First Semester Classes

My first two classes of my Masters Degree are

• EDPS 6430 Foundations of Instructional Design & Educational Technology
• EDPS 6451 Foundations of Learning.

For these classes, I'm keeping a blog of the happenings in them. It's also going to count as part of my Instructional Design grade. So, enjoy, try to make some sense of what I'm writing, or go check out my personal blog - it may be a little bit more interesting.....

Comrades evaluations

Blog critiques :

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Peter - 3, excellent. He gave me an in depth analysis of this blog, suggested several changes and complimented me on several aspects of the blog. Below you can read his critique and my responses.

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Leilani - 3, excellent. She was not as in depth as Peter, but made at least one excellent observation - the blog did not have much of "me" in it - it was all notes from class without any personal reactions or responses. I am hoping that "me" became more obvious as the blog progressed.

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Comrades :

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Joanna - 3, excellent. Joanna was the glue that kept us together, on track and on time. She would remind us (especially me) of what is due and when, and whenever my ADHD would hit hyper speed during a study session, she would drag me back on task. She would also make sure that all the parts of the assignment were there, and helped, equally with the rest of us, on the content.

Leilani - 3, excellent. Lani was halfway between me and Joanna on the organizational scale. She helped with content, she helped with keeping us on task and she did a lot of rewriting and perfecting the way our papers were written, making them sound a lot more professional than I did typing them in the first place.

Me, Steve - 3, excellent. (Yes, I think everyone was excellent). I did a lot of the typing and formatting of the papers, which didn't always work out the best (the bold debacle of the first paper in mind). I did the physical part of the first project, changing the tire, and a lot of the physical part of the tiling. I helped with content and with keeping the atmosphere from getting too serious. (Comic relief).

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Overall the three of us worked well together, I do not think that any one of us was burdened with an extra amount of the work. We did develop our own chores, responsibilities for the project that we took over or ended up without any official directive, it just happened. It's a group dynamic that I am looking forward to over the next couple of years.

Final Thoughts on Instructional Design

When I first started this class I pondered on why I needed to take this class, since I've been doing lesson plans for 15 years now, granted most of the time I do it in my head. Then we started breaking down a task, to the point of absurdness. Again, I wondered how this could be helpful, why we were forced to do this fruitless task.

As the semester continued forward, (as with my calculus classes years ago), things, purposes and the process started to make sense. When you set the idle on the carburetor on a car, you tighten the bolt down almost to the point of stalling the car, then you back off until you hit the right spot. Same with the breakdown in Instructional Design. You have to get to the point of absurdness so that you are positive you went too far, and then back off to a reasonable point. This has been useful to me in my position as School Technology Specialist. As I mentioned in our last presentation, I have had to send out e-mails explaining certain processes to the faculty. Processes that I know so well, without the practice of breaking it down (even if it is not on paper but just in my head) I would not see the steps to be able to decide if a novice needed to be told them or not. By the end of the semester I felt comfortable with the process and I felt a purpose for it.

And despite his evasiveness at times, I even enjoyed the professor.

Blog critique and response.

Pete and I critiqued each others blogs, here are his comments about mine and, afterwards, my reactions to those comments :

• Hi Steve,
  
  I've spent some time going through your idet classes blog and have made a few notes I will pass along to you here.
  
  I liked that your blog content accurately reflected the blog title, and I also liked the explanation of the content in the Kibitzing paragraph. It let the reader know what to expect and gave some direction on how to approach it.
  
  I liked the links to other places and thought the choice was good, i.e. your fellows and your own Web site. They each provided additional context for appreciating you and your blog.
  
  Your blog consisted of a fair amount of what seemed like notes taken on a laptop during your classes, which seemed fine, but there were formatting and punctuation inconsistencies across your various dated entries of the note-taking type. There were sentences with no capital at the front and no period at the ending, and there were caps and periods, and there were caps and no periods and no caps with periods. I would have appreciated a standardized choice throughout which would make it a bit easier to read and also look more professional.
  
  I did like your use of pictures and graphs and cartoons to illustrate and support your text entries. It kept it interesting and was much more easy on the eye than lots of text-only pages. It was also more motivating as a reader to continue reading.
  
  I liked your organization by class title and date for your entries. This was consistent throughout and was easy to follow as a reader. It also helped to understand your content by knowing which class and topic the comments were on.
  
  The colored text was interesting but seemed more like a thing to try out as a new blog host than as something used in a purposeful or consistent way across the blog. Your own Web site led me to believe you are an experienced blogger and blog creater so it seemed out of place a bit.
  
  Your use of bullets to summarize your points was a good choice for covering a lot of material in a small amount of space. I would again look at your formatting for consistency (see September 6 entry). There is double spacing and single spacing in sub-texts. Also, there are double, triple, and wider spacings between the various entries. there are also bullets with no heading in one of your entries in September. Standardizing such things can help the reader follow your organized entries from lessons as opposed to the flow-of-consciousness writing from thoughts during your classes.
  
  My only other thought is that you might want to add a note on the blog homepage listing the various classes you are taking so the reader has a heads-up as to what's ahead in your blog and will recognize it when we get there.
  
  Well done over all.
  Pete

It seems that his biggest criticism of the blog was in my inconsistencies. He liked that the purpose of the blog was clear, the use of pictures and graphics, and even the formatting - had the formatting been more consistent. Although I agree with him that a standardized format would look more professional and look better, my main goal at the time was to get the information down in a format that was clear to me. In the future I will try to be more consistent, it would look better that way, but I will still concentrate my effort on making the information understandable to me.

The other suggestion he made was a really good one, one that I have already implemented and plan to continue. He commented that it would be nice to have a list of the classes I am currently enrolled in at the top of the blog, so that the reader would immediately know the subjects that would be discussed in the subsequent posts. Excellent suggestion, and as you can see (if you scroll back to the top) I have done just that.

So, for the future I will :

• Try to be more consistent in my formatting - bullets, bolding (um, where do I remember that comment from before?) and coloring of text.
• Continue to keep a list of the classes I am currently enrolled in at the top of the blog.
• Continue to weave pictures and graphics into the text.

Viola. Thar' she be.

Learning Theory 11/29/07

Took quiz #9 - got 80% on it.
We're going to review both chapters 10 and 11 because nobody bothered to read chapter 10.
How did the field of instructional design start - during WWII - big push to have training for the soldiers. (In the US Military in WWII) German Generals said that part of the reason they lost the war was that they had underestimated how many soldiers the US could train fast enough to get them into battle. (Focus of Instructional Design : one or more of these 3 factors : Faster, Cheaper or matter of More People) Used for the first time (instructional design elements) : films. - used for the first time in instructional settings in the US Military during WWII. Also, to a much larger extent than before, were simulators. Flight (plane) simulators, tank, ship, combat scenario simulations.

Father of ID - Robert Gagne - still today his theories are expected to be followed when you are hired to do ID

Pg 355

Taxonomy of Learning Outcomes (taxonomy - way to list something)

Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Outcomes (pg 357)

• Knowledge


• Comprehension


• Application


• Analysis
  
• Synthesis


• Evaluation

Taxonomy of Affective Outcomes (how people feel about something)

• Receiving


• Responding Valuing


• Organization


• Characterization by Value

Simpson's Taxonomy of Psycho motor Outcomes

• Perception


• Set


• Guided response


• Mechanism


• Complex Response


• Adaption


• Origination

Gagne's Taxonomy of Learning Outcomes

• Verbal Information


• Intellectual Skills


• Discrimination


• Concrete concepts


• Defined concepts


• Rules


• Higher order rules


• Cognitive Strategies


• Attitudes


• Motor skills

Very, very practical - chart on page 367
List of specific actions, conditions and teaching methods that Gagne claims are best for each type of learning outcome. This is the second part of Gagne's three part series on instructional design.

Final part : pg 373
Nine events of instruction associated with the internal learning process they support

1. Reception - gaining attention


2. Expectancy - informing learners of the objective


3. Retrieval to working memory - stimulating recall of prior learning


4. Selective perception - presenting the content


5. Semantic encoding - providing "learner guidance"


6. Responding - eliciting performance


7. Reinforcement - providing feedback


8. Retrieval and reinforcement - assessing performance


9. Retrieval and generalization - enhancing retention and transfer

Neuroscience of Learning Theories

Rather than talking about the mind and how it works, we're looking at the brain, it's physical existence, and how it works.

Basic nerve cell - neurons and dendrites (1 neuron has 30 - 40 thousand dendrite spikes)
dendrites receive information
axon - only one of them, but one axon can branch out to thousands of places - sends information

Humans : only 5% of neurons actually go out the spine - work on your sensory and motor systems. 95% of brain function deals with reflecting inside itself.
(lower mammals, rats for example, 50% of brain activity is involved in motor and sensory activity).

Bigger brains for controlling bigger bodies, follows somewhat linear progression, except human brain development is above the line

Instructional Design - the day before Thanksgiving

Started class with a 5 Star Instructional Design Rating Jeopardy game to go over the concepts of the article 5 Star Instructional Design Rating. We kicked butt - 4,800 points to 3,600.

Does your instruction rate 5 stars? Here is the link to the page Mr. Monson said there was a good video to watch on : http://id2.usu.edu/5star

Restructuring Education through Technology

Development of Instructional Technology - started with wordless transfer of knowledge (mime), which evolved into oral storytelling when language was developed. After that comes the written transfer and finally electronic transfer of information.

The teacher - student relationship. changes since 1991
- feedback

- "power"

4 essential components of education - 4 core elements and the interaction between them is what education is.

- teacher

- student

- content

- context

Teacher-Content relationship.

- controlled to freedom of content.

Student - Context relationship

what does a technology rich environment look like for the student?

Teacher - Context relationship.

what does a technology rich environment look like for the teacher

Educational system - environmental relationship

limited : communication, period, activity(limited to certain places) and links to the outside world.

Highly centralized.

We just got told the story about the Greek god Thueth and King Thamus. Shouldn't it be Thueth and Thamuth? Thath the way I thee it. The story isn't that great, I just thought the names sounded funny, so I had to post them here. But for the record, the god Thueth created writing and was so excited about it that he took it to King Thamus. King Thamus, on the other hand was not so excited, he felt that transmitting knowledge through writing would detract from the actual learning, that the focus would be on the writing and would result in unauthentic learning. The comparison is with technology today. To some degree I agree with this, technology for the sake of technology is not necessarily good - it must fit authentically with the subject matter and teacher's teaching style.

The 2 things he wants us to take away with us tonight.

1. Information is not instruction.

2. Technology is really not machines.

Next week - debate Clark & Kosma.

Clark says - media has no bearing on learning. Media is to learning as milk truck is to nutrition.

Kozma - argues with Clark's statement.

Only need to read the Clark articles.

We're going to do it online, so there won't be class held here next week.

FOR THE FINAL :

book page xvii

Need to come ready to present on our project -

- what project was

- what learned along the way

- how solved the problem

Stuff we need to turn in to him

- first two documents

- third document - includes copy of first two documents

- Copy of instructional materials.

- stuff listed on page xvii - report #3

- have someone look over the instructional materials - get some feedback. Best would be to have someone try to do the tiling from the materials, but that being unfeasible, just having them look it over and make comments about what is and isn't clear.

Prototyping.

Provide client with a vision of what the instruction will be

Choose a Delivery System - best thing to do, most economical or what's available?

Consider

- setting

- media characteristics

- instructional materials

- time

- instructors

Learning Theory - 11/15/07

Professor was late - he called Ross to tell him to keep us here, Joanna made a comment about Pablo & Ross being BF F's (Best Friends Forever - a lot of the non-teacher people didn't get it. ) Ross was not amused.

Pablo's here, we're ready to go -

Learning theories a lot like the three blind men and the elephant

(one grabs the trunk and thinks it's a snake like animal, another grabs the leg and thinks it's a tree type thing and the last the head and thinks it's a hairy boulder.)

Chapter is divided into 3 parts :

• Motivation
• Self regulation
• How to apply these two

We're thinking about something that we are motivated to do and what, who or why are we motivated to do it.

I thought about a couple of things - cars and computers. I've been motivated by cars since before I can remember so I have no idea who, how or why. As for computers, I like learning about programs because of the things that can be produced - the product is the motivator.

Self Efficacy : Belief about ones own abilities - be it good or bad. "I can't do that, I'm too stupid." or "I'm good at that, it's going to be easy."

ARCS - attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction.

- how about social motivation - when it's cool to fail, or to exceed. either way, the peer pressure or cultural expectations effect motivation.

Now we're thinking about teachers that motivated us.

My teacher is a comparison thing. I took the required history class up here at the U twice, once from a guy who read out of the book, had us do readings and the tests were all what happened on what day, etc. I flunked it famously. The next time I took it was from a professor who taught it like a story - he would just stand in front of the class and tell the story of history. His tests were all essay - why did things happen, which events caused what other events to happen. Chronological order was necessary, but knowing that X happened on a specific day was irrelevant.

Objective #1 : Given a learning outcome, target audience and learning theory describe an instructional module using principles of the learning theory to appropriately address the learning outcome.

The Final? How can we do an assessment of Objective #1

Last day - the 13th of December.

On Dec 6th we each get instructional objective, target audience and 2 learning theories to develop one lesson to address the objective using the 2 theories.

On the 13th we have to present it in front of Pablo and 2 peers.

Instructional Design 11/14/07

First presentation : Distance Learning.

instruction and learning taking place via telecommunications

• physical seperation


• 2 way communication

informative presentation
practice with feedback
access to learning resources

Unique aspects

role of student, teacher and facilitatior
more monitoring of student progress
adaptation of instructional materials
copyright lenience (teacher act of 2002)

Endora the explorer.

Loved the Tie the Tie thing.

Sans Serif & Serif

letters with feet create a horizontal line, making it easier to read - letters without feet draw eyes vertically.

headers should be sans serif - keep it short

leading - spacing out the lines

This lettering thing is something I'm going to have to keep in mind for all the technology flyers I end up sending out.

Four main elements

nature of innovation

• The Innovation : Relative Advantage - "what is in it for me? benefits v. costs, incremental v. preventative, incentives, mandates, status.


• Compatibility - is it consistent with existing values, beliefs and experiences


• Complexity - is it difficult to use


• Triability - can it be experimented on in a limited basis?


• Observability - are the results observable to others "How do others see me?"

Innovators : 2.5% - venturesome

• gate keepers in adoption of new ideas/things


• daring


• risky


• substantial financial resources


• willing to accept a setback


• often connected with other innovators

early adoptors (13.5%) : Respect

• individual "to check with" before using a new idea


• role models


• respected


• makes judicious decisions


• conveys subjective evolutions to peers

early majority (34%) : deliberate

• deliberates for some time


• be not the first, nor the last.

late majority (34%) : skeptical

• adopt by economic necessity


• skeptical and cautious


• motivated by pressure from peers


• often have scarce resources

laggards (16%) : traditional

• no opinion leadership


• suspicious of innovations and change-agents


• resistance is rational to them


• must be certain the idea will not fail

Instructional Design 11/07/07

Formative Evaluation - why?
Usability Testing

basically testing, checking on the progress of the learner so that you don't get to the end and have learners that did not learn what they were supposed to.

• efficiency, effectiveness

test for all kinds of stuff - learnability, ease of use, errors, productivity, retention

tools - demographic information, observational checklist, specific tasks for the users, think aloud/verbal reports, video analysis, debrief/oral interview.

find someone who is your typical learner - meets all your prerequisites. don't want to use someone that is not going to fit the type of person that is your audience.

Taking the test - what I noticed about Joanna taking the survey :

Well, starting with her computer crashing as soon as she tried to open the web page - not a very good omen...........

computer spazzing out - Joanna is showing a little bit of aggrivation.... but now she has it up and running, and is reading the directions.... she seemed to comprehend the directions easily - the 0 - 7 scale - it would have been better if there wasn't all the talking going on in the room - it is distracting to her that the people around her are reading the same things that she is.

wording of some of the questions seems to be confusing - double negatives that make it hard to understand exactly what they are asking. meanwhile some of the questions are worded in a way that they are quickly understood.

result from that survey

- low level of completion

- question of accuracy of responses

• modified visual design
• drop down choice other than bunch of dots
• survey broken into sections
• demographic data first
• question numbering
• definition for unfamiliar words
• informed that surveyer was a student
• offered reward for completion

LEARNING THEORY 11/01/07

And we just finished the test on Piaget - I scored 13/15 (86.7%)

Jerome Bruner and his impact on learning theory - took Piaget and looked at his theories from a different prespective - are the stages variant?

The aim of education is to make the learner as autonomous and self-propelled a thinker as possible (Bruner, 1961)

Humans use 3 systems to represent their environments

1. patterned motor acts (ie: ENACTIVE REPRESENTATION) - learning to ride a bike or swim - once you learn it you don't unlearn it. or how I do the graphs with the students out on the lawn - where they are the points on the line and they have to figure out their y coordinate and move to the correct place to form the line.
2. imagery and perception (ie: ICONIC REPRESENTATION) - representing events using images, maps, diagrams. Octagon = stop, triangle = yield, clock represents time - numbers represent time - hours, minutes and seconds.
3. language and reason (ie: SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION) - represent mental and physical things using symbols - speech, writing, mathematics.

Piaget : is the learner ready for the learning task? Does the learner's method of understanding the world compatible with the learning task?

Bruner : is learning task represented in a way that is compatible with the learner's mode of representing the world.

Discovery Learner : an expectation of finding regularities and relationships in the environment - he did not beleive this was the usual in classrooms.

http://www.utahsright.com/salaries.php?city=murray_schools

Instructional Design 10/31/07

Visuals
reduce the effort to interpret

1. darken room
2. use variety
3. rehearse
4. avoid irrelevant visuals
   

The Z reading pattern :

Golden Mean

Why pictures are helpful

• clarify and simplify


• easier to remember


• provokes emotional responses


• enhance ability to interpret and create visuals


• provides concrete refrences


• and a couple others I didn't get

Decoding - reading the visual

Encoding - writing the visual

Culture can make a difference, same with visual preferences

6231 Blocton Avenue
Lipscomb, Alabama

address for our fictitious company for feedback from

Learning Theories 10/25/07

We're going on a field trip to the library in order to research "Genetic epistemology" in respec to Jean Piaget's theories. Then we're going to write an article on in in Wikipedia.

good links and info re: Piaget

http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber/piaget.html

• knowledge has a biological function, and arises out of action
• knowledge is basically "operative"--it is about change and transformation
• knowledge consists of cognitive structures
• development proceeds by the assimilation of the environment to these structures, and the accommodation of these structures to the environment
• movement to higher levels of development depends on "reflecting abstraction," which means coming to know properties of one's own actions, or coming to know the ways in which they are coordinated

[06] Piaget didn't normally describe himself as a psychologist. He called his research program genetic epistemology. Nowadays, the term "genetic" has been restricted to the mechanisms of heredity in the English-speaking world; cashing Piaget's phrase out in contemporary terms would give us developmental theory of knowledge. Genetic epistemology (which, for Piaget, included the history of scientific ideas, as well as the study of development in individuals) is consistent with Objectivism in its biocentric concerns. But its focus is very different; enough so to make comparisons more difficult than they ought to be.

LTD Parts.

Instructional Design 10/24/07

Joe Richards substituting for Johnny Boy.

Presentation on Web 2.0 - all web resources used for calloboration. Not a specific program, but any programs that fall under this category. "Web 2.0" because the second version of programs is usually referred to as "Blah-blah 2.0"

• 
  
  Level 3 - applications that are the most "Web 2.0"-oriented, which could only exist on the Internet, deriving their power from the human connections and network effects that Web 2.0 makes possible, and growing in effectiveness the more people use them
  Examples: eBay, craigslist, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Skype, dodgeball and Adsense
  


• 
  
  Level 2 - applications that can operate offline but which gain advantages from going online
  Examples: Flickr (which benefits from its shared photo-database and from its community-generated tag database)
  


• 
  
  Level 1 - applications that are also available offline but which gain features online
  Examples: Writely (now part of Google Docs & Spreadsheets) and iTunes (because of its music-store portion)
  


• 
  
  Level 0 - applications which would work as well offline as they do online
  Examples: MapQuest, Yahoo! Local and Google Maps (Note: Mapping-applications using contributions from users to advantage can rank as "level 2")

1. Social Bookmarking - bookmarks online - have them wherever you go & share them with people.


2. Social Networking - Myspace and places like that


3. Peer to Peer - Photobucket, Flikr, Youtube


4. Chatting / IM


5. Blogs / Podcast


6. Other - eBay, second life, Google Earth

Don't forget Zamzar - to get videos off youtube.

Backward Design :

• Identify desired results.


• Determine acceptable evidience.


• Plan learning experiences and instruction.

Instructional Strategy Decisions

1. Metacognition - thinking about our own thinking.


2. Job Analysis / Task Analysis - analyzing what is required to perform a task. Job analysis is the same - except that a job involves several tasks.


3. Cognitve Task Analysis - describes the thought processes that underly the performance of a task or tasks at various levels.


4. Critical Decision Method - analyze critical decisions that caused either success or failure to be examined by other people.


5. Situation Awareness - understanding of things in a specific situation - not always transferrable or understandable in other situations.


6. Situated Cognition - understanding in real world situations - with real world complications.


7. Cognitive Engineering - design and development of human centered systems - http://mentalmodels.mitre.org/cog_eng/ce_methods_overview.htm


8. Pedagogy - strategies of instruction - the science of being a teacher.


9. Content Knowledge - knowledge in the content you are teaching or learning


10. Pedagogical Content Knowledge - knowing how teach the subject knowledge


11. Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge - knowing how to teach the subject knowledge using technology.

10/18/07

Encore :

Cognitive Apprenticeships :

Anchored Instruction : instruction through simulations. oftentimes computer generated - Oregon Trail. build instruction around some simulated situation

Learning Communities : learning through collective activities. learning community is focused on social interactions and conversations. taking different experiences and knowledge that the participants have and integrating them together for learning.

Assessment In-Situ

Diagnosis - assessment for deciding future instruction
Summary Statistics - follow students learning trends
Portfolios - works put together. projects that show their progress through the learning process.

Foundations of Learning 10/18/07

Another happy day in academia.....

Situated Cognition Theory

learning is : transfer of knowledge from an expert in the field of study.

how do you know it has been learned : learner can perform or have discourse on the subject.

the environment and social context have an effect on the way you do things.

Community of Practices that I have or do belong to :

Teaching

Junior High School Teaching

High School Teaching
Pizza restaurant

Documents Analysis

Family

Extended family

Math community

Green Team community

Religious

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=srossinet%40gmail.com

that's my web calendar page.

consider not only the learning the individual accomplishes - but also what the community itself learns - defines as it's norms and practices.

introduction of the newcomers - takes a while for them to become aware of all the resources the community offers - for example as a new student to the U, I am still learning about things that the school offers.

how do those communities change and why? change at the group level.

take the newcomer - when they are first introduced into the community the interactions are usually very formal, somewhat detached. As they become more familiar with the community, the interactions become more intimate.

The fifth discipline - how to become a learning organization.

Apprenticeship - the ultimate expression of this theory.

pg 168 - 5 types of learning trajectories :

• Peripheral - no explicit mechanisms to keep learner in the community.


• Inbound - beginning to enter the community - headed towards full participation.


• Insider - learner that is a full participant in the community


• Boundary - participation in two communities and essentially broker interactions between them.


• Outbound - when you're leaving the community

Semiosis - symbols and their meanings. - why symbols acquire meanings and how these meanings evolve.

Learning is essentially the understanding of symbols - learning symbols and making use of them.

Instructional Design 10/17/07

Assignments : he likes them both paper and electronically.

Multimedia - group presentation.

Why do kindergartners learn the computer faster than adults?

• kids play on computers
• adults worry about failing, losing the document they worked on for the last 3 hours

3 steps kids use when learning the computer

• click on stuff,
• see what happens
• remember it.

http://www.itools.com/

First use of computers in schools -

• went to the english departments - word processors
• went to business department - can do accounting

Swedish Horses

http://svt.se/hogafflahage/hogafflaHage_site/Kor/hestekor.swf

Zamzar is a website that allows you to get video off of youtube. It is really easy to do.

http://www.zamzar.com/

this one is for the adults to give you a good laugh!

http://www.jibjab.com/

Next stage of the assignment is due November 2, 2007

Developing Assessment Instruments

3 essential questions of Instructional Design

1. Where are we going?
2. How are we going to get there?
3. How are we going to know we got there?

Instructional Designers would argue that "teaching to the test" is what we should be doing.

Focus concretely on desires outcomes, right after setting goals, set up how you are going to know you acheived those goals.

1. Entry Behavior Tests - make sure they know the stuff you are not going to test, what they must know to continue with the instruction.
2. Pre-Test - access current knowledge - if everyone passes pre-test your job is done - don't need to do the instruction.
3. Practice Tests - check progress, see if ready to continue to next level.
4. Post-Test - see if goal was acheived. What is mastery? Depends on the ask, what is expected, what is being taught and what deisgners thing mastery ought to be - defined case by case.

Assessment - with every test there are some incongruency. ie : True or False = 50/50 chance, and if you know even a little bit about the subject being tested, that T/F test gives you a great advantage.

If someone were really going to know this, how will we know?

Utah driver test vs. European drivers test.

Utah - if you can read a book and match it to the questions you can pass.

Europe - courses cost a lot of money and most people fail the first time.

1. a 1 minute paper
2. what's the muddiest point?
3. misconception - preconception check
4. pro / con grid
5. 1 sentence summary
6. concept map
7. what's the principle?
8. directed paraphrasing
9. student generated test questions
10. chain notes
11. RSQC2 - recall, summarize, question, comment, connect

Parsimony, parsimonious - extreme unwillingness to spend. For example you should be parsimonious on instructions - stingy on the instructions.

Authentic Assessment

Instructional Design : 10/03/07

Presentation on Online Learning went well.

Online learning - competency basis, you don't continue if you do not pass with a specific level of competency, at same token you don't have to wait until the end of the term to get the credit for the class - if you can show competency.

Goal Statement
Break down
Look for sub skills - he will look for signs that we really looked into breaking down the process.
Learners - entry behaviors
Context analysis - where are they going to learn this and where are they going to perform it.

I am the balance of the universe - right from the mouth of the professor.

OBJECTIVE :
(bread and butter of instructional design
The objective is for us to understand about objectives.

Key terms: (concepts)

Goals vs. objectives - goals are the "terminal objective" - describes what a learner will be able to do at the end of the instruction. Objective describes the kinds of knowledge, skills or attitudes that the students will be learning. Goal has to be measurable, objectives need not be measurable. I thought of objectives being the stepping stones to the goal - the thing we measure at the end.

Mastery - being able to know or perform the goal, and objectives, to a level that is acceptable to the instructional designer. Mastery is understanding the subject or thing to a high level - always set by the instructional designer. They decide what is reasonable and acceptable. Not a universal concept. What is mastery in one subject is not the same in another - ie: Pharmacy v. Pizza making. Is it as important to make sure you don't put sausage on a pepperoni pizza as it is to make sure you don't mix up Penicillin with Viagra?

Observable or ??? (if not observable what is it?) - have to have some way to measure if the goal is being met, or why bother doing it? How will you know when you're done, if you have achieved your goal. turn something that is not observable into behaviors that are observable. What behaviors would show the concept of patriotism?

Learning Objectives
BCS, PCC or ABCD

Behavior
Conditions
Standard

Performance
Conditions
Criteria

Audience
Behavior
Conditions
Degree

Collection of words and/or pictures or diagrams intended to let others know what you intend for your learners to achieve.
- related to intended outcomes - NOT processes.
- is specific and measurable.

Objectives - foundation will be laid before the walls go up, Sheetrock will be smooth before painting.

Goal - house will have 2 fireplaces, 3 bathrooms and a 2 car garage.

Use verbs that are measurable - write, identify, compute instead of things that cannot be measured - understand, know, believe.

Performance
- be able to read a book
- be able to type a paper
Conditions
- given a product and prospective coustomer be able to describe the key features of the product
**Add enough description to make it clear to everyone what is expected of the learner at the end of the instruction.
Criterion -
** speed - given tools, references and a malfunctioning celtrufugal pump, be able to clear the malfunction withing fifteen minutes. - make sure the criterion is necessary to the goal - why should they be done in fifteen minutes?
** accuracy
** quality - all information is factual, information is pertinent to the questions

Describe outcomes
Use specific language
Describe what students will do
Three characteristics
-performance
-conditions
-criteria

Cannot have criterion without observable behavior.

Learning 9/27/07

Show many different types of projectors so that they can become adaptable to new and unexpected changes to the projectors. Same for other subjects - related to my math teaching - have to show them many different iterations of an equation, of solving a problem, so that they can adapt when they see one they did not see before.

What is the differences and similarities between Schema Theory and Meaningful Learning?

Similarities :

1. Activate prior knowledge
   
2. Make instructional materials meaningful with organizers and elaboration


3. Use thought-demanding activities to promote mental models


4. Provide new contextx and apply to prior knowledge.

Meaningful Learning - semantics are very important - how is that knowledge being encoded - put a lot of importance on learners prior knowledge.

Schema Thoery - refers to prior knowledge less concretely - as schema. Link new knowledge to a schema as opposed to linking it to prior knowledge.

Main contribution of Ausubel and Meaningful Learning - #1 contribution to the field of leanring theory was advanced organizers.

Elaboration Theory : progressively more detail is to be elaborated in each level of instruction until the desired level of detail is reached. Common in Math instruction.

10 minute break


dun dun dun da dun duh dun dun, dun dah dun dah dun dit da dun ...................


We're back, but we're correcting a test, so I'll turn the Musak back on...

da da da duh da dun dun dun, da da da dada dun da dun dun .........

THE MIDTERM -

give some web sites which are examples of learning scenerios. the test will ask you to analyze the scenerio from the behavioral point of view, or analyze this scenerio from the cognitive processing theory

1. Behaviorism
2. Cognitive Information Processing
3. Meaningful Learning
4. Schema

Those are the 4 learning theories we have studied so far.

Then he showed us an example of one of the sites.

We get to pick one of the two scenerios and then analyze it with two theories of our choice. I love choices.

[ Svim Vere, Eeevening Vere ]

Next week we're up in 202.

Instructional Design - what the heck is it?

DESIGN :
In my mind, design implies a group of items that are coordinated together to form a single objective. One designs a house by coordinating all the peices that form that house, same with interior design. A lack of design implies haphazard application of various items - which may or may not acheive a desired goal.
INSTRUCTION:
Instruction is the planned presentation of information for the purpose of learning. Learning is the acquisition of knowledge of procedures, facts and/or concepts.
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN
Therefore instructional design is the planned coordination of analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation, and all their sub-parts, for the purpose of presenting information to be learned.
.
In other words, Instructional Design is a well thought out plan for teaching something to a given audience.

ANALYSIS.
The first step, analysis is the studying portion of the design. Deciding on what is the goal that is desired, and breaking down that goal into minute steps, deciding which ones one can assume the target audience already can perform and which ones need to be taught.

More to come as we progress in the class.....

September 19th, 2007

Video as an Instructional Media

So far all we've gotten is a lesson on how easily technology can mess up, and how annoying it can be while the class goes crazy as you try to get things going.

Formats:

• analog videocassette
• digital video - DVD & computer based
• Internet live and recorded

computer based - can be manipulated and even created by the class or the teacher

Copyright Act of 1976

• allows teachers certain rights to use copyrighted materials for teaching.

Advantages of video -

• motion
• process
• risk free
• dramatization
• affective learning
• rewind and watch again

disadvantages

• fixed pace
• "talking head"
• misinterpretation
• abstract, non visual
• only have point of view of the film maker

You might use video when:

• learning a process or a skill
• dramatizing an event
• observing an event risk free (volcano, tornado)
• understanding different cultures

Classroom video tips:

• market the video, give them teasers to grab their attention prior
• know your audience
• appropriate lengths, topic, appeal
• sights and lights - don't get in the way of the video or too much light
• FOLLOW UP discussion about video, why you watched it, what you were supposed to get from it.

Social Cognitive theory - people learn by watching other people. Trilogy - want to change from behavior B to behavior A. Need a set of 3 people to act out in the following manner : Person 1 exhibiting behavior A, person 2 exhibiting behavior B, and person 3 exhibiting behavior B - but chooses to switch to behavior A (the desired behavior). - watch someone you know (get to know in the way you get to know a movie or TV character) change their behavior from an undesirable one to a desirable one - very powerful.

2. - Next week - peer review.

Task Analysis article is not called the "Task Analysis" article

Abbey Brown - Essentials of Instructional Design, Chapter 06

Sub-Skill Analysis

Hard, tedious and time consuming.

Take the ordinary and the common and to thoroughly examine it - what makes it so? why is it this way? what would happen if? why is it not?

From the book:

• what must the student already know so that with a minimal amount of instruction this task can be learned?= = = lose learner if we try to teach them something they already know - they get bored.
• what is it that a student must already know, which if they didn't know, would make it impossible to learn the subordinate skill?
• what mistake might students make if they were learning this particular skill?

1. Analysis Document
2. Design Document
3. Analysis Document
4. Materials Document

Topic irrelevant - design is what's important.

Occam's Razor - quite often the simplest answer is the best. - instructional phase this is important.

Learning Hierarchy

Procedure - steps not hierarchy, so it's not a procedure

Analysis - 3 pages on making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So you can just imagine how long it's going to have to be for a tattoo with a shark bone.

What is an Entry Behavior? = what you assume they already know and that you do not have to reteach - after analysis you eliminate all the behaviors that you can assume the learners already know. Things that people will have already be able to do to learn this. Behaviors you have to already know to be allowed into the 'class'.

What is a General Characteristic? Characteristics of the target audience - teenagers, 40 year old housewives, Football fanatics, science fiction geeks. that kind of stuff. Superfluous - irrelevant - do not waste your time on these.

Is it worth the time to test it?

List - Entry behaviors.
IE: recognize letters of the behaviors.

Goal : In writing short stories, students will use a variety of sentence types based on sentence purpose and the idea or mood being communicated.

analysis - what does a student need to know to be able to do this? can it be done - will you be able to tell when it's done?

• sentence structure
• how to express a mood
• how to write a short story.

Analysis Document - due October 17th

1. Define goal - well crafted sentence.
2. Goal Analysis 5 - 15 steps - major steps - must relate tio objective, goal.
3. Break it down - sub skill analysis - task analysis - microscopic bits.
4. Analyze learners and context.

Learning Theory 10/13/07

Behaviorism.

pg 35 and 37



punishment v negative reinforcement - both involve something negative, involves something that is not wanted, that effects subject negatively.



punishment - adding the negative item

negative reinforcement - take away the negative item


Religion based on behaviorism?

The New Stuff.........
Theory comes from the development of the computer - the model is based on the processes of the computer.

Different parts of the computer

input - processor - short term storage - long term storage - output
keyboard - CPU - RAM - ROM - screen

Sensory registers - eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin (input)
duration - about one second (very limited)
capacity - unlimited continuously coming, but does not stay for long.

Working Memory - short term (RAM)
duration - 40 seconds
capacity - 5 +/- 2 GAMiller - re the 7 +/- 2 relating to sounds

Long term Memory - (ROM)
duration - unlimited
capacity - unlimited problem is accessing memories, but it is still there.

Process of encoding - adding meaning - information must be reformatted to be compatible with information that is already in out long term memory. Pass from receptors to working memory by adding meaning.

Page 78

relatively little is known about the sensory memories corresponding to the other senses...

most studies done on sight - vision, not many studies done on the memories corresponding to hearing, taste, smell and so on and so on and so on........

kinetic memory - talk about it more, but he thinks it's extremely important.

Storage - retaining information in long term memory, likely done in a variety of ways - images, semantically, verbal. the more ways a given piece of information is stored in the memory - the more readily accessible that information is.

Retrieval - bringing information from long term memory to working memory - also used in the process of encoding - have to retrieve to add meaning to new information

Automaticity - practicing or rehearsing some information to the point that it can be retreived quicklessly and effortlessly.

Having relevant retreival cues - Please, Excuse, My Dear, Aunt Sally.

Interfereance
Decay

No class next week.

Instructional Design 09/12/07

Projects are in, next time try packaging it all together rather than sending it in 3 parts - and don't forget to put the names on the project.

5 views of the field.

What instructional design isn't - 5 pages of discussion of this.

• by eliminating things that it isn't, you can better focus on what it is.

Instructional Systems Design : synthesis of theory and research on how information is transferred and how humans make meaning and desired outcomes.

How to design a system to adapt to multiple cultures.....

Housekeeping things :

• Next week - first draft of the term paper or this blog, so here's my "first draft"

Showed class how to make a blog. It was fun, thanks for giving me the opportunity to play college professor.

What is analysis - opposite of synthesis (put together) - break it down and see how it works.

Triangle of Instructional Design =

Content, Delivery and Instructional Design.

Focus on teaching or focusing on what needs to be done - example of the glass cleaners. - focus on the delivery of the information or focus on the end result.

Break down to the point of silliness - analysis breaking it down to the smallest parts possible.

Do not assume everyone knows anything - ie have flat tire - stop car, on flat surface.

chunk into 7 +/- 2

diamond - you have a choiced, boxes, no choice.

if there are not a lot of choices, there isn't instructionally dynamic

start asking boxes - then ask yourself about the choices, differences that are possible.

Come up with topic for the big project - "Compost Heap"

analysis process - domain the learning is in -not just all cognitive or psychomotor.

Declaritive Knowledge - "Knowing that" - statement of fact, recall of facts, outline of materials - ways to learn facts easier - pnemonics, alliteration, writing : Domain : Verbal Information - all building blocks for real learning

Procedural Knowledge - "Knowing how" - knowledge of how to do something. step by step "doing it". Descriminations - how to put that information to use. as opposed to : Associations - connect together

Problem Solving - take a wqhole bunch of rules and work with them together.
Rule Using - applying a single rult to a given situation or condition responding to a class of inputs with a class of actions. If - - then statements.
Concrete Concept- is responding in a single way to all members of a particular class of observable events. Seeing the similarity among a class of objects, people, events, which calls for a single respones.
Discriminations - tell the difference between yellow finches and house finches, telling the difference between guages on an instrument panel. Deciding whether a multiplication answer will be positive or negative.

What is procedures going to look like - lots of steps, lots of diamonds.

Break into the ridiculous, and then put back together to avoid duplications, and to chunk so that the lesson is not overly tedious.

Decisions

What are we going to do -

Wich domain does it fall under (Declarative Knowledge, Procedural Knowledge, Cognitive Strategies, Attitudes or Psychomotor Skills)

Project

Goals

Process - 5 to 15 simple steps

Ask the "why" questions, ask a lot

Admit bias, accept bias and actively work to avoid it.

Behaviorism, Radical or not radical. (My other EdPs class)

Pg 69
Clockwork Orange
"perfect society"?, possible? desirable?

Walden Two : From rats to humans. Some people think that Walden Two was a response to the issue or reintegrating GI's into society. His first book left the extrapolation of rodent behavior to human behavior with the quote 'let him extrapolate who will', not making the extrapolation, but implying it. And finally, Skinner wrote a textbook that spent a whole chapter on a strong concept in Walden Two - self control, believing that it was the way to be productive and happy.

Communes of the 60's were based on the Walden Two concept, if not that community specifically.

1967 Twin Oaks Community (web site) is started in Lousia, Virginia.

1971 Los Horcones (web site), is started in Hermosilla, Mexico.

Twin Oakers have a penchant for naming everything, including all of our communally-owned vehicles. By Valerie Renwick-Porter. [23 Jan 2006]
No one has a personal vehicle while living here. Here's a list of our current vehicle names:
From our female icon theme:

• Indigo Girl (a blue car)


• Moon Unit (a silvery/gold truck)


• Betty Boop


• Lola Puns on the word "car":


• Cari Krishna


• Escargot

Two of our vans:

• Vandrogyny


• Vanarchy

Other vehicle names:

• DragonWagon (greeny-blue station wagon)


• Navy Gravy (a tip of the hat to counter-culture icon Wavy Gravy) (a navy truck)


• Higher Yellow (reference to a Mao quote) (a yellow truck)


• Utofia (our tofu delivery truck)


• Viva Zapata (a nod to the Zapatistas)


• V-Eight (the last and punniest (it has a V8 engine) of our "beverage" series which included


• OJ and Cocoa, which were orange and brown vehicles)


• Blanche Whipple (white van)


• Ozone


• Jonathan Lesbian Seagull

BF Skinner - all behavior is in response to environmental stimuli - there is no free will. Person does not choose - person is conditioned. Belief in free will and dignity prevents "the prospect of using scientific methods to modify behavior for the purpose of building a happier and better organized society."

1. Select Goal : Quit smoking.


2. Determine Appropriate Reinforcers : $25 check.


3. Select Procedures for Changing Behavior : wife mails off check whenever she sees him smoking.


4. Implement Procedures and Record Results : Three checks and he had quit smoking.


5. Evaluate Progress and Revise as Necessary : he never started smoking again, so no revision necessary.

Behaviorism in Instructional Design -

1. Instructional Objectives - good instructional objectives have behavior that is to be performed and observed.


2. [Mager, RF, 1962] - the 3 component objectives : behavior to be acquired, conditions behavior is demonstrated, how well the behavior is to be performed (80% of the time, 90% accuracy, etc).


3. [Gagne, 1985]


4. [Merrill, 1983]

Personalized Systems of Instruction [PSI] - Unit Mastery Requirement. Small units with specific behavioral instructional objectives, work at own pace but cannot proceed until you have achieved mastery.

International Society for Performance Improvement; spawn of Behaviorism and Instructional Design.

Things to do for next class;

• Chapter 3 : Cognitive Information Processing
• Article - look at what are the behaviors the researchers were looking for in order to identify the variables
• Second Quiz
• Participation in e-discussion on Behaviorism - ends Sept 12th
• No class on the 20th, meet with Nikita and Lani at Nakita's house.

The big project

• Gotta pick a real world problem that can be alleviated by instruction.
• Ask the questions on pg 21 of the book.
• Start crafting a Goal Statement.

Task one - ADDIE model by next week - tire changing

Discussion online.

Solutions

Students will attend 90% of the lectures and discussions on future trends in technology, philosophy and business.



The student will be able to select examples of the political concept of conservativism in a list of liberal vs. conservative examples and non examples.





Students will be able to apply for welfare.



The student will be able to administer an allergy injection following techniques for sterility.

Train, Instruct, Teach and Educate

^^^ That's my cute little diagram you asked me to make in class.

Education - Any situation where something is learned. Does not necessarily involve training, instruction or teaching.
Instruction - The act of transferring specific knowledge. Does not necessarily result in learning or involve training or teaching.
Training - Instruction for the purpose of eliciting a specific task or activity.
Teaching - The art of creating a situation and/or environment where education occurs. Usually involves training and instruction, but does not always result in learning.

Instruction is passive - one person or medium attempting to transfer information to another or group of human beings.

Training is two way, between the instructor and the learner, but has a focus of a specific task or set of tasks.

Teaching is interactive, between the instructor (teacher) and the student or students. It relies, or should rely, more on directing the student to their learning, has a much broader scope than training, and often has hidden curricula.

Education is whenever someone learns, from the formality of a College Law class to when a two year old puts their hand on a hot stove.