Rod Sims [13 Jul 95] recently posted a technology update on ITForum representing in part a short summary of ED-MEDIA, a few digs at instructional systems design, and miscellaneous other tidbits. Rod indicated that I might want to comment on his perceptions.
At first I did not see a need. However, several other persons have posted responses to Rod s note. I am now inclined to respond. The reason is that I believe that underlying this discussion is an unwarranted belief that things associated with ISD are bad and things associated with constructivism are good. I believe that the so-called constructivism-objectivism debate is simple-minded, wrong-headed, and contributes little value to improving learning and instruction. I know that point of view is not popular and will receive harsh criticism from this forum. I have purchased a fire-proof suit for the anticipated flaming.
First, with regard to Rod s remarks. He properly reported the most outstanding presentation at ED-MEDIA, viz. the closing presentation on the Portinari Project by Joao Candido Portinari (Brazil). Portinari very definitely deserved the standing ovation he received as his creation demonstrated clearly how technology could be woven into an artistic domain and used to impart a clearly humanistic message--art depicting a society, especially its more disadvantaged members, captured in a moving multimedia form. The complex technology involved was transparent--so touching and moving were the humanitarian concerns being presented.
However, Rod failed to mention there was another very high quality presentation which made similarly excellent use of technology to deliver a moving humanitarian message, viz. Joe Henderson's keynote address which demonstrated clearly how effectively multimedia could be used to teach interns how to respond meaningfully and helpfully to AIDs patients and their families. Unfortunately, Joe said at the outset that he did not subscribe to the current constructivist dogma although he considered himself a constructivist. Partly because of that remark and perhaps partly because of the nature of his subject, many persons walked out of his presentation--not a response that I regard as civilized behavior at a keynote presentation at a major international conference for such a distinguished speaker who had such meaningful and helpful messages to deliver.
The behavior of those who left Joe's presentation and the so-called debate about constructivism/objectivism are generally indicative of childish and shallow attitudes. I say this knowing that I will be blasted and flamed from here to eternity--but I say it hoping that the debate will begin to focus on learning and the planning and facilitation of learning (normally called instructional design).
When Bob Gagné was asked by Larry Lipsitz to contribute an article reflecting his perspective on this issue, he declined saying that it did not deserve comment. Gagné, liked Henderson, considered himself a constructivist in the only sense that made any sense to him (individuals construct representations of external reality).
Rod's comment that I might want to say something is a result, I believe, of Begona Gros' panel on the "Integration of Educational Theories in the Development of Multimedia and Hypermedia" (Gros, Elen, Kerres, van Merrienboer, and Spector). We decided to abandon our prepared and structured short presentations to be followed by a short discussion in favor of brief introductions followed by a lengthy interactive discussion (partly due to a shortened presentation period and partly because members of the panel wanted to respond to constructivist notions that a free-flowing and less-structured discussion would be most beneficial). Some of the discussion that occurred was between Rod and myself, and I do believe what we discussed might have been somewhat interesting to some people present. I also believe the panel would have been better had we stayed with our original plan, mainly because I believe my colleagues on that panel had many excellent and well-researched ideas that did not get heard, re-constructed, critiqued, etc.
Next, I want to point ITForum listeners and lurkers to two articles in the current issue of Educational Technology, one by Walter Dick and the other by David Jonassen. Both are worth reading. Walt makes it quite clear there is nothing in ISD that prevents practitioners from being creative. He also argues that ISD has only been presented in a linear form for the purposes of explicating and teaching about a highly complex process. Tennyson and Gagné have both said on many occasions that the process should not be regarded as linear nor should it be regarded as consisting of the discrete activities typically represented in any of the many ISD models--activities can be clumped, chunked, distributed, etc. However, what must occur is some planning for and facilitation of learning if we expect learning to occur. Jonassen's article specifies at a macro level many of the relevant design concerns (from his constructivist perspective). I see no inherent or essential conflict in these two articles.
The distinction that I do believe exists is that between open-ended learning environments (open learning spaces, discovery-oriented learning, opportunities to create and try out individual representations, etc.) and structured learning environments (much less learner control, more definite learning space, highly specified and clearly articulated learning outcomes, etc.). I regard this more as a continuum than a basic distinction, I suppose. It seems to me that there are appropriate applications for each kind of learning environment or instantations along the continuum. When the learners are adults and the domain is a technical subject (perhaps job-related, as in learning how to operate a piece of equipment), it would be inappropriate to create an open-ended learning environment--the efficient way to train such tasks is with a structured learning environment. ISD was originally created to support the creation of such learning environments for the military--and there are a great many of these situations. This is why ISD is so effective in the domain of technical training. Tennyson and others have attempted to show how ISD can also be supportive of other domains, where an open-ended learning environment might be effective, but these efforts have gone largely unnoticed in the course of the debate.
I would like to close with two remarks:
(1) First, I agree with Tom Reeves [13 Jul 95] remark that it is extremely difficult to conduct research on the effects of constructivist learning environments--I think this is true, however, of most learning environments. We fail to realize that "what you measure is what you get" (Spector, 1995) is the operative principle--if you say you are going to evaluate a system according to its acceptance in a community of users, you will get a system that is acceptable in that community (assuming a competent staff of implementers); if you say you are going to measure learning effectiveness by student performance on a multiple-choice post-test immediately after the instructional intervention, then you are likely to get a system which insures that students perform well on such a test. I believe that what Tom has in mind is that what we sometimes want are learning environments which enrich an individual's life by improving problem-solving skills or developing alternative mental models which might contribute to deeper understanding and appreciation of our world. I believe that both Henderson's and Portinari's presentations achieved those kinds of results--BUT those results are typically the most difficult and costly to measure.
(2) Second, to those expert and highly creative practitioners (e.g., Rod Sims) who claim ISD is irrelevant and there is no need to specify instructional designs, I simply want to say that this appears to me to be a classical expert/novice difference. Rowland, Perez, & Niederman, and others have already shown that expert designers typically operate from an articulated and compiled mental model when given an instructional design task--they have no need to follow the detailed steps of an ISD model to produce a design. Novices typically find things like Gagné's nine events of instruction (which is incorporated in many ISD models in the design phase) quite useful in specifying a storyboard for a unit of instruction. I believe that the critical point is that one can derive an instructional design model from any extant learning environment (whether the designer consciously applied the model in the process of creating the learning environment depends in large part on whether the designer was a novice or an expert). The relevant research to conduct here seems to me to concern when and why various instructional designs and models are successful in terms of learning effectiveness.
Okay, I've had my say and promise to return to my usual status as a lurker.