Week 4

Stuff We Learned

We learned about Learning (adjective) Design (noun) and Design (verb) Learning (noun). The former, based on my own interpretations, is a systematic approach to guide a learner to, well, learn. The latter is about coming up with the systematic approach. I believe the aforementioned "systematic approach" is the core of what we learned for the week.

So, what is this "systematic approach" - such that it can serve as a guide to educators to customize effective learning methods to suit their respective goals, by developing sequences of activities (tasks) that are incorporated with appropriate tools that facilitate learning (resources and support)? Based on what I understood, the "systematic approach" towards designing learning also involves what we learned in Week 2, namely the representation of learning theories (i.e. Behaviourism, Cognitivism and Socioculturalism). I will explain why designing learning involves representation of learning theories in a moment.

To design learning, the educator first looks at what his goal(s) is/are. For example, he wants to teach his student to make a cheesecake online (idea directly "stolen" from my group's lecture activity for the week). He then thinks up the tasks (also known as "mini activities" in the readings) that his student has to complete in order to achieve the goal. For example, his student has to buy ingredients, followed by preparing the ingredients, followed by baking the cake... yada yada. The student is of course not yet capable enough to complete all the tasks by himself at this stage. Thus the educator has to develop/ customise resources and support to help the student as much as possible, so that he learns. The key question lies here: How to develop/ customise the relevant resources and support to help the student complete the tasks? This is where the representation of learning theories from Week 2 comes into the picture.

Using the Octahedron (a form of representation of learning theories), the educator can map the characteristics of each of his tasks to the three axis of interpretation. Namely, individual/ social, reflection/ non-reflection and information/ experience. The first task of baking a cheesecake (to buy ingredients) can be mapped to individual, non-reflection and information on the Octahedron. With this knowledge in mind, the educator is in a better position to develop suitable resources and support for the particular task because he has understood the characteristics/ nature of the task better. For example, he can just create a website that lists down the ingredients needed for a cheesecake (including the exact amount for each) in order to help the student complete the first task, since "buying ingredients" is a fairly simple task that only requires an individual (characteristic of individual) to follow (characteristic of non-reflection) simple instructions (characteristic of information).

In summary, an educator can design learning by using the Octahedron as a pedagogical approach, so that he can be better informed about what resources and support to use for the various tasks (in helping the students to achieve the learning goals/ objectives). I do hope I'm on the right track!

More Reflections

There are different ways to mapping tasks of learning to the Octahedron. The three axis of interpretation is not the only way, although I personally favored that. Another way of mapping is to consider the six characteristics individually, instead of doing it in pairs. Hence, a task can actually consist of as many as five characteristics out of the six. This is not to say that the three axis of interpretation will definitely lead to three characteristics. Each axis of interpretation represents a continuum of two extreme characteristics, thus a task can consist of both characteristics if it falls in the middle of the continuum.

The purpose of mapping tasks of learning to the Octahedron has many uses, apart from the one I mentioned (to inform the educator of a pedagogical approach so he can apply suitable tools of learning). It can be used as a means of evaluation of Learning Design as well. If, upon evaluation, a task of learning maps very closely to the characteristic of individual (strong characteristic of individual), the educator may choose to improve his Learning Design by including more resources and support that involve social interaction. The student can perhaps complete the task more effectively with the aid and input of others, hence learning better.

Week 4 tells us that Learning Design depends heavily on representation of learning theories (i.e. Octahedron). However, I agree with the reading by Conole et al. that representation of learning theories is not all that reliable. Factors such as individual perspectives and cultural differences do affect the usability of representation of learning theories across all learning tasks. Two educators might come up with two totally different Learning Designs for the same task for the same student. Clearly only one of them has the better Learning Design. To view the same factors from another angle, we can also say that it is exactly the flexibility in the interpretation of learning tasks from various individual and cultural perspectives that grants the representation of learning theories its potential power for Learning Design. This is because its flexibility allows it to be applied to various contexts, hence it can actually be applied across many learning tasks. In conclusion, much research work is still needed to determine whether representation of learning theories is a strength or limitation. Making sense?