Jan 16. Having thought about it for a few days, I have added some additional comments which are identified with [edit] tags and italicized.
Stephen Downes - Design, Standards and Reusability
Below are some of my reflections on the concept of 'reusability' within the learning object paradigm. The above article is a useful starting point for becoming well-versed in the discussion. It may be-labouring the point, but I have yet to see this issue applied to a real example. I'm sure that I will refine my ideas for the paper I am working on, once I have a chance to dig deeper into the subject matter.
One of the first rules of instructional design is to identify a specific target audience. The better you are able to define this group in terms of their needs, pre-requisite skills and knowledge, the more likely you are to develop instruction that helps them to achieve the desired outcomes. It may be a moot point for those that are experienced in the area of instructional design but one that requires re-stating given all of the discussion around the re-usability of learning objects.
[edit]
To promote the adoption of learning object design based on the value implied by their re-usability is to propagate a myth about the practice of designing effective instruction. Designing learning objects that are at the level of being easily re-purposable are merely 'objects' and runs counter to best practices of instructional design because they are largely devoid of the principles that we know will enhance learning. Merrill (2000) hypothesized that, "when a given instructional program or practice violates or fails to implement one or more of these first principles, there will be a decrement in learning and performance.
[/edit]
The Issue
At the current time the only instructional design theory that I am aware of that addresses the issue of granularity and sequencing in learning objects is David Wiley's LODAS. He combines a number of existing instructional design theories; Elaboration Theory (Reigeluth, 1999), Work Model Synthesis (Gibbons, et al., 1995), Domain Theory (Bunderson, Newby, &Wiley, 2000), and the Four-Component Instructional Design model (van Merriënboer, 1997). The important distinction is that he extends these theories by addressing two fundamental issues in the design of learning objects: granularity and sequencing. This is a significant contribution, as it speaks to the very crux of the debate surrounding the use and 'reuse' of learning objects.
The promise of the learning object paradigm is based on the premise that economies of scale can be realized by designing digital learning resources at the level of a "common element" that can be shared with other institutions (Downes, 2000). Lower production costs result by revising or recombining existing resources instead of creating them from scratch. This practice has existed in various forms for a long time (it's one I used to regularly engage in as a secondary school teacher). What is novel about the digital frontier is its' promise of making this process easier by using technology to store information about the learning resource (meta tags) so that it can easily be retrieved and combined with like objects to produce a learning outcome.
While I believe that realizing cost savings is in itself a credible and pragmatic reason for designing learning objects with the above-stated affordances in mind, there comes a point where breaking an object down to its most 'common elements' is not desirable or practical.
I'm not debating the merit of what Downes is advocating but I am suggesting that it is a difficult proposition to implement. I fully believe in the value of sharing (that's why we've made our learning object available under a creative commons license), but not at the cost of compromising the instructional integrity of the LO we developed (elaborated on in the debate section).
The Context
My views on this issue are based on my experiences in developing a pharmacology learning object and as a former member of an educational consortium that designed and shared digital teaching resources. Increasingly we found that in order to make our electronic curriculum more relevant for classroom teachers (and therefore more reusable) we had to divide our material into modules so they could deliver the mini-lessons in their allotted computer lab time. Additional revisions were made by teachers prior to delivery to account for differences in technical setup, class time, learning rates and styles. That is to say our 'common element' still required a number of changes before it was pedagogically useful to instructors. Not to mention our concern that in order to achieve the 'common element' we had to strip way a lot of learning and therefore the inherent value of the resource.
Not only did this affect the way we designed subsequent resources, we ended up having multiple versions of the same material to satisfy different groups. I would argue that this consumed a lot of unnecessary resources and ultimately took us away from our intended audience - online distance education students. At that time (1997) webpages were not dynamically generated and therefore revising the content required considerable work (re-formatting pages, updating links, expertise in Toolbook Authorware, etc….). And then curriculum reform hit!!!!! Needless to say this project is no longer running - it was not a sustainable model. This approach may have provided value to those who used the resources (did not have to start from scratch), but it was a huge burden for those creating them.
Why is this context important? Because, I see the same pattern emerging with learning objects.
The Debate
I think our enthusiasm for the concept of 'reuse' in the learning object paradigm must be tempered with a more realistic appraisal of the environment in which we are currently operating.
Hamel & Ryan-Jones, (2002) and others advocate that, learning objects should be relatively small, citing the following passages.
While there is no optimal size for a learning object, it has been suggested that they be kept relatively small to increase the potential for reuse (Quinn & Hobbs, 2000), and to facilitate an adaptive, competency-based approach to training (Longmire, 2000). If each learning object is based upon a single enabling objective, and the granularity is small enough, then each learning object will be "appropriately" small.
Ideally it would be great if the pharmacology learning object we created turned out to be at a level that was common to other medical schools. However, I suspect this is not the case. Based on feedback of our LO from faculty and students their definition of a 'common element' for studying this subject is a moving target. Some, depending on their area of study, viewed additional information about drug categories as a necessity for studying this topic. Pharmacokinetics is taught in a cross-curricular manner in a number of different health science disciplines. The point being, that there are a number of different ways in which it is taught.
If as an instructional designer, I was to attempt to take into account the multiple contexts in which the topic was being taught in order to design a learning object as a 'common element' and in order to promote its reuse, the process would be halted in its tracks. In LODAS Wiley (2000) discusses using expert reviewers to "identify the dimensionality of domain expertise". This is an excellent idea and one which you would think would facilitate some common understanding. However, even subject matter experts have difficulty agreeing on this area.
My issue with the concept of reusability in learning objects is that it runs counter to instructional design best practices. I agree with Shaw (2002) who stated that in developing learning resources, one should begin with a genuine instructional problem and should strive to achieve outcomes which are not otherwise possible. The instructional challenge at each institution may not be the same and to be frank its not my concern. In order to do my job properly I need to attend to needs of the local students (the ones with which I am most familiar) in order to develop effective learning resources. Isn't that the ultimate goal? To reduce the pharmacology learning object to its most 'common elements' would be to re-create what already exists in the textbook using another media. Is this really what we want? Our reason for developing the LO in the first place was that we felt that the text book did not adequately represent or visualize the relationships which exist between therapeutic principles and the parameters relating to the physical and pharmacological properties of drugs.
Having said this we have attempted to make our learning object 'pedagogically reusable' to a certain extent…. Boskic (2003) made an important distinction in suggesting that there is a difference between pedagogical and technical reusability.
Pedagogical Reusability
I am inclined to agree with Downes that the actual content of the design is not as important as the approach to learning implicit in it.
That's why I included an external link to an instructor and student guide from the learning object. These guides were offered as a complement to the Pharmacology learning object and were intended to provide information that could enhance instruction. The strategies included were not prescriptive and instructors were not required to employ these methods when using the learning object. The guides included a description of the LO, learning objectives, target audience, pre-requisite knowledge and information on how the design of the LO supported the learning of pharmacokinetics. The goals in the guides are stated in observable terms in order to describe what will be accepted as evidence that learners have acquired the cognitive capabilities suggested by the goals. Because this information was not physically embedded within the pages an instructor could choose to use the LO to achieve learning outcomes different than the ones identified by me (i.e. to demonstrate issues of visual design to graphic art students). However, the fact remains that the strategies to reach the outcomes I identified are embedded within the LO as best practice of instructional design would dictate.
(you may want to look at the LO http://icarus.med.utoronto.ca/lo/pharmacology9/index.swf
at this point in order to understand the example below)
Eg. The first 3 learning objectives below correspond to an expository approach in which the “Basic Principles” tab was designed to demonstrate each principle graphically. These demonstrations illustrate how these rules can be used to explain, control and predict the effects of drug administration. The description that accompanies the animation is useful in explaining the ‘whys’ of the principle and makes it meaningful for the students.
1. The learner will be able to list and describe the major therapeutic principles of drug administration.
2. Given a demonstration of a therapeutic principle the learner will be able to identify and replicate the relationship between the concepts (i.e. absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion of drugs) that underlie the principle
In order to fully acquire a principle, the student must learn to apply that principle in a variety of new situations (Smith & Ragan, 1999). Using the ‘drug options’ tab the student can practice replicating the basic principles by selecting a range of patient variables, routes of administration and drug dosages.
3. The learner will be able to identify the relevant principles which describe the magnitude and direction of change plotted in the blood concentration time curve as well as a visual representation of the area under the curve (AUC).
The fourth objective corresponds to an inquiry approach in which the learner uses trial and error to learn about the basic therapeutic principles. Student can randomly select a range of patient variables, routes of administration and drug dosages and try to induce the principle which applies to that situation.
4. By manipulating the patient variables, routes of administration and drug dosage the learner will be able to correctly explain, predict and control the effect of these changes on the patient.
As a consequence this LO has limited applicability outside of the context for which it was designed. To strip out these strategies would be to take out most of what is valuable about the learning object leaving us with just an 'object'. It's what Wiley (2002) referred to as the 'reusability paradox' and has serious implications for the concept of reusability in the LO paradigm.
Technical Reusability
Given the technical sophistication of the LO we designed using Flash MX it would be difficult to change it to reuse it in another context or to achieve other learning outcomes. It has about 15 layers with different movie clips, action scripting to generate graphs based on user input and an equation, and a drug database (text file which potentially could be edited). I highly doubt that anyone would be interested in delving into the code to change either the principles we have demonstrated or to alter the images we have used. We also did not meta-tag the various constituent components that combined to make up this object, so that others could retrieve and re-combine the constituent parts into alternate configurations. This would have been an incredibly arduous process. I know Friesen
and company are working hard to streamline the meta-tagging process but as it stands this remains a major hurdle to overcome in the mainstream adoption of the LO paradigm. Others have documented how difficult a task this is including a presentation at last year's CADE conference by Dr. Elizabeth Murphy and Kevin O’Leary who shared their experiences in "Locating, tagging, and transferring learning objects" (online report not available).
As a result of the technical and pedagogical issues outlined above, most users would be stuck with reusing the object "as is". It may not be entirely appropriate for their instruction, but probably better than the alternative. There is the possibility that it could be combined with resources at Martindale’s Health Science Guide, a resource center listing 60,000 teaching files and 129,000 medical cases as described by Downes (2000). Students could use the pharmacology LO to make decisions about the administration of drugs referenced in some of their cases.
[edit]
I think what Downes is talking about is the difference between reusing and re-purposing. Re-purposing implies that some changes would have to be made to the actual content of the learning object not just the strategies used to achieve learning with it. As the above analysis demonstrates our learning object can be reused but not re-purposed without a great deal effort.
[/edit]
Alternatives?
Downes (2003) seems to be advocating an "environment where people decide for themselves what to do and when to do it. It is the difference between requiring a director and requiring a coach." This is consistent with a constructivist view of learning in which the student defines what they will learn and how they will go about learning it. As an educator, I see the value in learner-centred design but not all students prefer to learn this way or have the skills necessary to execute such a plan. For example, a radical constructivist would have suggested that it was inappropriate to propose goals for the pharmacology LO because educators do not know what learners' need or want to learn (Smith & Ragan, 1999). However, with a subject as complex as pharmacokinetics one can't assume that individuals who are novices in this area would be able to devise an approach to acquire the knowledge.
To facilitate the kind of environment Downes is proposing would mean having to design learning objects based on the "common element" approach so that individual objects could be combined rather effortlessly by individual learners in a bid to acquire new knowledge. As I have argued above this is an impractical and undesirable solution.
[edit]
Downes is correct in stating that creating learning objects with that level of re-purposability, "shoots an arrow straight into the heart of the discipline known as instructional design".
[/edit]
Some of the major factors which seem to be overlooked when discussing the design of learning objects is the motivational and social dynamics of engaging in this type of activity.
Previous LO instructional design analogies and metaphors (legos, atoms, music analysis) have focused on the technical aspects of the process. Below is one that builds into account social issues and motivational factors. One that needs to be addressed if the movement is to continue going forward.
Asking an instructional designer to create an LO based on the "common element" is like asking a local politician to develop municipal legislation with a provincial (state) and national level audience in mind. Ideally it would be nice for people to think in terms of the 'bigger picture', but it's not too realistic. The local politician would have no idea about the law's potential application outside the local jurisdiction (or the context in which it would be implemented), and would incur the cost of enacting the legislation, not to mention the amount of work involved in creating it (taking all things into consideration). After all is said and done, the final product would have to be watered down in order to accommodate different perspectives and political motives. The result is something radically different than what was envisioned at the outset.
Furthermore the local politician is accountable to the constituents of the district he/ she represents and therefore meeting their needs is the primary consideration. And this is where my metaphor breaks down… because in the political context a politician who meets the need of local constituents is likely rewarded with re-election. Such is not the case for faculty who for the most part do not receive appropriate recognition for the time invested in learning to use and develop instructional technology (for more on this issue see Culp, G. (2001) Faculty Rewards in Digital Instructional Environments. Syllabus Magazine).
Conclusion
In conclusion, I think we should acknowledge the fact that attempting to realize the full potential of "reusability" with learning objects has potentially undesirable consequences. We really need to ask ourselves whether it is worth the opportunity cost of making our learning resources so reusable as to strip them of their inherent value. Although, it is getting easier to retrieve material (using RSS) and share resources (CAREO, CLOE, MERLOT), teaching will continue to be a time intensive process requiring a great deal of thought and effort if it is to be effective. Designing for a global audience leads to different decisions about granularity and sequencing of learning objects and takes the instructional designer away from their initial goal - meeting the needs of their learners.
More time should be spent on exchanging best practices for designing and applying learning objects to instructional contexts than the content itself.
References
Boskic, N. (2003). Faculty assessment of the quality and reusability of learning objects. Unpublished Master's thesis, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Alberta.
Downes, S. (2000). Learning objects. Retrieved November 2002. Available:
http://www.atl.ualberta.ca/downes/naweb/Learning_Objects.doc
Hamel, C.J., & Ryan-Jones D. (2002) Designing Instruction with Learning Objects.
International Journal of Educational Technology, 3(1). Available: http://www.ao.uiuc.edu/ijet/v3n1/hamel/index.html
Longmire, W. (2000). A primer on learning objects. ASTD Learning Circuits, March 2000. Online: http://www.learningcircuits.org/mar2000/primer.html
Quinn, C. & Hobbs, S. (2000). Learning objects and instructional components. Educational Technology and Society, 3(2). Online: http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/vol_2_2000/discuss_summary_0200.html
Shaw, S. (2002, February). Designing online facilities that really leverage learning. Paper presented at the Knowledge Media Design Institute, Interactive Webcast, University of Toronto, ON. [online]. Available: http://epresence.kmdi.toronto.edu/archived.asp
Smith, P.L., & Ragan, T.J. (1999). Instructional design. (2nd ed.). Toronto: John Wiley & Sons. Inc.
Wiley, D. A. (2000). Learning object design and sequencing theory. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT. Available: http://davidwiley.com/papers/dissertation/dissertation.pdf
Wiley, D.A. (2002). The reusability paradox. Available: http://rclt.usu.edu/whitepapers/paradox.html
No comments:
Post a Comment