I. Summary and critique: Merrill’s 5 Star Instructional Design Rating
Merrill’s rating system offers up to five stars for instructional design, depending on the design’s adherence to the First Principles of Instruction (Merrill, Barclay & Schaak, 2008) from the Week 1 reading. It offers detailed criteria for judging adherence to each principle, and offers bronze, silver and gold levels for each star category, presumably (it is not stated explicitly) reflecting the number of criteria met for each star. The categories are:
1. Problem (Task-centered approach in First Principles): Is the courseware presented in the context of real world problems? Does it engage at the problem or task level, not just the operations level (as in: step 1, step 3, step 3)?
2. Activation: Does the courseware attempt to activate relevant prior knowledge or experience? If they have relevant experience or knowledge, are the given the opportunity to demonstrate it?
3. Demonstration: Does the courseware show examples of what is to be learned rather than merely tell what’s to be learned? Are they given examples and nonexamples, and given multiple representations and demonstrations?
4. Application: Do learners have an opportunity to practice and apply their newly acquired knowledge or skill?
5. Integration: Does the courseware encourage learners to transfer the new knowledge or skill into their everyday life? Do they get to publicly demonstrate it? Reflect on and discuss it? Create, invent and explore new and personal ways of using it?
Merrill makes clear that the rating system is not appropriate for all instruction, including reference material, psychomotor skills courseware, and tell-and-ask “information-only” materials such as quizzes. It is, however, “most appropriate for tutorial or experiential (simulation) courseware.” (P. 1)
I find the five-star rating system to be thorough, complete, and even intuitive from an action/social/situative learning perspective. Even if courseware is designed for learners to interact with the material and not other learners or, perhaps, even a live instructor, the rating system’s attention to public demonstration of new knowledge and skills implies a level of social feedback based on such demonstrations that allows for deeper learning and situates such cognition within the learner’s community of practice.
I would point out one seeming inconsistency, however, and it my simply be due to the brevity of the description the reading presents. Merrill makes clear that “T&A (tell-and-ask) instruction gets no stars.” Yet under criterion No. 4, he clearly allows for information-about, parts-of and kinds-of practice, all of which imply a prior “telling” followed by an “asking” for a skills demonstration. Clearly, Merrill endorses instruction that goes beyond mere fact presentation followed by true/false, multiple-choice or checklist assessment. He would do well to state explicitly that the point is not to merely listen to facts and respond to questions, but to engage knowledge in a practical way and demonstrate its use in a social context.
II. Rating for the Tulane business module
http://payson.tulane.edu/courses/ltl/projects/entrepreneur/main.swf
http://payson.tulane.edu/courses/ltl/projects/entrepreneur/main.swf
Five stars. (Based largely on “Veasna’s Pig Farm”)
1. Is the courseware presented in the context of real world problems? Yes. Veasna saw a real social need as a business opportunity and acted to address it.
2. Does the courseware attempt to activate relevant prior knowledge or experience? Yes, but weakly. The tutorial makes clear that business ideas can come from anywhere – even TV, friends or one’s current job. In that sense, it presents life experiences as relevant to identifying business opportunities.
3. Does the courseware demonstrate (show examples) of what is to be learned? Yes. It offers models for a product, service, restaurant and retail business, and within each offers examples of a business product that must be mastered to create those businesses. For Veasna, it was the business plan.
4. Do learners have an opportunity to practice and apply their newly acquired knowledge or skill? Yes. The Veasna module invites learners to manipulate various aspects of a business plan based on the pig farm, including marketing plans, income statements and operations management plans.
5. Does the courseware provide techniques that encourage learners to integrate the new knowledge or skill into their everyday life? Yes. The final “Your Own Business” module explicitly encourages the learner to “dare to begin” and walks the learner through the steps for identifying a business opportunity, pitching a business idea, identifying and acquiring resources, and starting and managing a business.
III. Rating for Dreamweaver CS4 Essential Training at Lynda.com. 10 hours, 15 minutes
Address (IU I.D. required):
Four stars.
1. Is the courseware presented in the context of real world problems? Yes. The course progressively builds a website for a surfboard company.
2. Does the courseware attempt to activate relevant prior knowledge or experience? Yes, though not in a systematic way. The instructor often makes reference to “if you’ve ever tried to …” experiences, most often as a means of expressing how well Dreamweaver aids web page design or solves challenges such as creating a single CSS style sheet for multiple pages of one website.
3. Does the courseware demonstrate (show examples) of what is to be learned? Yes. Lynda.com’s practice files, downloadable with each course, provide numerous examples that are used within each lesson, or “movie,” to show how the program works. The progression within each lesson is usually presented as challenge-application-solution. Further, different lessons employ different iterations of the website under development, allowing the learner to see how the entire site is built piece by piece.
4. Do learners have an opportunity to practice and apply their newly acquired knowledge or skill? Yes. The practice files allow learners to follow along and mimic the instructor’s actions during the lesson, and/or to repeat those actions as often as one wishes.
5. Does the courseware provide techniques that encourage learners to integrate the new knowledge or skill into their everyday life? Not explicitly, and for this reason I award no star for integration. Such application is implied within each lesson and the tutorial as a whole, however, and one could easily award a star for it.
IV. Summary and critique: Kim and Frick's Changes in student motivation during Online learning
The authors examine the literature for influences on motivation among learners who choose self-directed, web-based instruction, developing a theoretical framework organized into three major categories: internal (features of coursework that can influence motivation), external (features of the learning environment that can influence motivation), and personal (influences caused by the learner) factors. Also, the authors compare their framework to Keller’s ARCS model of motivation – Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction – and find numerous areas of commonality. The authors study the factors that predict learner motivation at the beginning, during and at the end of e-learning courses; whether motivation changes during instruction; and the factors related to such motivational change. The study population was about 800 adults learners in the United States.
Among the authors’ major findings:
· 94.2 percent of respondents chose online learning because face-to-face learning did not fit their schedule or was not available, or because the online learning was “convenient and flexible.” (P. 10)
· Respondents reported relatively high motivation before and during the course; more than a third reported increased motivation during the course, while more than a quarter reported decreased motivation.
· Learners’ motivation during the course was the best predictor of positive change in motivation.
· Motivation at the start of the course was the best predictor of motivation during the course.
· The course’s perceived relevance was the best predictor of motivation at the start of the course.
· Along with relevance, learners’ competence in/comfort with technology makes them more likely to be motivated when they begin a course.
· Older learners have advantages over younger learners in that they are more likely to be motivated when starting a course, and more likely to be concerned with the relevance of course content. The latter is attributed to older learners’ apparent increased knowledge of the learning required for their jobs.
· E-learning courses should be designed to help learners stay motivated.
“The findings in this study make practical sense,” the authors write (P. 14). I would agree. People will not start or stick with an online course that they perceive has little relevance to work or life goals, or if they struggle with its technology. It’s unsurprising, too, that relevance is of greater concern to older workers and that they come to online learning with greater motivation. This reflects my own life experience: I look for direct benefits to my personal or professional life in my online courses, and find myself less motivated by learning for learning’s sake. I want my learning to “take me somewhere” – that is, help me to accomplish something concrete, not simply take up space in my mind.
References
Kim, K.J & Frick, T.W. (2011). Changes In Student Motivation During
Online Learning. Educational Computing Research, Vol. 44(1) pp. 1-23. Downloaded from Oncourse April 7, 2011
Merrill, D. (2001). Five Star Rating Scale. Downloaded from Oncourse April 7, 2011
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