For Scott's Learning Odyssey...

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Thinking of Vyew

I would love to teach a lesson using Vyew. I would have to do some advance planning to become fully comfortable with the tool and determine which functions I wanted to use with my lesson. Vyew has a free-wheeling nature to it, so I'd like to pull some of that into the lesson, but also keep it structured. For instance, I might have a lecture with audio and video, but the chat function would allow students to ask questions. I might ask students to share their work by uploading a graphic or an attachment and having others provide live feedback.

As a system for collaboration, Vyew offers several affordances, such as drawing tools, the ability to share one's desktop, the ability to broadcast video and audio, and the ability to import files to share with others. These are the advantages of Vyew as a collaborative tool. It also has disadvantages. PowerPoint presentations are imported into multiple pages instead of a single file with navigation, so the structure of the presentation can be unclear. It would take a lot of practice, I think, to become completely familiar with Vyew. It also runs slowly at times, so there might be issues if a lot of people are in a session.

Analysis and Design - Part of the Flow

Analysis and design are extremely close as part of the instructional design process. Without an analysis, one really can't go confidently forward with the design. The analysis provides at least a portion of the roadmap so the designer knows where to go. I don't think an analysis has to be overly involved; in fact, there are times when an analysis is little more than asking what is needed and when it is needed. But even with such a short time for analysis, the designer can get a feel for the outcome of the learning and some clues on how to proceed with the design. I don't think that the analysis, once complete, is never revisited. Sometimes questions come up in the design process that require the designer to go back to the analysis portion again. Goals and objectives can be tweaked and revised as needed, since the content (to me) is like any creation -- it can evolve into something vastly different than what was originally intended, and revisiting the analysis can help make sure that the creation is still valid and desired.

The Information R/Evolution described in the video drives the way that most of us will obtain information that is used in the analysis, and it may guide the design, depending on the topic, the purpose and the audience. Most of us will use the Internet as a starting place for our research, and we'll come across websites, blogs, networking sites, wikis, and other online resources. If we know that our audience falls in what is known as a heavy Internet-using demographic, the instruction could be designed that way. It could be more exploratory in nature.

Analyze That!

Sorry, I just couldn't resist using the title of one of the Robert DeNiro/Billy Crystal films for the title of this post. :-)

The Analysis phase of this project helped me clarify what needs to be accomplished during the training session and set it all down on paper. It sounds so simple, but pre-planning is often skipped when designing training. I had to think about the learning objectives, the audience (the learners), the instructors, and all of the resources I had to work with. Of course, it isn't set in stone; the objectives may change as we start to develop the training. However, the analysis document gives me something concrete to use instead of some scribbled notes and my thoughts.

I haven't thought much about activities except for a possible scavenger hunt. The learners are grouped in pairs, and I would like them to search on specific sites to find the definitions for certain terms. We'll have about 12 learners in the class, so we can have six different groups. Once the terms are all defined, the learners can help piece everything together.

How Do We Learn?

I don't think there's a single catch-all theory of how we all learn. I think that we learn best by using a combination of approaches, and it depends on the subject matter being presented. For instance, I've had classes where we had to basically teach ourselves, and that works great as long as the instructor is there to provide feedback. Otherwise, you could be learning something incorrectly. There are also times where it is good to learn in groups; yet again, the instructor has to be present and available to provide mentoring and coaching to make sure that we are learning correct information. And when I'm learning something like mathematics or computer programming, I'd rather have someone explain it to me. I don't want to discover it myself, since I don't have a lot of personal experience or background and I would probably end up frustrating myself and not having a good learning experience at all.

So, my theory would probably be a combination of the objectivist theory, where the instructor dispenses knowledge and the students absorb it; the constructivist theory, where I teach myself the information based on what I discover; and the cooperative model, where I work with my fellow classmates to acquire new knowledge.

I'm honestly not sure how the cognitive information processing theory fits into my personal learning theory. I see how it fits as an adjunct to the constructivist theory. We all process information, rehearse it, and commit it to memory.

Instructional Design and Work

For our first week of CECS 5210, I read the ADDIE handout and the first chapter of our text book, and I must say that I am heartened by what I have read. I have been doing instructional design, of a sort, for the last several years, and I didn't really have an official process for it. I just did it by instinct. While I didn't have any disasters, I certainly did have times when it didn't work as well as I had hoped it would. Now, it's nice to learn that instructional design is an interesting combination of art and science, and that it is a continuous process. When I tried following a strict instructional design model in the past, I kept getting tripped up because I was trying to follow a linear process, and it doesn't work that way. Not from my experiences, anyway.

As for the ADDIE handout, it confirmed many of my suspicions. I almost never hear the word ADDIE mentioned at work. We use an adapted form of it, but I was beginning to wonder if ADDIE was one of those buzzwords that people who really don't do a lot of instructional design throw around in conversations or in job interviews. I think ADDIE is a good guideline -- or a framework, as the article put it -- but the instructional design process doesn't seem all that different from the software design process.

As far as my future work goals are concerned, I would like to be a full-time instructional designer. I've been encouraged by what I've read so far and by my past experiences, so I would say that instructional design is extremely important in my future work goals. I had a job interview this summer and the interviewer asked me several pointed questions about my instructional design processes and I really couldn't explain them. Needless to say, I didn't get the job, but it was a learning experience.

Suffice it to say that I know I have a lot to learn, but at least I know I'm not on totally unfamiliar ground.

A Magical Weekend

This post doesn't tie directly to school, per se, but it does tie in with learning. I have the best time with people from whom I can learn something. I can do idle chit-chat, but to really capture my attention, the best thing to do is to tell me about something I know very little (or especially) nothing about. I had a dear friend come and spend the weekend with me. We hadn't seen each other in months, so we spent the greater majority of the day playing catch-up. She is a recently converted Catholic, so she asked if I could find a Catholic bookstore that might be nearby. I found one in Farmers Branch and we went there on Saturday afternoon. We had a delightful time. I had been in Christian bookstores many times over the years, but none of them affected me as much as this Catholic bookstore did. The store was completely modern, yet you could feel the history and tradition of the Catholic faith. My friend patiently explained what she was going there to get (a monthly book of daily prayers and scripture readings) and she explained more about the daily rituals of practicing the Catholic faith. She showed me how you use a rosary. I don't know that I had ever seen one. She also showed me these lovely miniature paintings of the 12 stations and told me what they symbolized. We walked around the store, which sold everything from priestly robes to incense to crucifixes (some lovely crucifixes - I saw a striking metal one), to all kinds of study bibles. They even had a rack of DVDs with popular movies that had Catholic themes, such as the Ingrid Bergman version of Joan of Arc and the popular comedy from the 1960s, The Trouble With Angels. Our next errand was the flagship Half-Price Books on Northwest Highway, so we discussed religion on our way to the next bookstore. I learned all kinds of information that I didn't know before.

We revisited the topic several times during her stay and she was always a fountain of helpful information. I rarely, if ever, discuss religion with anyone because I feel that it is extremely personal and really no one's business. Additionally, I resented the teachings of the church I grew up in that encouraged us to be witnesses and proselytize others, so I dug my heels in and decided that if I ever went back to church, it would be my business and no one else's.

She wrote me today to tell me what a wonderful time she had. She was able to relax and get away, even though she didn't travel all that far, and that helped her tremendously. I was glad to hear it, but I had a wonderful time too.