments. Hershey, NY: Information Science Reference IGI Global.

 

Write a reflection about the advanced instructional design model that your group chose for the project. Why did you choose it? How do you think you will approach it? How did you divide up the work among members of the group? What will be your timeline for completion?

I have chosen the Learning and Teaching as Communicative Actions (LTCA) ID as my personal project first because this is an advanced instructional design model that will guide me to design the online course in health science curriculum. First, all of our group members discussed about each one’s instructional design model and all members agreed to choose this as the group project as well because LTCA instructional design principles provide the guidelines to design and implement student learning activities that will give the opportunities for students to work individually and in groups to construct knowledge. Also, I have used LTCA ID in practice for a clinical ethics course in a graduate level health science curriculum. So, group members were interested to know about the design and its effect in online course that I have designed.

The approach we took is that we will meet several times in a synchronous online meeting to discuss about distribution of group responsibilities, contribution, providing feedback, and to set the timeline for completing the project. First, we called a synchronous meeting by using Canvas conference tool. We discussed about each member’s interest about the project and then divided each individual member’s responsibility with timeline. As it was my personal project and I have used it to design an online course this semester I have submitted a draft and other two members contributed their input and edited the project with feedback. Providing feedback from own group members were important. After review the project several times we finalized it and sent it to other group for their feedback. This is also an example of LTCA’s constative actions of instructional design principles. Then feedback from other group members has been collected and has reviewed to update the draft again. Then we compiled it based on all feedback together and updated the project and submitted to instructor for instructor feedback. We did not receive any feedback from the instructor yet.

The timeline for completing this project was less than two weeks. All members have contributed actively and have engaged in a dialogue to improve the group project. We have successfully completed the project on time and have submitted for instructor feedback and grade.

 

Write a reflection about the advanced instructional designs that were presented in class. Which ones made sense? Which would you use? Why? Which did you have problems with and what problems?

All four presentations about instructional design theories/models in week eight were informative. Cognitive apprenticeship and component display theory are the two I enjoyed the most. I also enjoyed the presentation on Bloom’s taxonomy and presenter’s analogy with ADDIE and 4C.

Cognitive apprenticeship emphasizes four building blocks that constitute any learning environment are content, method, sequencing, and sociology. In cognitive apprenticeship design principles, providing appropriate scaffolds to support the students’ own efforts is essentials.  Heuristic, control, learning strategies are three kinds of strategies knowledge. According to Collins et al (1987) here are six teaching methods-modeling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, reflection and exploration. The presenter provided the research findings that support cognitive apprenticeship as an advanced instructional design model.

David Merrill’s component display theory (CDT) is about component. Learning is classified in content (fact, concept, procedure, principle) and performance (remember, use, find) dimensions.

Primary presentation forms (PPFs), secondary presentation forms (SPFs), and interdisplay relationships (IDRs) are instructional strategy components. CDT framework is learner centered which provides individualized learning experiences to meet their learning styles and preferences. CDT is also an advanced instructional design framework. David Merrill himself mentioned some limitations of this theory.

I would like to know more about cognitive apprenticeship theory in practice in the future.

Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Newman, S. E. (1987). Cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching the craft of reading, writing and mathematics (Technical Report No. 403). BBN Laboratories, Cambridge, MA. Centre for the Study of Reading, University of Illinois. January, 1987.

Write your reflections on class presentation of week seven

There are four advanced instructional design models that were presented in week seven synchronous class meeting. These are Learning and Teaching as Communicative Actions (LTCA), Student-Centered Instructional Design, Award-based design and 4C-ID.

I personally believe that the instructional design principles of LTCA theory provide opportunities for the designer to use it as an advanced instructional design model. Bringing interpersonal communicative actions is important for constructing socially produced knowledge.  I think LTCA model is an advanced model because LTCA instructional design principles will provide the guidelines to design and implement student learning activities that will give the opportunities for students to work individually and in groups to construct knowledge. Also, there are researches that support it as an advanced instructional design. “Learning constructs in LTCA theory comes from Habermas’ four communicative actions: normative, strategic, constative, and dramaturgical actions (Warren, et al., 2010).” Warren and Wakefield (2011) stated that “LTCA theory help to augment student learning experience through more active communication and increased content sharing among students to build a social learning community.”  An appropriate design for Peer-instruction activities can encourage students to deepen their understanding of contents, taking ownership of their own learning, enhance meta-cognitive skills, and increase motivation (Topping, 2003).

4C-ID is an instructional design model developed by Merriënboer and others that is characterized by four components: (1) Learning Tasks, (2) Supportive Information, (3) Procedural Information or just-in-time information and (4) Part-Task Practice. According to Merriënboer et al. (2002), this model addresses on the integration and coordinated performance of task-specific skills rather than on knowledge types. And traditional models use either part-task or whole-task practice; the 4C/ID model recommends a mixture where part-task practice supports very complex, “whole-task” learning.” Merrill considers this model as problem-based learning model. My personal thought is that this model might be specifically good for technical curriculum such as vocational training.

Award-based instructional design was also interesting to me. It is great to know that providing plus(+) as reward and exchange or trade more pluses motivated students to learn new language or information. I think any strategy that enhances learning can be used for teaching and learning. But I would connect the activity to an underlying theory or framework in a PhD level discussion.

Learner/student-centered instructional design is also a good advanced ID because it’s design principles require continuous assessment of learning, understanding of different learning styles, students’ interest, and participation of students as “active partners” in their leaning process. Webber (2006) stated that “The Learner centered model of education argues that the control of the learning should be exactly the opposite of the recent trend, and should reside primarily on the learner him or herself, with the teacher serving as a facilitator for the constructivist learning process.”

I would choose Student-centered instructional design if I was not doing the LTCA.

References

Topping, K.J. (2003). Self and peer assessment in school and university: reliability, validity and utility. In Segers, M. Dochy, F & Cascallar, E. (Eds.).Kluwe Academic Publishers.

Warren, S. J. and Wakefield, J. S. (2011). Instructional design frameworks for Second Life virtual learning. Cutting-edge Technologies in Higher Education, 4, 115–163.

van Merriënboer, J.G, Clark, R, E. & de Croock, M. B. M. (2002). Blueprints for complex learning: The 4C/ID-model. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 50 (2),39-64.

 

Reflection on conversations about instructional design by Gagne and Merrill and Allen Iterations.

A conversation on instructional design video recorded in 1989 is very informative about basics of instructional design. Even though these videos are old these are very useful for me to understand the foundation of instructional design. Even though I read about Gagne’s nine events about instructions, I was not familiar with five conditions of learning that is also known as five categories of learning outcomes. Watching Gagne speaking about this has a special impact on my own learning about instructional design. I knew some terms like declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge and cognitive strategies but after watching the conversation about five categories of learning outcomes (verbal information, intellectual skills, attitude, cognitive strategy and motor skills) with examples helped me to clear my conception on how these events occurred internally in human learning process.

Discussion about Merrill’s component display theory, elaboration theory etc. was interesting too. David Merrill’s component display theory (CDT) is about component. Learning is classified in content (fact, concept, procedure, principle) and performance (remember, use, find) dimensions. Most important lesson that I learned from the conversation is how important it is to identify the primary presentation forms and secondary presentation forms functions appropriately in learner’s cognitive process. Finally, I have learned how two highly regarded philosophers complement each other’s contributions in their fields with great respects.

The second video is about successive approximation model (SAM) of instruction design in Allen Iterations. In this iterative process a series of attempts are taken to solve an instructional problem. The lesson that I have learned from this video is to differentiate instructional design from instructional material development. I think some instructors think instructional design as instructional material development. It is the instructional designer’s responsibility to make it clear that the purpose of instructional design is to design challenged based instructions and performance based methods that will give the learners opportunities of experiences to construct knowledge.

Write a reflection about the advanced instructional designs that were presented in class. Which ones made sense? Which would you use? Why? Which did you have problems with and what problems?

Four instructional designs that were presented in class are: Hybrid-PBL, ASSURE, Brain and learning, and PBL. All presenters have done an excellent job in explaining theory behind the ID, why it is an advanced ID and how to use it to design courses. My reflection on these instructional designs is summarized as follows:

Hybrid-PBL design is based on connectivism theory. This is the first time I heard about hybrid-PBL . Based on this model there is no need of prerequisite knowledge. Hybri d –PBL is pedagogically sound, authentic task orientated and promote student centered learning. It is useful for real life problem solving. Although it is adaptable to different learning it is a time consuming process.

ASSURE and Gagne’s nine events of learning. ASSURE is consisted of six stages such as analyze, state, select, utilize, revise and evaluate. This instructional design is a step-by-step process to analyze the learner’s characteristics, state objectives, select design method and materials and utilize these. It also requires learner’s participation. Finally it evaluates the performance and revises the outcomes. The presenter clearly explained how he will use this model and Gagne’s nine events learning. I enjoyed the whole presentation.

The brain and learning theory of multiple pathways by Janet Zadina was a very interesting presentation. The anatomy of brain and functions of different parts of human brain were very interesting to know. I was not cleared why this is an advanced instructional model and how one can use it to design courses or instructions. It could be my lack of knowledge about brain and how it functions. I would like to study more about it in future.

PBL was the last instructional design that has been presented. I am sure the presenter knows about underlying theory of PBL but did not mention it in the presentation. I would prefer to give a background of the theory which is constructivism in this case like other presenters did in their presentation. I personally think it is very important to relate the learning theory with ID for any effective learning and teaching. Because learning theory guides deriving instructional design principles. The PBL is one of the widely recognized instructional design model in learning and teaching in many disciplines. The presenter clearly explained the principles of PBL, design goals, assessment of competencies, practices in different learning environments, and the challenges. Also, characteristics of PBL in classroom application with examples based on Bloom’s taxonomy were clearly defined.

Based on my understanding and above reflections if I was required to choose one of these four instructional design models I would choose the ASSURE with Gagne’s nine events of learning.

Write a reflection about your instructional design model. What do you think makes it advanced? Is there research to support your model? How might you research this model in the future if you choose to do so.

The instructional design model that I am preparing for my class presentation is Learning and Teaching as Communicative Action (LTCA).  “Learning constructs in this theory comes from Habermas’ four communicative actions: normative, strategic, constative, and dramaturgical actions (Warren, et al., 2010).” Warren and Wakefield (2011) stated that “LTCA theory help to augment student learning experience through more active communication and increased content sharing among students to build a social learning community.” I am working with a faculty to convert a face-to-face course into blended/online settings. It has been noted that “when learning moves from face-to-face to online, the intimacy and rapport is reduced (Jones, Warren and Roberson, 2009).” Bringing social presence in online setting is important to build interpersonal relationship.  I think LTCA model is an advanced model because LTCA instructional design principles will provide the guidelines to design and implement student learning activities that will give the opportunities for students to work individually and in groups to construct knowledge.

The course “Ethics for Clinical Research” will introduce students to a practical application of professionalism, clinical ethics and research ethics. Learners will demonstrate core knowledge of the principles of professionalism, clinical ethics and research ethics. And also, the learners will identify and reflect on virtues in professionalism and ethics common across health care and health sciences professions. The Canvas LMS will be used for strategic communication with learners. Learners will participate in group discussions and as well as in peer-review critiques through Canvas discussions tool as constative communicative action principle. According to social constructivists’ views, these groups’ communications and peer-review critiques will be an effective means of constructing knowledge.

There are researches to support LTCA model as an advanced model. Warren and Wakefiled (2011) used LTCA to conduct a study on social media as educational tool. Also, LTCA is used to conduct a study on improving historical knowledge and cognition through Second Life avatar role play. Vygotsky ( 1978) suggested “powerful links among speech, social presence, scaffolding, learning, and teaching (Cited in Warren and Wakefield, 2011).” The concept of Social presence has been positively correlated with perceived learning (Lowenthal, 2009 cited in Warren and Wakefield, 2011). An appropriate design for Peer-instruction activities can encourage students to deepen their understanding of contents, taking ownership of their own learning, enhance meta-cognitive skills, and increase motivation (Topping, 2003).

References:

Jones, J., Warren, S.J., and Robertson, M. (2009). Increasing student discourse to support rapport building in web and blended courses using a 3D online learning environment. Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 20(3), 269-294.

Topping, K.J. (2003). Self and peer assessment in school and university: reliability, validity and utility. In Segers, M. Dochy, F & Cascallar, E. (Eds.).Kluwe Academic Publishers.

Warren, S. J. and Wakefield, J. S. (2011). Instructional design frameworks for Second Life virtual learning. Cutting-edge Technologies in Higher Education, 4, 115–163.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.