This discussion of ISD, constructivism, etc., seems to be in danger of wandering off along heady summertime byways of Master's dissertations, invoking magic touchstones like Jonassen, Piagét, Merrill.... I hate to be a Cassandra (no, really, I love it!) but term's about to begin and that means real students, who sweat, complain, cheat, and lie for marks--rather than idealized constructs of our imagination for whom beauty is truth and truth beauty, etc.
The depressing truth is that no matter how comprehensive, logical, delightful, and engaging we make the learning materials, they will be filtered through the disposition of the student--what Marton, Saljo, Ramsden, Biggs, and others have identified as "Surface," "Deep," and "Achieving" approaches to learning.
A predominantly "Surface" learner will quickly tire of hypertext links that do not provide ready answers; an "Achieving" learner with well-developed "study skills" will probably skim the lovingly created artwork and music track in order to download the structure diagrams. It is only the "Deep" approach in which the purpose of learning is seen to be the construction of meaning by the learner and where curiosity is its own reward.
While the "deep achiever" is the ideal student, she is not the norm at Universities. Some students are born "surface," but most have "surface" thrust upon them. There are discipline areas--Medicine and Law are universally common examples--which force students into a "surface" approach by virtue of the pressure of work and the nature of assessment.
By definition, a constructivist approach to the creation of computer-based learning materials makes the assumption that students are "deep" learners, but to look at many tertiary curricula and teaching methods you would be excused for assuming that B.F. Skinner was the head of department.
I have spend some time observing Medical students working with the excellent Adam and Brainhead CD-ROMs. There's not much exploration and discovery going on--they use the program as a reference tool, a handy version of Grey's Anatomy, a source of "answers."
Staff at this university produced an exploratory CD-ROM on Japan containing a wealth of historical, geographical, economic, and social material. The animated interface represents a trip along an ancient pilgrim's road from Kyoto to Tokyo. We observed students working with the CD-ROM in the Library--they ignored the interface and used the Hypercard "Search" function to get at "facts" to use in their assignments.
I've anecdotal evidence that students are increasingly using the WWW as a handy and almost undetectable means of plagiarism--much more convenient to download a file from an electronic journal (which the non-computerate lecturer has probably not seen) than to laboriously copy text from a library book (which the lecturer may have written!)
None of this should surprise us. Undergraduate university teaching methods do not, as a rule, encourage deep approaches to learning nor the construction of meaning by the learner.
The point I am laboring to make is that ISD, constructivism, positivism, cognitivism, Piagétism, whatever, are no more than jargon and piffle unless the people on the ground (teachers and students) are in agreement. Educational technologists, instructional designers, or whatever we call ourselves need to be firmly grounded in the teaching/learning process, in touch with that is happening, and preferably teachers ourselves.
The instructional designer who works in isolation to produce revolutionary and ground-breaking media materials for the teaching of Widget Physics is not going to change the ways in which Physics teachers teach, timetables dictate, students cram, and examinations grade. The best curriculum in the world can be sunk by the timetable.
This is part of a much wider argument about the role of educational technology units within universities--put a glass of Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon in my hand and I'll bore you rigid with it. But it seems to me that much of what we hear in this debate is more appropriate to Open Learning than to institutional education. Institutions still own education and a degree from Oxford, Harvard, or the Sorbonne (even HKU!) still cuts more mustard than an electronic qualification from Web Academy.
So let's hear some practical case studies about ISD or constructivist based curricula which are actually being followed in universities and are still in operation after the paper has been submitted to ETR&D or IETI. How do they co-exist with the Neanderthal curricula in other subjects? How have they changed attendance requirements and patterns, assessment methods? How has the institution adapted?The holidays are over. Let's put our old dissertations back in the drawer and get the show back on the road.