Did the message get through yet? Is semiotics too esoteric for us? I find these concerns from the discussion group (Palaskas, and others) particularly ironic given the pragmatic roots of semiotics. This led me to wonder if a semiotic view of educational technology could be presented without the use of semiotic jargon. Although I'm a technologist and not a philosopher (Is there such thing as the philosophy of technology?), having studied semiotics I'll give it a try. My version of "Semiotic Lite."
Semiotics is a philosophical effort to identify the most fundamental components of human communication, learning, and understanding. Peirce discovered, or recognized, in the early 1900s that reality is mediated to humans through intermediary representations (signs and symbols). He also realized that in order for us to learn, or to know, we must each manipulate and organize these representations of reality on our own (our interpretations). Thus, representations will forever insulate us from the base objects of reality, we will never really "touch" reality (objects), but only the representations we attach to it.
Peirce set out to categorize our symbolic representations of reality. He set no limits to these representations (signs and symbols), and thus he believed that he could find them in every phenomenon involving humans. Peirce identified learning as a process of manipulating these symbolic representations of reality. In particular, he observed that our personal organization of representations of reality changes with repeated experience, as our representations of reality interact with reality itself (consistent with, and pre-dating, the idea of cognitive schema). Thus, Peirce developed the semiotic idea that learning consists of a progression from first impressions to a final and more complete arrangement of representations of reality.
My own view of this, and I think others would agree, is that semiotics suggests a naturalistic type of instructional design, one that views learning and performance as a phenomenon derived from individual and group interpretations of signs and symbols (shifting now into semiotic jargon). Semiotics seems to say that we can not teach without accommodating progressing and diverse interpretations in the minds of learners.
Thus, following this line of reasoning, if we wish to design instruction, we must find tools that allow us to inquire into the interpretation of signs and symbols in groups of, and among, individual learners. Perhaps an instructional design model can be constructed around a process of inquiry into the progressive interpretations of learners during learning. This type of semiotic instructional design might involve the study of sample learners during facilitated learning and tutoring experiences (as in Marcy's essay). Instruction would be generated only after the instructional designer had identified meanings that would likely be developed by learners during the learning process and the gaps between learner interpretations and the desired interpretations (if fixed interpretations are the objective).
Incidentally, these gaps could also be studied naturalistically, with an eye toward identifying how a typical learner, perhaps with a tutor (live or electronic), is able to make the desired changes in interpretation. This could be done through the use of "talk aloud" protocols, and other modern tools of cognitive psychology (this addresses the question about gaps raised by Stamper [8 Nov 94]).
A semiotic view suggests that instructional designers get involved with some of the individual differences among learners (as suggested by Ibieta [10 Nov 94]), asking learners open questions during a sample learning process as part of the design of the instructional system. Thus, in cases where concrete performance objectives are identified, instruction should be accomplished by helping each learner develop interpretations that are well-aligned with identified objectives. Note that in this semiotic usage, "interpretations" refers to all symbolic conceptualization, not just affective interpretations.
In situations with less concrete objectives, we may wish to orient interpretations to converge only approximately on the desired interpretations. In still other cases, instructional objectives might be emergent or open, and the instruction would simply facilitate the learner's reflections on, and development of, his or her own representations of reality. These various approaches, as informed by semiotics, address the issue raised by Ibieta about interpretations possibly being imposed on the learner in a semiotic design process. Consider, for example, how many interpretations should there be of the meaning of the number "5?" On the other hand, how many interpretations could or should there be of the cause of the U.S. Revolutionary War? The extent to which a desired interpretation is "imposed" should depend on the type of performance sought, and the nature of the objectives, and not be an inherent problem with a semiotic approach.
I believe that semiotics is a rational and straight-forward way to conceive of human communication, learning, and understanding. Semiotics helps us rationally take into account both the objective nature of reality and the subjective construction of our own representations of reality [Shank, 9 Nov 94]. This is consistent with a naturalistic paradigm, and suggests to me a process of instructional design that uses semiotically-informed, naturalistic and cognitive tools of inquiry.