Learning Theory and Instructional Design 13

LEARNING THEORY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN 1

LEARNING THEORY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

SYNTHESIS OF CURRENT READINGS

Erich Widemark, MSN, RN, FNP

November 2003 LEARNING THEORY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN 2

INTRODUCTION

How do we learn? How do we teach? How does modern technology and information management alter the process of learning and teaching? These are very complex questions whose answers will impact the future of education globally. The advancement of computer technology and communications has further created a chiasm between learners and educators, forcing a paradigm shift in the way education is and will be delivered in the future. This paper will glean the surface of learning theory, and discuss its effects and implications for the practice of instructional design. It will focus on the future of instructional design and the paradigm shift that’s guaranteed to change the way we learn and teach.

LEARNING THEORY

How do we learn? Many developmental psychologist have spent their lives answering this particular question. Some rely on the study of brain physiology to describe the process, while others search social, cultural, and behavioral domains. These theories of learning, based on collaborative knowledge and research, give us an idea of how learning occurs.

There are several popular learning domains that have been studied. Cognitive learning theory, based on the work of Piaget, focuses on the internal workings of the brain, and its response to the outside environment. According to Vander Zanden (2000), cognitive theory examines internal physiological processes including sensation, perception, reasoning, thinking, problem solving, and memory. Piaget identified several stages of development that he based on the age of the individual. This suggests that LEARNING THEORY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN 3 different learning methods may be more effective for different age groups. It also means that people may need to be developmentally ready to learn certain concepts or ideas.

Cognitive theory is one of the most widely studied because of it extensive utilization in education.

Another domain that has been important to learning theories is behaviorism.

Skinner revolutionized this area of developmental psychology in his article entitled, “The

Science of Learning”, published in 1954. (Reiser, 2001). Skinner and others believed learning was manifested by behaviors, which were learned based on stimuli from the surrounding environment. Many agree that behaviorism is thought to be the basis of many instructional design theories (Dijkstra, Seel, Schott, & Tennyson, 2000).

Ecological and sociological theories of learning have concentrated on the surrounding environments and communities and their relationship on the impact on an individual’s learning. These theorists recognize that the individual and his/her surrounding perceptions may not be the only part of learning, but rather a larger picture which would include the impact of the community, society, weather, geography, etc.

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

How do we teach? While learning theory concentrates on how we learn, instructional design focuses on the process of delivering knowledge. Reigeluth (1999) described instructional design theory as a guide that describes how to better help people learn and develop.

While learning theory describes a phenomenon, instructional design offers guidance describing what behaviors will most likely improve a person’s education or LEARNING THEORY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN 4 performance. Reigeluth (1999) describes four characteristics that are unique to instructional design theory. Instructional design theory is design oriented, includes methods of instruction, components of instruction, and is probabilistic.

Design orientation suggests that instead of instructional design focusing on the results of a given action, it favors the process needed to attain specific learning goals. In contrast, learning theory is deterministic, most interested in how something was learned.

Methods of instruction describes the actual process of education delivery. This researches the learner, content to be learned, surrounding environment, and any limitations to the process of instruction. This area of instructional design theory often utilizes the concepts of learning theory in the development of the process. Here is likely where there is a marriage between instruction design theory and learning theory. This is also the point where curriculum theory is used.

An important aspect of instructional design theory is the ability to break the design process into different components or stages. While one component may concentrate on teaching a specific concept, another will evaluate the learner’s success.

The components may have subcomponents, making instructional design theory not just one object, but a whole collection of different processes.

An instructional design theory must be probabilistic. This means that the design process meets certain goals that will most likely show some type of improvement in performance or knowledge. These improvements are not guaranteed. This is different than other types of theories that are deterministic; focusing more on a probable process to attain a known goal, instead of a known process to attain a probably goal. LEARNING THEORY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN 5

Instructional design theory has the purpose of taking the answers to the question regarding how we learn, and stepping further to create ideas about how we teach. In order to quantify instructional design theories accurate, designers should strive to develop theories that neatly fit the above described framework.

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN DOMAINS

Instructional design theories are separated into three primary groups. These are cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. This is a framework on which instructional design theory is built.

The most used and studied domain is cognitive. This is because most instructional material is built using the cognitive domain. Of all the different areas, this is perhaps the most easy to understand for its analytical steps to completion.

Affective domains are those that rely on more abstract concepts including emotions, attitudes, and personality. This is a real difficult area in which to design instruction because of the nature the content which may include values, morals, or attitudes. Futhermore, it is sometimes difficult to measure success of learning objectives that are often conceptual in nature.

The psychomotor domain concentrates on physical manifestations of learning which could include walking, riding a bicycle, or using a keyboard. These theories concentrate on developing procedures based on how people learn tasks. It is strictly based in the physical world relying on touch, movement, and observation to best teach people. LEARNING THEORY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN 6

LEARNING PHILOSOPHIES

While the origins of education are believed to be a relationship between a master and an apprentice, American instruction in the twentieth century has gone through many stages.

According to Tavers and Rebore (2000), progressivism entered American education in the 1920s, emphasizing individual learning, vocational, and career education. The curriculum was created by the teachers, but focused towards the needs and interests of the student. This was a period of customization. This was also started in a pre-industrial America before the advent of factories and mass production, but lasted into the 1960s, well beyond the start of the industrial revolution.

As World War II ended, and the industrial age was born, essentialism was a popular educational philosophy. This concept is known in many places as traditionalism or conservatism. This model preached the need to teach the basics and remain general so as to ensure everyone had a broad educational base (Tavers & Rebore, 2000). This was an idea stating conformity and compliance. It stressed standardization of information, with the goal being transmission of past knowledge to future generations.

Other theorists suggested different philosophies including perennialism, social reconstructionism, and existentialism. Although many teachers share these philosophies today, it was constructivism that seemed to push America into the current educational revolution.

Towards the end of the twentieth century, Bruner (1966) suggested the constructivist theory of learning. His ideas researched the concept that learners build from prior knowledge, and education is more a process of self-discovery with instructor LEARNING THEORY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN 7 guidance. This philosophy has become very popular, and has affected instructional design in a large way.

PHILOSOPHY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

Instructional design during the progressive movement relied heavily on psychomotor and cognitive domains for instruction. Customized educational programs relied on individualized instruction consisting of teacher-student communication. Tasks were observed and practiced before being mastered by the learner. Progressivism started without the benefit or availability of mass communication, so often the classroom was the only way of getting the content out, and instructional design was limited to classroom- based methods and activities. Not until World War II did instructional design find tools and researchers who strived to use technology to be innovative. One of the earliest examples of this was the old Army training films. Using video, sound, and motion, these

Army researchers, who later become pioneers in education, saw the ability to redesign instruction with a technological edge.

As progressivism slowly faded from public view, essentialism became popular.

The launching of Sputnik in 1957 had much to do with this (Tavers & Rebore, 2000).

Essentialist instructional design concentrated on creating teacher to student based lessons that were standardized for all. The instruction focused on memorization and procedure- skills development, while discouraging customization and individuality. This attitude reflected in the surrounding environment of the industrial age. Assembly line education in which everyone attended class, memorized ideas, but few were able to develop these into applied concepts. Mass communication was available at this point, and offered LEARNING THEORY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN 8 increased diversity of lesson planning and curriculum design. Distance education relied on television, videotape, and the postal service.

With the constructivist movement, ideas changed from standardization to customization with facilitation instead of instruction. This is rapidly developing, and probably will become the philosophy of the 21th century. Today’s technology allows for the transfer of personalized content as well as knowledge centers which can help the learner with possible resources, all available online! The Internet certainly has made a large impact in this area, as it has in the rest of our lives.

PARADIGM SHIFT

Because of these new and changing philosophies, education has had to make a paradigm shift in the way it does business. While the industrial age encouraged standardization, bureaucratic organization, centralized control, compliance, conformity, and compartmentalization, the next era is that of customization, autonomy with accountability, initiative, diversity, and holism (Reigeluth, 1999).

Technical requirements for employment are much more complicated than in the past. Manufacturing jobs are moving to other countries, and there has become a greater emphasis on corporate training. Because of this, educators have realized the importance of teaching towards goals. They have also learned that people learn at different rates and in different ways. It has become necessary to analyze the learner as an individual and decide collaboratively what the learner’s goals will become.

This change will force instructional design to switch from a passive learning system based with instructor control, to that of an active learning system which will be LEARNING THEORY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN 9 learner centered. This creates much difficulty in the traditional setting, which concentrates on delivering the same educational message to large numbers of students at the same rate.

Computer technology has enabled e-learning. Schools can customize a lesson plan, and deliver it to any group of people allowing the learner to work at their own rate.

This new demand for online education has created a large need for instructional designers. These experts need to use constructivist based learning theories to develop future curriculum. They must harness and utilize all types of technology to design material that is congruent with many types of different learning styles.

Two key characteristics of this paradigm shift include the needs for autonomy with accountability, and initiative (Reigeluth, 1999). Learners who may have had a lifetime of traditional classroom experience, will need to understand online learning.

These learners must be able to take initiative so as to guarantee their own learning experience. They will need to know that they can be autonomous, but must understand that they are also accountable for their learning, a concept that shifts a large amount of the learning responsibility to the learner.

INSTRUCTIONAL SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT

While instructional design theory concentrates on the overall conceptualization of an instructional process, instructional systems development acts as the complete plan, customized with further information for implementation in any environment.

Instructional Systems Design looks at other details of an instructional program which may include cost-benefit analysis, personnel assignments, and other “nuts and bolts”. LEARNING THEORY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN 10

According to Dijkstra, Seel, Schott, and Tennyson (1997), instructional design primarily identifies learning goals and remains a part of instructional systems development. They go on to say that instructional systems development is a much more conceptualized system usually planning everything from the initial needs assessment, to any implementation or evaluation eventually needed.

Instructional systems development can be thought of as the glue which holds several theories and practices together in a complete package. It incorporates learning theory, design theory, and curriculum theory. In addition, it may include economics and management systems theory as well.

CURRICULUM THEORY

According to Reigeluth (1999), curriculum theory as historically concentrated on what to teach, while instructional design as focused on how to teach it. Often these two frameworks are combined for the ease of the overall design process. A seamless integration of these two theories enable a smoother planning process in the development of instructional systems. The instructional design process starts with the development of educational goals, which are created during curriculum development.

TECHNOLOGY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

How does modern technology and information management alter the process of learning and teaching? With the creation of online environments, instructional design theory is forced to take on a completely new role, integrating curriculum development with technology delivery. Instructional designers are forced to develop new ways of LEARNING THEORY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN 11 delivering instruction using learning theory, while working in a new environment. Part of the process of instructional design is the initial assessment of the learner. Learners in an online environment may have different characteristics than those in a traditional education setting. These learners should be better at time management skills, more proactive in seeking out educational opportunities, and able to hunt for their own supplemental resources.

Instructional designers need to change their methods to meet the needs of these new learners. This may include greater reliance on internet resources, multimedia presentations, and perhaps even newer technologies not in wide-scale use yet. Often, because of these new technologies, older models of instructional design which rely on traditional classroom delivery concepts, may not be useful. Furthermore, more concentration will be needed on different learning theories which are more transferable over this new technology medium.

Constructivist theory offers instructional designers the ability to work with students on this level, giving the learner much more control over their educational process, encouraging the building of present knowledge on past experiences and learning concepts.

CONCLUSION

Learning is perhaps one of the most important concepts in any civilization. For societies to advance in cultural and technology, learning becomes an integral part of the process. Societies collect and store information. For the knowledge to be useful, its LEARNING THEORY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN 12 members must be able to apply and integrate this data over many different areas.

Learning is part of human development.

For learning to work, teaching must be understood. While learning theories concentrate on how we learn, curriculum design can define the products of teaching.

Instructional design can focus on delivery, utilizing the concepts of developmental psychology and learning theory. To wrap it up, instructional systems design can integrate this in a package defining the overall education system.

Part of instructional systems design concentrates on the environment, which is changing substantially with new technology and innovative ideas. The paradigm of the industrial movement, which concentrated on standardization and mass delivery, is no longer applicable in the information/digital age. Instructional designers must change this paradigm with the help of constructivist philosophy, to deliver education in new ways, to a new type of learner. LEARNING THEORY AND INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN 13

REFERENCES

Bruner, J. (1966). Toward a theory of instruction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

Dijkstra, S., Seel, N., Schott, F., Tennyson, R. (1997). Instructional design:

International perspective. Volume 2: Solving instructional design problems. New

Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Palloff, R. M., Pratt, K. (2001) Lessons from the cyberspace classroom: The realities of online teaching. San Francisco: Josey-Bass.

Reigeluth, C. (1999). Instructional-design theories and models: A new paradigm of instructional theory volume ii. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Reiser, R. (2001). A history of instructional design and technology: part ii: a history of instructional design. Educational Technology Research & Development 49(2).

Tavers, P., Rebore, R. (2000). Foundations of education: Becoming a teacher.

Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Vander Zanden, J.W. (2000). Human Development (7th ed.) New York, NY:

McGraw-Hill.