Discovering Instructional Design 8: Developing Material for Learning Programs

Continuing this series on instructional design. Today, I'm going to outline some guidelines for developing the material for a learning program.

Now read on…

Criterion Tests
These are instruments to enable learners and instructors alike to determine whether the learner is ready to move to the next unit of instruction, hence the term criterion-referenced assessment. They are not intended to determine how well a student performed in comparison with other students or norm-referenced assessment, or grading on the curve.

Practices
The description should list tools and equipment needed, and environmental requirement if relevant. The instructional designer is typically guided by the conditions specified in the objective.

Content derivation
When objectives, criterion tests, practices and audience are all defined, the relevant content can be produced. Key learning points are listed along with examples, questions and illustrations. Often the instructional designer will undertake a “mapping” exercise to a particular textbook, for example a Microsoft Office User Specialist-certified publication can be used if the course if training office productivity skills on the PC. The example in Table 1 is a (modified) extract of a specification of a time management e-learning product.

Table 1 A Sample Mapping

Topic Time flies – where?
Taxonomy level	Objective/ assessment	Mapping
Evaluation	Assess your use of the resource of time	Time as a precious resource: page 9, right Self-assessment and indicators of bad time management 10-22 Time log: 45-65
Key concepts You want to achieve your goals. To do so you need to match the time available for those goals Time is a precious resource. Assess how well you are using that precious resource: Calculate how much of that resource was wasted today. Calculate how much of that resource is available to you to pursue your goals (proactive time) when you take away legitimate interruptions (reactive time) and necessary but low-level work (maintenance). If you use time badly, you won't achieve; if you use it well there are many benefits, especially achieving your goals
Presentation guidelines
…

Delivery System Selection
This determines the combination of media, resources, job aids, and classroom exercises needed for both instruction and practice.

--

Discovering Instructional Design 7: Objectives Analysis

As I've discussed in previous posts, an important element in the instructional design process is the identification of learner entry behaviors. It is critical to the instructional development process that designers understand what skills, knowledge and experience their learners need to bring to the instructional process. In the area of skills and behaviors, it is important for the designer to identify them before producing the instructional materials. The pre-attained skills required of learners to begin the a learning program are called entry behaviors.

With that in mind, there are several valuable techniques used to analyze the objectives the ID has develop. I will cover three approaches today.

Now read on…

Hierarchical analysis
These are diagrams or tables showing the dependency relationships between the objectives, so that it becomes clear which objectives must be learned before others are attempted.

The hierarchical approach is used to analyze goals that are identified as being intellectual or psychomotor skills. It's purpose is to identify the foundational knowledge or rules that need to be taught/learned before the subsequent steps are taught.Subordinate skills are analyzed and then those skills are further analyzed. Hierarchical analysis is a top down model (see Figure 1), where each lower step supports the skills required by the steps above it.

Figure 1 Hierarchical Table

The IS should ask the following questions:

• What does the learner need to know in order to accomplish this step?
• What mistake might a learner make in completing this step?

Grouping or clustering
Sometimes objectives are too small to cover one at a time. In this case, they may be grouped into higher units, whether called “lessons”, “topics” or “modules”. As an aside, this leads on to one of the great ongoing debates in learning: what constitutes a learning object / lesson / section / module? As you will know if you design learning and development programs for a range of training institutions, corporations, and public organizations, each of them uses a terminology when delineating the same (or similar) discrete units of learning content. But I digress.

When clustering is indicated, a useful guideline may be to distinguish between enabling and terminal objectives. An enabling objective usually forms part of a subset of objectives that collectively enable the learner to demonstrate a terminal objective, which can be described as the key behaviors, skills, or performances a learner has acquired and can undertake at the end of a course. For example, if the objective involves changing an bicycle wheel, then enabling objectives for this would be using a spanner, unhooking the chain, preparing the patch, and so on. Table 1 is an extract from a time management course:

Table 1 Clustered Objectives

1. Define your Dreams	A. Time flies – where?	Assess your use of the resource of time	Produce life and work objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound (SMART)
	B. 'Dumb' dreams to 'SMART' goals	Identify guidelines for defining goals
2. Remove your Barriers	A. Procrastination	Identify guidelines to combat procrastination	Minimize the effects of the three most critical time wasters in work and life
	B. People	Identify guidelines to minimize interruptions from people
	C. Perfection	Identify guidelines to control a tendency toward perfectionism
3. Achieve your Goals	A. Prioritize	List the steps in converting goals into prioritized tasks	Successfully achieve key tasks that are prioritized accurately and scheduled realistically
	B. Schedule	List guidelines for effective scheduling
	C. Implement	List guidelines for successfully implementing a prioritized and scheduled task list

DIF analysis
In a DIF analysis, the objective (or groups of objectives) are analyzed in terms of difficulty, importance and frequency.

• Difficulty: the simpler the skill to be taught the better. All skills are not equal so for each we need a measure of complexity. One common measure is Bloom’s Taxonomy which rates skill complexity from 1 (knowledge) through to 6 (evaluation).
• Importance: No matter how often a skill is used, or how difficult it is, we have to ask how important that skill is to performance. A taught skill may not be used very often by the learner but it could be crucial to that learner’s job. Conversely, other skills may require constant use and re-use but may be less important in overall competency terms.
• Frequency: this simply measures how often an objective will be performed.

All three categories above can be rated on a scale of 1 – 5 from easy to hard, infrequent to frequent, less to more important and so on. Table 2 shows how a completed DIF analysis might look.

Table 2 Sample DIF analysis

Terminal Objective	Enabling Objectives	Diff.	Imp.	Freq.
Create Better Business Documents	Determine who your readers are	1	5	5
	Draft your document	2	4	5
	Write an effective letter	4	5	5
	Revise your writing	3	5	5

Prerequisites Identification
These describe what learners must be able to do before they start the course. These are often defined in terms of skills, knowledge and attitude (SKAs). When you subtract the student's previously-learned SKAs from the list of objectives, the remaining SKAs are the objectives that will need to be covered in the learning program.

More…

--

Discovering Instructional Design 6: Developing Objectives

Continuing this E-Learning Curve Blog series on Instructional Design. In this article, I'm going to discuss:

1. Describing the Target Audience
2. Objectives Writing

Target Audience Description
The Target Audience Description describes the key characteristics of the learners that you're designing instruction for. It assists in the selection of objectives, examples, terminology, typical work practices, and cultural issues.

Typical headings include:

• Age
• Gender
• Culture - organizational / ethnic / socio-economic
• First and other languages
• Education
• Existing skills and skill sets
• Professional and life experience
• Values
• Motivators
• Interests
• Taboos
• Current job
• Career history

An effective approach to elicit this information is to ask the SME to describe someone he knows who would be a typical audience member: what kinds of things would that person relate, react, and respond to?

Understanding organizational culture is important from the perspective of gaining learner acceptance when developing customized training. The instructional designer should find out about vocabulary/argot, typical topics of conversation, clichés, conversation buzzwords, TLAs, corporate beliefs, do’s and don’ts, examples of successful and unsuccessful people and performance; speed of organizational feedback, and symbols (logos, mission statement, mottos etc). Considering these factors will help paint a realistic picture of the people in the examples, scenarios and problems covered in the learning program.

Similarly (and particularly in e-learning and web-based training) there will likely be a need for a visual depiction of the audience profile – age, sex and particularly dress code (i.e. customer-facing organizations typically wear formal business clothes or uniforms, clean room production workers bunny suit).

Objectives Writing
Objectives are the key learning outcomes desired from the instruction. They emerge from the previous analyses – performance, task and goal – to provide the objectives that learners need to have mastered to perform the associated tasks competently.

Classically, instructional objectives have three elements: conditions, performance, and standards (see Table 1):

Table 1 Instructional Objectives

“Given that you are in a high-pressure job,	CONDITION
reduce workplace stress	PERFORMANCE
and lower your blood pressure by 10%”	STANDARD

It's quite common to find aims disguised as objectives in training materials. However, there is a fundamental difference between the two. Broadly speaking, we can say that an aim (or goal) is a general statement of intent. They are not especially helpful for deciding an appropriate (1) teaching strategy or (2) assessment procedures.

Examples of aims include:
• An awareness of the types of breakdowns electric motors are prone to.
• An understanding of how silicon chips are produced.
• An appreciation of potential hazards in an industrial plant.

Objectives are precise: both learner and instructor know exactly what is required to master the learning activity. An example of an aim translated into an objective might read as follows:

The learner will, without using reference materials, draw and label accurately a use case which shows all the stages involved in a human-computer interaction.

Conditions
A performance of any kind will always have important conditions surrounding it. The nearer these conditions can be to the actual work situation, the more accurate the objective will be. For example, it is one thing for a worker to be able to repair a piece of equipment in a workshop with every sort of tool available, but quite another to expect him to repair the same piece of equipment somewhere on-site, far from home base.

Conditions must be realistic. Learners must be asked to carry out the performance objectives under normal conditions. For example, use the Hitachi Chip Etching Tool to set as a condition 'using an electric drill', would be pointless (and irrelevant) if there was no silicon blank, no fabrication facility, or the person concerned did not have a cleanroom space suit.

Performance
A statement of actual performance is of primary importance and is central to writing of good objectives. This performance must be an observable action of some kind. Words and phrase such as "understand," "appreciate," "feel a sense of pride," "know," "feel deeply about," are irrelevant when deciding learning objectives. If you have any doubt about the appropriateness of a verb to describe a performance, just place the phrase "Watch me..." at the start of a sentence containing the verb.

For example,

• Watch me appreciate this piece of hardware (!)

or

• Watch me etch this 45 nanometer silicon chip processor core.

It is obvious which is the observable performance (the second one).

Standards
When developing courseware, instructional designers must consider the level or standard of the performance - how well must it be done?

For example a performance objective describing an activity relating to some aspect of workplace safety demands a 100% standard. If a serious accident occurs, an employee won't get a second chance to do the task more carefully.

Just as the conditions need to be defined with real, everyday situations in mind, so too do the standards. When setting the standard for an objective, always consider the level of performance required in that particular situation.

Next Time: Objectives Analysis

--

Discovering Instructional Design 5: Stages in the Affective Taxonomy

Goal statements (sometimes called purpose statements) are often used with the Affective Taxonomy. They answer the question, "Why does the student need to learn this material?" Goal statements reflect the instructional designer's empathy for the learner's motivation and attitudes, which should enhance the outcome of the lesson (see Table 1).

Table 1 Levels off the Affective Domain

Affective Domain
Level	Definition	Example
Receiving	Being aware of or attending to something in the environment.	Person would listen to a lecture or presentation about a structural model related to human behavior.
Responding	Showing some new behaviors as a result of experience. To act or comply; to perform an act willingly and to obtain satisfaction from it.	The individual would answer questions about the model or might rewrite lecture notes the next day.
Valuing	Showing some definite involvement or commitment. To accept, prefer or commit oneself because of its perceived worth or value; to appreciate; defend; judge; praise; volunteer	The individual might begin to think how education may be modified to take advantage of some of the concepts presented in the model and perhaps generate a set of lessons using some of the concepts presented
Organization	Integrating a new value into one's general set of values, giving it some ranking among one's general priorities. To compare, relate and synthesize values into one's own value system; question; dispute.	This is the level at which a person would begin to make long-range commitments to arranging his or her instruction and assessment relative to the model
Characterization by Value	Acting consistently with the new value. To integrate values or value systems into one's style or philosophy of life.	At this highest level, a person would be firmly committed to utilizing the model to develop, select, or arrange instruction and would become known for that action.

Using behavioral terms, samples of performances are constructed that will provide evidence that the students have achieved the purpose.

For example

Original objective:
“Upon completion of tasks in the auto repair shop, replenish supplies to maintain the stock levels specified in the shop stock handbook.”

Amended to include an affective goal:
“Upon completion of tasks in the auto repair shop, replenish supplies to maintain the stock levels specified in the shop stock handbook without supervision”.

If learners meet this objective "without supervision," no one will watch them, pressure them, or remind them to replenish supplies; they must now complete this task on their own. If learners meet such an objective, they are functioning at the Responding level of attitude, or perhaps at an even higher level.

Other goal statements include:

• Voluntarily takes action to…
• Without being told to do…
• Without promise of reward…
• Without threat of punishment…
• In spite of social pressure to do otherwise…
• Initiates on his or her own…

Notice the last three of these phrases. If learners undertake an activity in their own time, initiate something on their own, or do something in spite of social pressure to do otherwise, they are displaying behavior at the Valuing level of the taxonomy (and perhaps higher).

Short courses and brief exposure to material can be expected to change attitudes only in small ways, and only at the lower affective levels (receiving, responding, and, possibly, valuing).

Changes at the higher affective levels (valuing, organization, and characterization) require much longer exposures - an entire course rather than a lesson, or a program of instruction: these are more difficult to evaluate and measure, typically at Kirkpatrick Level Three. We cannot be sure a particular attitude characterizes a person if the only measure or index used is a formative or summative assessment.

More...

--

Discovering Instructional Design 4: The Affective Domain

The Systems Approach to Instruction, like all instructional design processes, can be said to have a number of phases:

1. determine the current state and needs of the learner
2. define the end goal of instruction
3. develop a learning intervention to assist in the acquisition of new skills, knowledge or expertise.
4. assess the quality of the instructional design and improve where required
   

Last time, I began discussing the analysis stage of the process, which is used to determine the current state of learners' knowledge and skills, and to define the learning needs of the student. Today, I will look at goal analysis and the relevance of the often-overlooked affective domain.

Goal Analysis
Goal analysis is used when there is an abstract state or condition that must be taught/encouraged in the learner.

Typical goals are:

• Be self-starters
• Exhibit good leadership characteristics
• Be conscientious
• Be professional
• Have a customer service attitude

These are called affective objectives, and can be arranged according to a taxonomy. According to Mary Miller (2005), when instructional designers consider the affective domain, “they think only in terms of a learner's motivation to learn.”

As Smith and Ragan (1999) have pointed out, "any 'cognitive' or 'psychomotor' objective has some affective component to it (if at no deeper level than a willingness to sufficiently interact with learning resources to achieve the learning)" (p. 250, parentheses in original). Motivation is certainly important, as "a student's attitude toward a given course or subject area can be a contributing factor to his achievement in it.

(Edwards & Porter, 1970, p. 107)

While it's natural (an logical) for instructional designers (and learning professionals in general) to emphasize the cognitive domain (associated with Benjamin Bloom) the affective domain can significantly enhance, inhibit or even prevent student learning. The affective domain includes factors such as

• student motivation
• attitudes
• perceptions
• values

Considering the affective domain when designing programs can increase the learning effect, whether delivering content and activities, and during formative and summative assessment.

David Krathwohl's affective domain taxonomy is perhaps the best known of any of the affective taxonomies. Krathwohl's Taxonomy refers to a person's awareness and internalization of objects and stimulation.

The taxonomy is ordered according to the principle of internalization. Internalization refers to the process whereby a person's affect toward an object passes from a general awareness level to a point where the affect is 'internalized' and consistently guides or controls the person's behavior.

(Seels & Glasgow, 1990, p. 28)

As such, a goal analysis can assist in determining what can be taught.

There are five steps to the procedure:

1. Write down the goal using appropriate abstract terms to express the intent. Ensure the statement is written in terms of outcomes rather than process – for example “Have a favorable attitude to… rather than “Develop a favorable attitude…”.
   
2. Understand the activities or performances required to achieve the goal.What would SMEs have to do or say (or stop doing and saying) before you, as an instructional designer, are willing to say that the performances represent the goal? List as many performances as you can think of.
   
3. Sort the list. Many of the items will be fuzzy and not describe anything about performance. Ask SMEs to undertake steps 1 and 2 again. Continue until you have a list of performances that collectively represent the goal – that is, until you are confident that if a learner did these things (and did not do other things) the goal would be achieved.
   
4. Expand the words and phrases on your list into complete sentences that describe when or how often the performance is expected to occur. This helps you to limit the scope of the expected performance. It helps to define “how much" performance would be satisfactory. For example, a goal analysis on security consciousness included the item ‘lock unattended PC.’ When expanded into a complete sentence it could read “Employee always locks PC before leaving workspace unattended.”
   
5. Test for completeness. Review the performances on your list and ask “If someone did these things would I be willing to say that he or she is competent in the activity?” If so, you have completed the goal analysis. If not, return to step 2 and add reiterate the goal analysis.

More...
___________

References:

Krathwohl, D.R., Bloom, B.S., and Masia, B.B. (1964). Taxonomy of educational objectives: Handbook II: Affective domain. New York: David McKay Co.

Miller, M. (2005). Teaching and Learning in Affective Domain. In: M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved 20 May 2009, from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/

Seels, B. and Glasgow, Z. (1990). Exercises in instructional design. Columbus, Ohio: Merrill Publishing Company.

--

Discovering Instructional Design 3: A Systems Approach

The process of instructional design specifies all the interrelated learning components that collectively constitute a specific training program for one content area. The generic high-level process is typically characterized as having four basic stages, each of which can be further divided into smaller constituent elements:

1. Analysis
2. Development
3. Implementation
4. Improvement

A Systems Approach to Instruction
According to Paul Saettler (1990), the systems approach to instruction emerged in the later 1950s and in the 1960. It grew from the then-current focus on integrating contemporary technology into learning environments including language laboratories, (the quaintly-named) teaching machines, programmed instruction, and Computer-Assisted Instruction. Most systems approaches are similar to computer process flow diagrams (see Figure 1). The instructional designer steps through the process during the development of the four stages. With its foundations in the military and business worlds, the systems approach involved setting goals and objectives, analyzing resources, devising a plan of action, and continuous evaluation/ and modification of the program during implementation.

Figure 1. A Systems View of Instructional Systems Design

ANALYSIS

Several types of analysis are undertaken when using the Instructional Systems Design (ISD) strategy to learning program development.

Training Needs Analysis (TNA)
This focuses on:

• the business goal related to the training need (e.g. more sales, higher productivity, employee retention, product knowledge, customer satisfaction, reduced costs, employee satisfaction).
• the improved or new performance needed to realize the business goals

Performance Analysis
This process:

• reveals the differences between what people are actually doing and what they should be doing
• identifies those differences that can be eliminated by instruction.

Note: Not all performance-related issues can be remediated by training.

Task Analysis
The outcome of a task analysis is a step-by-step description of what a skilled person does when performing a task, whether the task is cognitive or psychomotor in nature.

The purpose of a task analysis is to develop an understanding of what competent people actually do (or should do) when performing a task. From this understanding, we can deduce what others have to be taught to enable them acquire the skills to perform the task competently.

The instructional designer often undertakes a task analysis with the assistance of a subject matter expert (SME), who identifies and illustrates key elements and tasks related to the skill or activity. Here are some useful approaches to elicit an effective analysis of a task under investigation:

Work Behaviors
The SME demonstrates the steps or aspects of the process required to complete work-driven tasks. These can be organized in many ways (for example, chronologically, by level of complexity, frequency etc). The instructional designer records what each step or process is called, and its place in the overall structure of the activity. The instructional designer documents:

• how often the task is done
• what percentage of users will need the task
• how critical the task is
• task complexity

Expert Behaviors
Here the SME demonstrates tacit tips and tricks that are not usually documented in source materials. Expert behaviors typically have lower frequency and higher complexity ratings.

Analytical Behaviors
The instructional designer asks the SME to describe decision-making processes that are performed during the task. As useful inquiry strategy to follow is the 4WH1 approach ("Who?, What?, When?, How?, and Why?").

More...

________________

References:

Saettler, P. (1990). The evolution of American educational technology . Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, Inc.

--

ADDIE, and the Systems Approach: a Critical Analysis

In yesterday's post I looked at a systems approach to instructional design and development, and suggested that this approach was an emergent property of the process whereby instructor-led courseware developers in the 1990's attempted to apply previously-effective training development techniques to the new domain of e-learning.

As an example, I looked at the ADDIE design appraoch and suggested that it could be characterized as a set of heuristics (or conceptual framework) to enable learning professionals to output content commensurate with the systems approach.

Now read on...

In this context, we can say that ADDIE will only deliver results consistent with the expertise of the content designer, as it relies on their (the designers') skills and experience in transferring information and knowledge to "deliver" learning to the recipient. In E-Learning Strategies: how to get implementation and delivery right first time, Don Morrison remarks that

...like many ISD models it fails to give clear guidance about what makes good learning content. You can follow ADDIE to the letter and still deliver mediocre content.

(2004, p.255)

It can be said that ADDIE (and similar systems' approaches to learning content development) are closer in philosophy and practice to a project management methodology than a pedagogy. In this respect they can be a useful approach when developing "one-shot" training content in environments where repetitive worker activities are the norm.

Take this scenario as an example:

1. Production workers have just started using the new WidgetMaker 300-0 tool: it can create 3o widgets per hour.
2. As it's operating principles are very similar to the the older WM 299-8 (20 widgets per hour) model, the organization decides that workers only need a 2-day familiarization course before beginning production with the new tool.
3. A new production target (30 WPH) is set for workers to reflect the increased efficiency of the tool.
4. After three months, production is still 5WPH short of target. It turns out that workers are using the old production process on the new machine, and with the expectation of attaining 30WPH are actually working harder than ever, but are still 50% short of the difference between the new and old hourly production rate. Much disgruntlement all round.
5. It seems that there's an extra gadget on the handle of the WM300-0 that nobody noticed because of the cursory nature of the 2-day familiarization course.
   
6. Time for some training...

Table 1 Systems Approach Methodology applied to learning intervention

ISD Process Phase	Systems Inputs
	People
Analyze	Organization sees deficiency in workers skill-base or competency set (causes lower productivity from the new widget-making tool, the WidgetMaker 300-0, than had been planned)
	Material
Design / Develop	Two-day delta training developed
	Technology
Implement	Training on new process delivered to learners
	Time
Implement	ILT / WBT course delivered (Learners taken out of productive work to take training)
Evaluate	Workers complete certification on tool
	Outputs
Outputs	Workers' productivity increased	Delta training integrated into updated operators' training program

As this example illustrates, treating learning like a project leads to "training outcomes" equivalent to project deliverables. While these training deliverables may have value in and of themselves, they have limited value for workers in the longer term. We could even say that the outputs are valid; workers have increased productivity and the next training course will have extra content to address the issue of lack of competency on the WidgetMaker 300-0. The efficiency of the system has been improved, and future trainees on the WidgetMaker 300-0 will not experience the productivity "hit" experienced by their colleagues. From a project perspective, it makes sense to fold the delta training into the course for the tool.

• There are a number of negative consequence associated this approach
• The delta training no longer exists as a discrete knowledge asset for the organization
• Over time, specific knowledge of that particular learning intervention will be lost, half hidden among the overall learning goals of the WidgetMaker 300-0. Useless in effect, should another learner require remediation on that particular aspect of the tool
• Without this discrete knowledge resource at workers' disposal, the only way to remediate their specific deficiencies on the tool is to require them to re-take the complete How to use the WidgetMaker 300-0 course. Again.

Our field of educational communications is founded on the premise that communicating content to students will result in learning. In educational communications, information or intelligence (in many different forms) is encoded visually or verbally in the symbols systems employed by each technology. During the "instructional" process, learners perceive the messages encoded in the medium and sometimes "interact" with the technology. Interaction is normally operationalized in terms of student input to the technology, which triggers some form of answer judging and response from the technology in the form of some previously encoded (canned) message. Technologies as conveyors of information have been used for centuries to "teach" students by presenting prescribed information to them which they are obligated to "learn."

(Jonassen, 2001)

Rather, Jonassen argues technology (and in particular so-called Read/Write Web technology) should enable learners to develop their skills in a constructivist learning environment (or CLE).

As a quick reminder, here's the Cliff Notes version of Constructivism:

• We construct our own understanding of the world we live in
• Knowledge not received from outside, but by fitting new information together with what we already know we construct knowledge in our head
• Learning is the process of adjusting our mental models to accommodate new experiences
• Constructivist theorists support that people learn best when they actively construct their own understanding

With this in mind (no pun intended. Well... maybe), we'll be looking at CLEs tomorrow.

____________________________

References:

Exclusive Interview with Professor David Jonassen (2001) IN: elearningpost [Internet] Available from: http://www.elearningpost.com/articles/archives/
exclusive_interview_with_professor_david_jonassen [Accessed 12th January 2007]

Morrison, D. (2004) E-Learning Strategies: how to get implementation and delivery right first time Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

--

E-learning ecosystems and the failure of ADDIE

Onwards with our investigation of the e-learning ecosystem and learning & development in organizations. Today's post looks at the similarly-sounding but fundamentally different Systems Approach to instructional design and learning, and why the doubtful provenance of ADDIE combined with a misunderstanding of the role of content delivery channels have failed a generation of e-learners.

Now read on...

I have suggested that a growing number of researchers and learning professionals (Dillon & Hallett, Jonassen, Rosenberg etc) are recognizing the negative affect of what Brown, Collins, & Duguid (1989) call the "breach between learning and use" (p.1) of training interventions in organizations. We have seen that both instructor-led and 'traditional' self-paced learning courseware are relatively limited in their application, and are most effective in a restricted range of circumstances. Brown, Collins, & Duguid elaborate:

Many teaching practices implicitly assume that conceptual knowledge can be abstracted from the situations in which it is learned and used. [The authors] argue that this assumption inevitably limits the effectiveness of such practices. Drawing on recent research into cognition as it is manifest in everyday activity, the authors argue that knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used.

(p.1)

To meet these conditions, we can say that it is appropriate to adapt both pedagogical approaches and the technology resources now available to enhance learners performance.

Marc J. Rosenberg concurs:

Although e-learning began as a new way to deliver training, it cannot remain that way because it is no longer able to adequately support all the learning needs of individuals and organizations by itself - if it every was. E-learning has moved in a new, somewhat unanticipated direction that is not always reminiscent of an instructional framework. To be more influential, e-learning must be reinvented. While continuing to provide a viable instructional option in a formal learning setting, it must also move toward informational and collaborative solutions that focus more prominently on the specific jobs people do. It must move beyond courseware and classrooms and into work. To reinvent e-learning is, in many ways, to reinvent learning itself.

In essence, this means transforming workplace learning, so that learning activities and resources are situated around the learner, their work environment, and their tasks, enabling learners to construct their own knowledge in the context of what resources they need to carry out their work effectively. As David Jonassen says:

In constructivist learning environments, technologies are used to situate learning tasks in a variety of contexts. With video, very rich and engaging contexts can be created.

He asserts that in the traditional organizational approach that

[u]nfortunately, most e-learning replicates the worst features of face-to-face instruction. So, it may be cheaper to "deliver" knowledge over the Internet, but it will not be more effective.

This is commonly known as the systems-based approach to instructional design & development (ISD). A system is a set of elements or components that must integrate to perform a specific function. Every job in an organization is used by the organizational ecosystem to produce a product or output. The product or output is the means by which a organization generates its assets and remains self-supporting.

There are four inputs necessary in every system to produce a product or output:

• People: The workers making up a group and linked by a common activity.
• Material: The raw products which go into the system.
• Technology: The technique for achieving a practical purpose or goal.
• Time: The measured period during which an action or process begins and ends.

In learning and development, this systems-based approach is epitomized by the ADDIE conceptual framework (see Figure 1), most notably refined by Dick & Carey in The Systematic Design of Instruction (1996).

Figure 1. The ADDIE ISD Heuristic

The ADDIE approach has been one of the core tenets of instructional design for the best part of two decades, but curiously, it may not exist! In his article In Search of the Elusive ADDIE Model (2003), Michael Molenda undertook a Livingstonian attempt to discover the source for the original reference to the ADDIE model. Molenda’s research uncovered no original reference for the ADDIE model. This lack of an original reference led Molenda to write,

I am satisfied at this point to conclude that the ADDIE Model is merely a colloquial term used to describe a systematic approach to instructional development, virtually synonymous with instructional systems development (ISD). The label seems not to have a single author, but rather to have evolved informally through oral tradition. There is no original, fully elaborated model, just an umbrella term that refers to a family of models that share a common underlying structure.

(p.1)

Hence my suggestion above that ADDIE is more properly labeled a conceptual framework; I would go so far as to say that it could even more accurately be described as a set of heuristics or "rules of thumb" to enable instructional designers from a instructor-led tradition to develop learning content by adhering to the precepts of the systems approach (see Table 1).

Table 1 The ADDIE Model

Phase	Activity
Analysis	During analysis, the designer identifies the learning problem, the goals and objectives, the audience’s needs, existing knowledge, and any other relevant characteristics. Analysis also considers the learning environment, any constraints, the delivery options, and the timeline for the project.
Design	A systematic process of specifying learning objectives. Detailed storyboards and prototypes are often made, and the look and feel, graphic design, user-interface and content is determined at the Design stage.
Development	The actual creation (production) of the content and learning materials based on specifications instantiated during the Design phase.
Implementation	During implementation, the plan is put into action and a procedure for training the learner and teacher is developed. Materials are delivered or distributed to the student group. After delivery, the effectiveness of the training materials is evaluated.
Evaluation	This phase consists of (1) formative and (2) summative evaluation. 1. Formative evaluation is present in each stage of the ADDIE process. 2. Summative evaluation consists of tests designed for criterion-related referenced items and providing opportunities for feedback from the users. Once they have undergone formative and summative evaluation, learners are encouraged to review and revise the courseware as necessary, until they have successfully passed the proscribed tests

The transactional nature of the systems approach assumes that the very act of communicating information to the supplicant (sorry, learner) results in the output of "learning."

Adhering to this content development methodology, instructors consider that the channels used to "deliver" knowledge are cognitively neutral and merely replicate and modalities of the classroom - voice-over narration equating to instructor explanation, the screen being equivalent to the overhead projector or blackboard, computer-mediated interaction being the essentially the same as teacher-student interaction, and so on.

By balancing the cognitive load across the learning modalities, it is supposed that knowledge can be effectively delivered, and the student will "learn." A corollory of this is that the learning delivery channels (visual, audial, text-based, and so forth) themselves have no affect upon the learner's interpretation of the content, so to all intents and purposes, the "sage on the stage" transforms into the "guide by the side."

_____________________

References:

Brown, J. S. Collins, C. & Duguid, P. (1989) Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning [Internet] Educational Researcher 18(1), pp. 32-42, Jan-Feb 1989. Available from: http://tiger.coe.missouri.edu/%7Ejonassen/courses/CLE/index.html [Accessed January 12th 2007]

Dick, W. & Carey, L. (1996). The Systematic Design of Instruction (4th Ed.). New York: Harper Collins College Publishers.

Dillon, P. & Hallett, C. (2001, October). Powering the leap to maturity: The eLearning ecosystem. Cisco Systems white paper.

Exclusive Interview with Professor David Jonassen (2001) IN: elearningpost [Internet] Available from: http://www.elearningpost.com/articles/archives/
exclusive_interview_with_professor_david_jonassen [Accessed 12th January 2007]

Molenda, M. (2003). In Search of the Elusive ADDIE Model. [Internet] Available from: http://www.indiana.edu/~molpage/
In%20Search%20of%20Elusive%20ADDIE.pdf Accessed 12 May 2008

Rosenberg, M.J. (2001) What Lies Beyond E-Learning? learningcircuits.org e-zine [Internet] Available from: http://www.learningcircuits.org/2006/March/rosenberg.htm Accessed 14th April 2007

--