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If viewing these graphics via the Learning Ecosystems website/blog:
You may need to right-click and download the graphics to see them in their entirety.
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If viewing these graphics via the Learning Ecosystems website/blog:
You may need to right-click and download the graphics to see them in their entirety.
The facts on higher order thinking — from Faculty Focus by Maryellen Weimer, PhD
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I just read a study that pretty much blew my socks off. An article highlighting the details will appear in the March issue of The Teaching Professor. I’ll give you the nutshell version here. The researchers were interested in finding out if there was empirical evidence to support the frequent criticism that introductory courses are fact filled with little content that challenges higher order thinking. Beyond anecdotal evidence, this research team didn’t find much empirical documentation so, being biologists, they decided to look at introductory-level biology courses.
What makes a good learning game? Going beyond edutainment — from e-Learning Magazine by Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen
After developing more than 30 learning games I can safely say that it is definitely not an easy task. Developing good learning games requires constant attention to opposing factors, which only through creativity can truly be made to smoothly work together.
Since the inception of computer games, there has been learning games. In the early years, games were used to demonstrate the potential benefits of computers. Although learning games date back to at least the 1960s, it is still a discipline fraught with challenges [1]. One of the fundamental questions that remain unanswered is: What really makes a good learning game? This simple question is far from trivial as it might be seem upon first sight. The question relates to what we define as a good game and what we define as good learning—none of which have been fully answered.
This article is not be a quick-guide for “how to design” learning games with ideas like points, leveling, power-ups and clear goals. Rather it will present a helicopter view on what often happens when you apply these principles and ignore the fundamental structure of games. You may very well create a learning game that is motivating, and uses level and feedback in some ways, but still fail miserable. This often happens because designers are not conscious of how games are fundamentally structured. They forget games are about “what you do” and not “what you see.” Instructional designers apply game principles but forget to step back and see whether these principles distort the learning experience. Often this happens by failing to integrate game and learning goals, losing sight of the difference between seeing and doing, and accidentally derailing the player away from learning in favor of pure fun. When you use very simple principles from games in your e-learning applications the risk of distortion is less, unlike when designing more complex, game-based learning applications.
.Some of the sessions being offered include:
Designing online courses with course updates in mind — from Faculty Focus by Patti Shank, PhD, CPT in Online Education
Online courses are rarely “done.” Over time, things change, including the curriculum and content (because of changes in the field and changes to available content) and the technologies (ways that the content can be delivered and tools for interacting with it and with others in the courses, including you).
Bottom line:
Just like initial course development, updating courses can be quite a lot of work. You can reduce the hassles and work (but not eliminate them) by designing your online courses with updating them in mind. That is, design so that updating is built into the process, not tacked on as an afterthought.
Instructional Systems Design (ISD) Needs to Evolve — from Brandon-Hall.com by Tom Werner
From Tom:
The two most interesting pieces of data from the ASTD and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) study entitled Instructional Systems Design: Today and in the Future (free download to ASTD members) are:
Instructional Systems Design: Today and in the Future explores how instructional systems design (ISD) is adapting to the current, fast-changing learning environment and the uncertain future. The learning environment is constantly evolving, with companies’ operations expanding globally; learners coming from increasingly diverse backgrounds and cultures; and technological advancements constantly changing the ways in which learning occurs.
Developing effective programs has always been a challenge: Most companies have ISD programs that are, at best, moderately effective in achieving both learning and business goals. The changes in the world of learning also mean most companies need to be better positioned for the future, modifying the priorities of ISD professionals who will need to add skills and competencies to their repertoire.
This report includes valuable results and recommendations to help executives and ISD professionals make strategic decisions about ISD within their organization-for today and the future.
Putting the Learning in Blended Learning — from Faculty Focus by Ike Shibley, PhD. in Instructional Design
Blended learning involves using a combination of face-to-face interactions and online interactions in the same course. Students still regularly meet in the classroom in a blended course, but the frequency of those meetings is usually decreased. The goal of blended learning is to facilitate greater student learning and could thus fit within a learner-centered paradigm.
Many discussions about blended learning, however, focus not on learning but on blending. “Blended” is an adjective and “learning” is a noun; why has our focus been directed at the adjective? Do we assume, as is often done in the teaching paradigm, that learning is automatically assumed? I think that blended learning has become widely established enough that attention can now be paid to the learning portion of the name.
In higher education learning must be the focus—the push for learner-centered teaching is a noble, pedagogically defensible goal. Improving the cost-effectiveness of teaching should play only a secondary role. An instructor should not begin a blended design by asking how many face-to-face hours are really necessary, even though some administrators may use reduced hours as a starting point. The course should be designed to maximize learning.
Also see:
What Instructional Designers can learn from IBM’s Watson — from kaplaneduneering.com by Karl Kapp
Excerpt:
Enter instructional design. What happens in a typically designed program? The designer creates abstracted bulleted lists or items the learner must know and apply to a situation and then, once or twice in the course of the class/e-learning event, etc. The learner is given an example. One or two examples at the most. Not enough to develop pattern recognition or to create an internal construct of how to deal with a particular situation.
That’s all wrong. Instead of giving learners abstractions of concepts or lists of rules, we need to give them examples, not one or two examples but dozens and dozens of examples.
We know expertise comes from experience with situations that build a generalization by the expert who then compares a current situation with past situations to decide how to problem-solve. Designers of instruction can create “learning experiences” using case studies, simulations, etc. to immerse the learner in dozens of similar (but not exactly the same) situations so the learner can recognize situations, not-by-rules, but by experience.
We can’t teach every rule in compliance training, or every answer to a customer’s objection in sales training or every combination of troubleshooting customer problems but we can provide example after example after example that can help learners develop the ability to recognize and address situations and the right response.
So, next time you develop instruction, provide examples, not one or two but dozens.
From DSC:
This makes sense also from a mental rehearsal standpoint — helping move things to long term memory.
Book Review: Designing mLearning: tapping into the mobile revolution for organizational performance — from Brandon-Hall.com by Clark Quinn
E-Learning & Instructional Design 101 — from The Rapid E-Learning Blog
Excerpt:
Good instructional design can make learning happen faster and more efficiently than what might happen more organically. Instructional design is the process of assessing the learning needs and then applying the appropriate learning strategy to meet them.
I’ve always seen instructional design as an intrusive process. It’s a manufactured attempt to make learning more efficient and effective as it intrudes on our natural learning process. Ideally, this intrusion is beneficial and helps us learn better.
In a simple sense, there are three core components to instructional design:
Do you need an Instructional Design degree? — from The Rapid e-Learning blog; with special thanks to Dr. Jeff Wiggerman for the link/resource
From DSC:
I’d like to thank:
2/8/11:
Note/correction from my original posting:
Doug Lynch and Stanton Wortham are not at Penn State, but rather they are at the University of Pennsylvania; Elliot Masie is an Adjunct Faculty Member at the University of Pennsylvania.
Carnegie authors featured in ISSOTL Journal
Carnegie is well represented in the Fifth Anniversary Issue of the International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning.
From DSC:
A global push continues to be evident in some of the things that Pearson has been up to in the last year:
