While carefully reading through the reams/screens of response to the Reigeluth paper, I've had some questions repeatedly popping up in my mind:
WHY have we decided that the learning "paradigm" has to be changed? Is it supported by valid research outcome(s) or other empirical evidence pointing to deficiencies?
WHO initiated this train of thought/fashion? Or is it the natural result of a growing general awareness that there is something radically lacking in our hitherto accepted/acceptable models?
WHY is it simply accepted that learning (implying ALL learning) is "socially constructed?" (I have my serious empirically-based doubts about the inclusiveness of such a proposition. I could argue that there is much learning that is NOT socially determined, i.e. that is highly "individualized.")
WHY is it implied that learning happens mainly through exchange of ideas? I would also challenge this assumption, unless it rested on some valid proof that is stronger than my argument. I haven't seen empirical proof yet. (Although, admittedly, I am not as well-read as most of my learned friends on the list.)
WHY do we want a complete transformation of views about learning? In my own country, South Africa, the merry bandwagon of transformation in education has people clinging to the wheels and the tailboard in the mad scramble to be fashionable and politically correct. I get the idea an eleventh commandment has been issued: Thou shalt transform everything in sight.
WHY?
In what respects has society changed during the past three decades or so, that would necessitate a change in "paradigm" from "industrial age" thinking to "information age" thinking? If the arguments for cooperative/collaborative, socialized, networked, holistic, process-oriented learning experiences are anything to go by, I see an ironic dichotomy: While this line of thinking is moving back to the cog-in-a-huge-machine model--industrial metaphor par excellence--we are, at the same time, making much of "learner-centredness," i.e., individualizing learning. Aren't we dealing here with a contradiction in terms?
How does one practice the gospel according to the new paradigm in classes of 150 to 200 students, even with the intervention of technology?
A remark: Individualized, self-paced, technology-supported learning is not as new as some list members apparently think. I know of at least one author writing extensively about the topic (as applied to language learning) in the early seventies: Renee Disick in Individualizing Language Instruction: Strategies and Methods expounded the idea very well.
Instead of throwing out the baby with the bath water, one should perhaps recognize the dialectic in the learning process--perhaps we need BOTH the "old" and the "new" paradigms. It reminds me of the reason language laboratories became so unpopular in the late seventies/early eighties--proponents saw them as ideal tools for behaviouristic drills only. When the "communicative" bandwagon came past, the labs were abandoned like broken-down cars. Even today the stigma remains in certain uninformed, unimaginative circles, while innovative practitioners have succeeded admirably in adapting the same instrument to serve the best interests of both "paradigms."
Having been in teaching for a mere 18 years in a country that usually lags behind the U.S. and Europe by at least five years (if not more), I can only support Steve Tripp's and Ian Hart's comments about the problems often experienced in non-U.S. parts of the world, and especially in Third World countries. In large parts of Africa the "industrial age" hasn't even arrived yet. Perhaps we'll just have to skip that part of evolution and dive straight into the "information" torrent? However, without electricity that is going to be a problem.
Therefore the New Paradigm might be something realizable in the U.S. and parts of Europe and the East, but for the vast majority of the world's learners it will remain pie-in-the-sky indefinitely.
[quoting Reigeluth's paper] design of learning environments that provide appropriate combinations of challenge and guidance, empowerment and support, self-direction and structure.... an area that has been largely overlooked in instructional design: deciding among such variable methods of instruction as problem-based learning, project-based learning, simulations, tutorials, and team-based learning.
Hasn't vocational training in the U.S. been working like this all along? I mean, even in behind-the-times South Africa our technikons (i.e., technology universities or polytechnics) have been practicing this approach for years. I want to ask: So, what's new about Charles's ideas?
From my particular angle of experience the "user-designer" concept raises further questions. At what level of sophistication of the learner does this concept "kick in?" It seems to me even many postgrads would be rather lousy "user-designers." Isn't a high level of maturity needed for this kind of decision-making? How many students would really be able to use such a system to its full advantage? It seems to be the old question of learner-control.
The notion of computers reading the minds of learners is an exciting one. But artificial intelligence seems to me to be exactly that--artificial. Will it ever be able to match "natural" intelligence in making really intelligent decisions? I am also excited about the possibilities for adaptive instruction, etc. But, I am a bit wary (and weary) of getting onto yet another bandwagon. If I think of the diversity of individuals, compounded by the complexity of diverse cultures in my country, I find my excitement tempered somewhat.
Sorry. As usual I have many questions but few answers. My main question remains: (How) will technology enhance the quality of my students' learning, regardless of new or old paradigms?