Wednesday, November 8

Blog – 11/08/06 - Provided by Ben Fendel

Present Students: Dr. Foreman, David, Lane, Ben, Chastiti, Doris, Philip, Liz, Deidre, Mary, Erica, Deb, Kate, Toni, Mauricio, Valerie, Nora, Devorah

4:10 Began class with a practice quiz – through iLearn – Quiz Link – this quiz was done as a final project of a student a few years ago. Dr. Foreman will talk more about final projects later in the class.

Next week’s assignment – to create a 10-question quiz based on the reading.

Final project – can be in various forms, print, video, online, etc. Dr Foreman doesn’t want to you to be overly concerned with the technical stuff.

4:38 – Quiz – focused on different learning theories. Mostly multiple choice, true/false. Some fill in the blank. One short example. Covered topics such as the major learning theories, Gagne’s stages of instruction and learning outcomes, and Ausebel’s meaningful learning.

5:03 - Situated Cognition –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situated_learning

Learning is situated, meaning that knowledge is dependant on the situation or context. (Review of Gagne’s steps of instruction, learning outcomes.)
Important concept because often students don’t always transfer knowledge to a different context. Knowledge is not totally isolated. It must have various contexts. Context plays a role in learning, as learning communities play a role in the environment in which the learner exists.
In learning communities, everyone has a different level of involvement. May be very involved (insider) or just barely involved (peripheral.)

David Merrill – Component Display Theory (CDT) - provides a list of prescriptions for designing instruction for different kinds of instructional outcomes.

CDT is an instructional model which designers can apply to develop an instructional micro-strategy. The theory is designed for developing instruction for concepts while providing learner control. The theory suggests that there is a unique combination for the most effective learning experience by determining the content and desired performance then adding prescriptions to form a learning strategy. To achieve that experience, the designer identifies the content and desired learning and develops a prescriptive learning strategy.

Merrill (Merrill, 1983) uses a two-dimensional matrix or table to illustrate the dynamics of his Component Display Theory. On one side the types of content are listed (fact, concept, procedure, process and principle). Perpendicularly listed are the desired levels of performance, finding, using and remembering. This content/performance table comprises the desired level of student performance. In other words, the designer identifies what type of content and how the learner is expected to use the information.

Once the correct content/performance is identified, then a set of prescriptions can be applied to the instructional strategy.

Next week, after reading Chapter 6 about Jean Piaget, you will create questions. You can use Merrill’s matrix to help determine what types of questions to ask or to create instruction.

Merrill’s Theory seems to stem from Bloom’s Taxonomy. Saying similar things in a different way.

5:45 – Break

6:00 – Discussion of learning communities…

What defines a learning community was a primary question in our discussion: “What types of communities / organizations are not communities of practice?” Just because you are a member of a subgroup of society, are you part of a community of practice? Does “learning” have to be a central objective of the community? Is it enough to share a common interest or must there be a degree of interaction or shared knowledge? We discussed how people take on different roles within their learning communities, from peripheral to insider, from inbound to outbound, and sometimes a boundary. How can one discern as an outsider who is a member of a learning community?


6:45 – Final Project Discussion – Due December 13th.

From the course syllabus:

Final Project (20%): A PERSONALIZED SYNTHESIS of the material which we cover this semester. The project can be a product of instructional materials based on one or more of the instructional theories we covered or a summary/critique paper of major instructional theories.


End goal of ITEC 800 is to synthesize and to apply a learning theory or learning process into some form of instruction or creation. Each student will design / develop a project which reflects the understanding and critical evaluation of one or more learning theories studied in this class.

For next week – come with an example of what you have in mind for your final project.