Can knowing some learning theories make you a good instructional designer?

It is disheartening to hear someone say that courseware development is all easy job. Just involves effective use of Copy and Paste commands on the menu. What do they know about Instructional Designing?

It takes years to make someone competent to design instructional material. Those who share my pedestal would appreciate the time and effort spent on mastering the art of instructional designing.

Now the question: What will make someone a good instructional designer? experience? knowledge? flair? inherent flavour? training?
I would say, all the above would attribute in a way for someone to become a good instructional designer.

Most important? Flair and proper training.

You should aspire to prosper. The fire within to learn, to observe how learning happens, to come up with creative ideas, all these should be inherent qualities of an instructional designer. Empathy is again the greatest trait that I would want to see in those who join me in my team. If you do not have the flair for teaching, its difficult to make an instructional designer of you.

Training. The mould that fits the clay to bring it to a usable shape. Training would help mould the raring intellect into an intelligent instructional designer.

There could be another question... How will I generate a breed of such individuals?
Hmmm... Good question. I have some thoughts and some practical solutions (which has worked in the past with my organisation). Will reveal that in my next post.

Learning modules or Hollywood movies?

At the Instructional Designers Forum, MSN, there was this interesting comment on customers demanding their instructional modules (CBTs/WBTs) to be fancy and with graphic gimmicks. I have personally experienced this with my clients in Singapore. I particularly remember my interactions with an naval officer, who was my onsite SME from the client end. My team was to develop a CBT on how a generator works. Well, the entire course was on some circuit diagrams and troubleshooting parts of the device.

The best instructional strategy that one can think of could be to provide simulated circuit diagrams that track the flow of charge to each relay and how the relays respond. Instead, the SME was focussed on how snazzy the interface should look like and how to add some animated 3D buttons.

I had a tough time explaining to him that adding animation everywhere and making them dance on the screen would only distract a learner. We had to convene a meeting with the top officials and explain in their presence the instructional values that we are adding to the course in doing away with those 'Matrix' like gimmicks from the course.

There, my knowledge on learning theories came handy when I could easily map our design strategies to Gagne's and Blooms. I had mapped each feature we were to provide in the CBTs to Gagne and relate every aspect of the assessment to Bloom's levels. Any good instructional material need not be graphic intensive, but definitely structured and carry instructional values.

A sound knowledge of the learning theories is a must for anyone who interracts with the clients. Educating the clients on instructional strategies goes a long way in convincing the clients on what is right.

Is Gagne's cognetive or constructivist?

Most of the instructional designing models seem to be addressing more than just one type of learning. I found this particularly interesting discussion about Gagne's 9 instructional events. Many of us know that the 9 events addresses cognetive learning style. What I mean here is that each event in the Gagne's model targets learner at the three predefined levels of learning:

1. Memorisation
2. Understanding
3. Application

But did anyone observe that in event 3 (Recall Prior Learning) and event 9 (Reinforce and Transfer) the shift is towards constructivist theory? I feel that though Gagne's model may have been based on the rudiments of cognetive learning, there is definitely an impact of constructivist spiral learning theory.

Interesting, isn't it?

New age IT curriculum

School education has become a flourishing business. Schools compete to show value in their curriculum. As a matter of fact, schools look for 'that' differentiator, the edge over their competitors.

Many schools try to gain mileage through introducing new technologies as subjects. IT has been a subject in almost all private schools, so IT is not an USP anymore. Therefore, there has been a drive to introduce new trends in positioning the IT curriculum as an inevitable aspect of life and earn that edge.

IT curriculum should now be woven closer to the lifestyle of the new generation. IT curriculum should stop focussing on teaching children to just program calculators and draw lines. The new age IT curriculum should help children to use gadgetry, innovate applications that can be used in daily life, integrate media and become intelligent users of the technology.

I strongly welcome the change in paradigm from considering IT as a programming subject to looking up for an IT curriculum to make children, intelligent users of technology.

Rapid E-Learning

I was discussing this with my friend and thought I would blog this for my reference. During my discussion with my friend on this topic, we documented the sequence of steps we followed to build an e-learning module with minimum effort.

1. Select the topic to be covered and check if there are any presentations already avilable on the subject. Create presentations if required, to bridge topics.
2. Get an expert trainer to handle the subject in a classroom mode, in front of a running camera. Videograph the sessions based on the presentations.
3. Cut the footage into appropriate sizes, matching the slides in the presentations.
4. Port the footage and the slides into Flash and use cuepoint animation to sync.
5. Ensure that you have some questions at the end to evaluate your leaner's understanding on the subject.
You are ready with a rapid e-learning module. (More or less a talking head)

We have tried this on experiment basis. The topic we chose was Instructional Designing, so we neither had to search for an expert or appropriate presentations. We had them all with us :-)

Felder-Silverman: Another Theory?! (Part2)

Continuing with my earlier post on the Felder-Silverman model...
I was wondering if this model can really be used in the pedagogy that I was working on, a few days back. My team was involved in designing a new strategy to address "difficult to learn" topics for school children through a not-very-usual a medium.
The challenge was to address all types of learners; visual, active, auditory, kinesthetic... I could relate to Felder-Silverman model immediately.

I understand that the model provides classification of learners under different learning patterns. I feel that a common stimuli cannot address all learners, but definitely most of the learners. For example, the model we were working on had
1. visual illustration of concepts in the form of pictures and animations. This would address visual learners.
2. audio explanations coupled with the illustrations to address the verbal learners.
3. group discussions to address active learners.
4. individual exercises for the reflective learners to guage their understanding by themselves.
5. a sequence of steps for the sensing and sequential learners who would like to follow a precise set of instructions.

But what have I understood from this whole exercise are some rudimentary principles of Instructional Design. Any learning module should address:
1. well articulated objectives and summary
2. visuals/illustrations
3. explanation in short text/audio
4. exercises for the self evaluation and discussion

If the above mentioned features are religiously adhered to in a coursematerial/CBT perectly fits any learning model (I have at least seen them to fit Gagne and Silverman models).

Felder-Silverman: Another Theory?!

When I discuss learning theories while strategising methodologies for curriculum, I see that people easily relate to Bloom's or Gagne's models. Felder-Silverman? Well, people raise their brows. Is it because they have not considered pondering this learning style? I feel that there is no harm in understanding what Felder-Silverman model suggests about learners.

These are some notes for reference on the Felder-Silverman model (I hope it would help me sometime later)

Learners as per the model:
1. Active and Reflective
2. Sensing and Intutive
3. Visual and Verbal
4. Sequential and Global
5. Inductive and Deductive

Will write more columns on how I and others I know have addressed each learner through our learning modules.