The entire C/I debate and user control verses program control is in a sense problematic in the extreme. It would seem to me that the perspective of students is often secondary to the argument with some notable exceptions.
[quoting Reeves, 14 Nov 95] Needless to say, I would not now advocate that we should have set up a constructivist learning environment for the missile trainees in which they would have "discovered" the procedures for establishing their targets. The trainees might have constructed a mental model of their role akin to that of the mad General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's classic film, Dr. Strangelove. No, an instructivist approach was absolutely necessary. At the same time, when I consider the enormous needs in education and training today, especially the demand for lifelong learning and knowledge workers, I see a great deal of merit in contrasting instructivist and constructivist views of the world. Further, considering the small payoffs resulting from the millions of dollars that have been and are being spent on efforts to automate ISD or build intelligent tutoring systems, I don't think any of us can afford to be neutral.
One of my own reasons for entering the IMM field was the recognition that the conventional delivery methods of teaching and learning (classroom, laboratory, lecture) were not achieving the desired or even expected results. In interviews with students after they have completed courses of instruction, one is continually faced with the thought, "now where did they get that idea/concept/set of beliefs from?" One purpose of IMM software is to improve learning outcomes--hence the commonly held understanding of this group that if a book is better suited to the task, then buy the book. However, there are learning goals that many of this group would argue can be more readily achieved with IMM or Hypermedia.
We come back to the student. Not all students are highly self-motivated autonomous learning entities. Students do not want to spend their entire time "discovering" what they need to know, nor necessarily should they. Discovery learning within a chemistry laboratory is not something I'd like to be near enough to observe closely. Some scaffolding is necessary, be it in the laboratory, the classroom or Hypermedia, at least some of the time. Now if the scaffolding takes the form of a series of drills, a familiar on screen environment, or step-by-step instructions for learning a particular skill (it helps to know that you have to have the car in gear before you press on the accelerator to move off) then so be it. If the IMM program is intended to accomplish some particular set of learning goals or outcomes then scaffolding of some kind will be necessary. If the IMM is designed to entertain/infotain, then let the user discover away.
[quoting Sims, 14 Nov 95.c] Of course, the user would also be provided with a set of "tools" to help in the voyage of discovery--just as in Kings Quest (or Leisure Suit Larry for the more mature). The "?" for example would allow the user to interrogate a person, a magnifying glass an object. The result may simply be an OI or it could be an Update Interaction, where additional information is provided as a result of the interrogation.
I don't think these ideas are new (I've been calling them Learner Integrated Teaching Environments for some time) and they represent situational or contextual applications.
In creating virtual learning environments the scaffolding needs of the learner have to be paramount, as in Rod's set of tools above. The challenge for the instructional designer is to provide the appropriate tools that are needed by individual students with different approaches to learning--all within the same program and within the project budget. The formative design process involving all the stakeholders in the program currently being used in many IMM projects is clearly an effort to address this very issue.
[quoting Sims, 14 Nov 95.d] I may have been around too long, but unless you know something about how to make a computer work for you (programming for want of a better word) then you're not going to get far with any application or tool you're interested in. Unless developers are competent programmers, then I say forget it.
I must take umbrage at this rather sweeping statement Rod. Nor do I believe that teachers/lecturers have been the major producers of poor educational software. By all means know something about the tool you intend to employ to accomplish learning, but that doesn't require a developer to be a full-time programmer. Developers should have competent programmers as part of the design team, and the team should have someone with a sound grounding in teaching, learning and good educational practice, a graphics designer and input from the intended learners. Too much poor software purported to be educational has been produced by really competent programmers who weren't also trained graphic designers and educators.
Isn't the penultimate goal to improve learning in the students we teach? I say penultimate because we all have to work in the NOW. Students and teachers have grown up in a particular culture in which specific learning goals are set--numeracy and literacy--which have been accomplished using a specific approach to learning (looked in many University lecture halls or school classrooms lately??). That model of teaching and learning is not going to change quickly, but appropriately designed IMM and Hypermedia will (I believe) change the nature of education and the respective roles of teachers and students.