One of the critical factors in the production of multimedia is to decide which instructional design philosophy will be employed (Brown, 1995, 46). Instructional design is the methodology involved in structuring instructional materials in such a way that they will be efficient in the learning process.
In order to do this effectively we need to "know' how people learn. Most theorists develop their own mental model of how we learn (See, for example Brown, 1995, 8-9)
A lot of the CBI until recently, has had a very strong behaviourist background. This was because, if students were to meet predetermined objectives when using software, then they needed to be guided through the information, and so only given little control. However, with increasing user-control in multimedia, it has become necessary to use and extend non-behavourist instructional design theories.
When developing multimedia packages or any instructional package instructional designers use previous knowledge and experience to fit particular situations. (Rowland 1991).Previous experiences help determine multimedia content and instructional strategies.
The models developed from these experiences reflect the (author's) underlying conceptualisation of what it means to learn and understand. Carrol and Campbell (1988 in Duffy and Jonassen 1991, 115) argue that the things we build ( and in particular, computer applications, interfaces and so on) provide a rich basis for studying and understanding the theory that underlies our design. In other words, our theory of learning is implicit in our design of software, and so we can come to a reasonable understanding of our beliefs about learning from an analysis of that instruction. The theory is bound up in the instruction that is produced.
In the beginning most CBI material was driven by technology, rather than by educational principles (Brown 1995, 6). The big push now, is to ensure that CBI is based on educationally and developmentally sound principles, and to show that "Hi tech" is more than just "a great gimmick" (Crockford (1988) in Ambron and Hooper, 1988, 269), because
"in the long run audiences will not be judging you on the 'highness' of your tech...unless it is your intention to teach Technology Appreciation".
The 2 predominating instructional theories relating to CBI and multimedia presentation are Behaviourism (contained within Objectivism), and Constructivism. However, I have concluded from my reading and research that constructivism is a much more in vogue approach in terms of achieving competencies, and transfer of skills, so I have concentrated more on this theory.
Instructional design for computers originally developed from an objectivist tradition (Duffy and Jonassen 1991, 115). Objectivism believes that the world is completely and correctly structured in terms of entities, properties, and relations (Lakoff, 1987, 159 in Duffy and Jonassen 1991, 115). Experience plays no role in the structuring of the world: meaning is something that exists in the world quite apart from experience. So the goal of understanding is coming to know the entities, attributes and relations that exist. The objectivist view acknowledges that people have different understandings based on differing experiences, but no 2 people will have identical understandings. The aim is to work toward the complete and correct understanding.
This has significant implications for computer instruction. The goal of computer instruction is to help the learner acquire the entities and relations and attributes of each model and to develop their own structured model. A behaviourist approach to analysis focuses on identifying the entities, relations and attributes that the learner must "know". This requires active student learners. But the purpose of behaviourist-based computer instruction is to cause the student to pay closer attention to the stimulus events, to practice, and to demonstrate mastery of knowledge. The critical issue, in the design of the behaviourist instruction, is the depth and amount of processing of the stimulus events. (Duffy and Jonassen, 1991, 7-9).
Since knowledge is believed to exist independently of instruction, a behaviourist need not look at the instructional activities to see what is learned. Designers simply need to produce a test that stands separate from the instruction, and can probe the knowledge acquired in an objective way. This allows us to look for mastery of learning- an assumption that everyone has acquired the same basic information and now has it available to use.
Behaviourism is not the only objectivist class theory. An objectivist view also underlies much of information-processing based cognitive psychology (Brunerm1990). Understanding is seen as being composed of a knowledge base in the form of an "expert" model (Duffy and Jonassen 1991, 116). Particular stimulus events trigger particular productions. Therefore, learning simply involves acquiring the production rules. A person's understanding can be fully specified by these external descriptions and his/her ability to apply the production rules.
Dick and Carey (1990, 5 - 6) summarise the "components" of the behaviour approach model as:
¥ identify an instructional goal
¥ conduct an instructional analysis
¥ identify entry behaviours and characteristics
¥ write performance objectives
¥ develop criterion-referenced test items
¥ develop an instructional strategy
¥ develop and/or select instruction
¥ design and construct the formative evaluation
¥ revise instruction
¥ conduct summative evaluation
Constructivism provides an alternative view to objectivism. Constructivism also believes there is a real world we can experience. But the argument is that meaning is imposed on the world by us, rather than existing in the world independently of us (Duffy and Jonassen 1991, 8). Because there are many ways to structure the world and many perspectives to view events from, there is not a correct meaning we have to strive for.
"Meaning is seen as rooted in, and indexed by, experience." (Brown, Collins, and Duguid, 1989a in Duffy and Jonassen 1991, 116). Each experience with an idea (and the environment it comes from) becomes part of the meaning of that idea. That experience must be examined to understand the learning taking place. For example the experience with concepts and relations in a classroom accessing the Internet to get pen friends, is different from the experience of adults accessing the Internet in a professional capacity.
So, the experience in which an idea is embedded, is critical to the individual's understanding of and ability to use that idea.
While an individual enters a multimedia situation with a plan, the critical aspect of performance is the ability to respond to the situational constraints- to be able to construct new plans based on the changing demands and parameters of the situation. In this view, then, plans (the principles, rules, procedures) are "part of the subject matter of purposeful action, not something to be improved upon or transformed into axiomatic theories of action" (Suchman 1987). Instruction should not focus on transmitting plans to the learner, but on getting the learner to develop the skills to construct ( and reconstruct) plans, in response to the CBI situational demands and opportunities. Instruction should provide contexts and assistance that will help the learner make sense of the computer generated environment as it is encountered. A plan is one part of that sense making, but plans must be constructed, tested and revised as a function of the particular encounters in the environment.
A critical component of constructivism in multimedia, is that no two people share the same path or reality. So, when 2 trainee pilots are trying to simultaneously "land" their planes using a computer simulation, each constructs a plan for functioning in this situation. The plan is basically an attempt to "impose" order, rather than to "find" order in the events occurring. The important point is that each pilot has their own construction and understanding of the situation.
Winograd and Flores (1986) argue that because behaviour is situationally determined, "one cannot construct machines that either exhibit or successfully model intelligent behaviour" (1986, 11). This presents a strong criticism of the computer models of the mind. Clancy argues that "every action is an interpretation of the current situation based on an entire history of our interactions" (1986,5). Representations are not stored in the head, but rather the representation is constructed "in situ" based on an unstructured previous history, so from a CBI point of view, it would be ridiculous to try and embed all relevant situations into a computer program.
Computer models of the mind rely on a formalisation of knowledge. Experiences must be represented in some propositional form. But this is just one representation of prior experience. The computer can't, but the individual can, conceptualise, reconstruct and repositionalise that experience in many different ways. Constructivism enables students to predict solutions. A teacher's goal is to support the constructive activities of the learner.
Cunningham (as argued by Hirsch, 1987) also agrees with this, and says the goal of constructive instruction is not to make sure that individuals know particular things, but rather to show them how to construct plausible interpretations of their own, using the multimedia tools that we have provided or developed in collaboration with them. Part of assuring that it is plausible includes assuming students will come up with alternative perspectives, goals, and emphases, and will develop alternative interpretations from other students. So, it cannot be assumed that there is one correct perspective or interpretation.(Duffy and Jonassen, 1991, 118),
Skills cannot be considered independently of the problems to which they are applied. Learning a particular sub skill means using it effectively in solving problems (not just being able to apply a formula). Assessment emerges quite naturally from task performance, if we have authentic tasks ( not just doing skill and drill questions at the end of a computer sequence), like being asked to identify the body systems of a horse, after having completed a multimedia dissection of a rat.
Constructivism imposes sharp demands on learners in 3 major ways;
- a learner has to "buy in" to the random access nature of multimedia CBI. In otherwords, they have to choose to become an "active learner". This is when a learner makes the choice to operate the technology the way it has been designed to be used, rather than just asking to be taught, so he/she can give the correct answers. We are asking the students to learn 2 things at once: a new theory of learning, and solving the required problems.
- there is increased cognitive complexity, in content and context, when CBI becomes non-linear. Spiro et al. (1990, 10) claim that as teachers with a constructivist approach we must help the individual to see complex interrelationships and dependencies, by criss-crossing the "landscape of contexts".
- task management ."Task managers" are elements in the multimedia instructional setting that help to sequence students through the learning experience. Task managers include teachers, instructions in the CBI and of course, the learners themselves. There is a technique that helps with task management and cognitive complexity: "scaffolding" or "coaching". It is the job of the constructivist teacher or interactive technology, to hold learners in their "zone of proximal development" (Perkins 1991, 20),by providing just enough help and guidance, but not too much.
A good constructivist multimedia program provides cognitive supports to reduce cognitive load, perhaps choosing the "conflict deferred" path, ensuring fine-tuned scaffolding to help with task management, and acknowledging explicitly as part of the instructional process the double learning agenda inherent in the "buying in" problem. "The larger lesson is that any teaching method, but especially constructivism, does well to include a vision of how its students experience it." (Perkins 1990, 21)
Spiro et al. (1990, 24) state that any effective constructivist approach in a multimedia arena must consider:
- the constructive nature of understanding
- the complex and ill-structured features of many knowledge domains
- patterns of learning failure
- a theory of learning that addresses known patterns of learning failure.
After having read reams of information on behaviourism and constructivism, it then became apparent that neither of these "theories" is set in concrete. There are little, and BIG corollaries to these theories, which can be added at any time. As different "angles" are seen to be more effective in the learning process, they are attached on to the mother theory.
For example: Crockford's Paradox which says Interaction should have more to do with taking part than with making decisions. It is not choosing to fire a gun into a crowd. It is joining the dance around the tribal fire. It is not playing your horn in the middle of the violin solo. It is....kinesthetic participation in a psychologically safe co-creative fantasy (multimedia games??? CBI ??) with powerful metanoic consequences. (Crockford cited in Ambron and Hooper 1988, 272)
("metanoic" wasn't in my Macquarie dictionary, but "meta" means "among", "together with". My guess is he means an even stronger word than "interaction")
Better known, and more academically accepted extensions of constructivism, as applied to computers in instruction, include Anchored Instruction, Cognitive Flexibility Theory, and Strategic Teaching Frameworks.
Cognitive Flexibility Theory says that as content increases in complexity and ill structuredness, great amounts of information can be lost with linear approaches and unidimensionality of organisation. Random access computer technologies make practicable non-linear and multi-dimensional learning and instruction that are better suited to conveying complex content. For example it is easy to revisit the same content material in a variety of different contexts, and each visit can bring in additional aspects of the content's complexity that would have been missed in a linear coverage. Random access instruction refers to a cluster of fundamental issues associated with non-linear learning and random access media(multimedia).
We need to apply cognitive flexibility theory to guide random access instruction. Mastery of multimedia complexities "is greatly facilitated by the kind of guided nonlinear and multidimensional explorations typified by the instructional program (based on Cognitive Flexibility Theory)." Spiro and Jengh (1991) have accumulated evidence that shows that in more advanced cognitive content settings, traditional linear methods are not successful.
The use of non-linear multimedia programs is intended to prepare learners to go beyond the ability to reproduce the instruction they received, and to independently apply the instructed knowledge to new situations that differ from those of the original learning.The goal is transfer, to be able to predict and create, from what they have experienced, and to assimilate this learning within other learning domains.
Anchored instruction concentrates on creating an anchor or focus that generates interest and enables students to "identify and define problems and to pay attention to their own perception and comprehension of these problems." (Bransford 1990, 123). The main aim of anchored instruction is for students to be able to transfer knowledge from old situations, to new problem-solving situations, so that old knowledge does not become inert. (Brown 1993, 55). Case-based situations (such as the Jasper Woodbury Series) are examples of anchored instruction, where an event or problem provides an "anchor" for learners' ideas and understandings. Jonassen (1991, 36) states that the best way for a learner to achieve real-world competencies, is to be "immersed"in the situation, and have to manipulate it.
Strategic Teaching Frameworks are conceptual frameworks for designing and evaluating learning environments. The philosophy is that excellence is achieved by teachers who "are strategic in their actions" (Jones et al. 1993, 125). This concept looks at curriculum, instruction and assessment as a unified system, and explicitly defines (strategic) learning approaches. Working out how and why a teacher uses a particular instructional strategy requires that the learner see the strategy within the "context of the whole classroom" (Jones et al., 1993, 130). It also requires that teachers know their strategies, and why they are using them.
In conclusion I would have to say that I agree with CTVG (1991, 16), who say the individual is free to build their own world of educational theory, so long as the interpretation goes along with the general educational "spirit" of the time, and that
"individuals have opportunities to test their constructed ideas on others, persuade others of the virtue of their thinking, and be persuaded" (1991, 16)
We do need educational theories to mould our CBI, and the great thing is it's metamorphosing all the time to fit the human element, not the computer side of things. It is quite possible to be a constructivist with behaviouristic tendencies, or the opposite. As Kristina Hooper (Ambron and Hooper 1988, 320) says, "we need to give up the simplicity of the equations that proclaim interactivity as good and linear presentations as bad."
"Multimedia presentations will allow cognitive researchers to study multisensory and interactive learning in ways that have been prevented in the past...and we can look forward to some valuable interactions between the field of cognition and multimedia approaches, each enhancing the other (Ambron and Hooper, 1988, 326)."
and the future...
To succeed individuals will need to be tremendously flexible. What tomorrow's students need is "not just mastery of subject matter, but mastery of learning" (Ambron and Hooper 1988, Forward). We will serve our students best if we give them the ability to continuously renew their understanding of a changing world.
"The printing press never wrote a single book ...multimedia learning environments are the tools of tomorrow, and like the printing press will empower individuals, unlock worlds of knowledge and forge a new community of ideas" (Ambron and Hooper 1988, v - ix).
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