Learning design: define learning

[Yishay Mor]

Hi all,

Xin raises an interesting question. If we want to engage in learning design, we need to understand what we mean by "learning" and what we mean by "design". 

My presentation explores some interpretations of "design", but broadly considers "learning" as "acquisition of knowledge".  Even if we accept this definition, the Xin invites us to ask "what is knowledge". I would propose that the Chinese proverb she offers resonates with the western Pragmatist view of knowledge - i.e. that "knowledge" derives meaning from action. In other words, the measure of how what I know is in what I do. If there is no change in the way I act, then I haven't learnt anything.

Any thoughts?

Yishay

On Thursday, 10 January 2013, Xin Alice Huang wrote:

Hi Yishay, 

I just watched the launch presentation on Prezi,.

What I like: The new task for faculty is to help the student to collect , organize and analyze information and turning it into knowledge and teach is to shape learning. 

What I need more help:  I feel there is something missing from the design process. To gain knowledge is not the end point, holding knowledge is not enough, you must know how to use knowledge to deal with real life situation, which is transfer of learning. In China, we have an old saying: what you learned is just knowledge, what you can apply is your real competence, and this is what matters." 

 I think learning design should cover transfer of learning. And I am not sure how this will be addressed in this course. I wonder if you can elaborate more for me?

Cheers,

Xin

On Thursday, January 10, 2013 12:38:21 PM UTC+13, Yishay Mor wrote:

Hi everyone,

According to our server statistics, about 400 of you managed to join the launch presentation live. We're really sorry about the difficulties you had, but now that the recording and the prezi are online at http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/6712 - we would very much like to hear your views:

- what did you like?

- what did you agree / disagree with most strongly?

- what did you find unclear and would like us to elaborate?

all the best,

Yishay

____________________
Dr. Yishay Mor
Senior Lecturer, Educational Technology
http://iet.open.ac.uk/people/yishay.mor
+44 1908 6 59373

 

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____________________
Dr. Yishay Mor
Senior Lecturer, Educational Technology
http://iet.open.ac.uk/people/yishay.mor
+44 1908 6 59373

 

[CE Gregoire]

Hello!

 

I wonder if the transfer of knowledge isn't incorporated into every step of the learning design process?  From consulting with one's users to design a product that meets their needs, writing goals and objectives, formatting the product, developing content, etc.  That's why the evaluation portion is so important - it's where we can (try to)measure if our product was successful in creating change. 

 

Just a thought!

Carolyn

[dan mcquillan]

hi yishay & xin

is the idea of critical pedagogy useful here? i.e. the learning context is based on a real world need for some kind of action.

xin's point about competence also reminds me of amartya sen and the capability approach.

dan

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-- 
Dr. Dan McQuillan
Lecturer in Creative & Social Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London
http://www.gold.ac.uk/computing/staff/d-mcquillan/

[Courtney Felton]

The distinction between information and knowledge I think is quite important, and part of the discussion of what it means to learn. I can acquire knowledge about particular topics that I may never use. If I can recite all of the capitols of the developed countries of the world, I have acquired the knowledge of both countries and capitols, so I can say that I have "learned" the capitols. I may not ever have a use for the majority of capitols on the list, but they are stored in my memory. Perhaps this is the more cognitive approach to what learning is. Xin's thoughts seem more behavioral, that there has to be evidence of my knowledge through a change in behavior. I think the reality is somewhere in the middle, depending on the type of information and its purpose. Factual information as the basis of building skill is important; you can't reliably and accurately perform a skill long-term if you don't have the knowledge behind the skill (or maybe you can). I think rather than looking at what is knowledge versus what isn't, I think it is more important to look at types of knowledge: knowing what (information), knowing how (skills), knowing why (theories?) may all be different categories of knowledge. Maybe there are more. 

[Kristina Hollis]

I definitely agree with your assessment as well Yishay.  I believe learning is making use of knowledge.  The acquisition of new information and the application of it in new contexts is what I would define as learning.  Design to me is the careful consideration of how the acquisition of this knowledge is facilitated and scaffolded and developed. 

Kristina

[clacks...@googlemail.com]

From my background in IT  and technology I would distinguish between knowledge and skill. Knowledge is what you are told, a skill is what you gain through practice. This kind of debate can easily become bogged down in questions of semantics. There is a fundamental difference between reading a book or web page on how to ride a bicycle and the ways in which people actually get the skill of riding a bicycle yet in English we would describe both as 'learning'.
 

[Xin Alice Huang]

Thanks all for your discussion. 

To make my thoughts clear, what I try to find out is how we can design a learning experience that will bridge the gap between holding the knowledge and apply to the real life situation.

Take myself as an example, before I moved to New Zealand, I took a wide range of different English courses to improve my language skill. I passed IELTS test, I passed TOEFL test, I passed the GRE test, I learned English vocabulary and practice in different scenario with native English speaker, I passed all test and I thought I have gained the knowledge and I would be fine. However, in reality, Native English speaker doesn't always speak English the way it supposed to be spoken, you don't say 'university" , instead, you say "uni"  Not to mention slang, idioms and phrases.  It took me a couple of years to get my head around and I am still trying to bridge the gap.

Learning context is based on a real world, but can never completely reflect what will happen in the real world. So I think only connecting to learner’s context or using scenarios based practice are not enough to transfer learning.

 At workplace, trainer and manager usually share the training and development responsibility, together to make transfer of learning happen. So when we design the learning experience, we will look at how to incorporate on-the-job coaching into the overall framework.

As to the educational context, sometime we describe university as Ivory Tower, focusing more on theory, framework, or knowledge, not focusing on dealing with real problems. And this brings to my another question, should the learning design framework or principle be different between educational setting from profit driven corporate setting?

Regards,

Xin (Alice)

[Yishay Mor]

"Knowledge is what you are told"?

Do others agree with this definition?

[Luis Salema]

Hi Yishay and all!

What’s the purpose of education?

I think this question is always present throughout the times. In different moments we want different answers from our educational systems… That’s why we will find different answer to the question. In my opinion, now, when we are discussing what learning is, we should think about different kinds of «knowledge». Do you pay attention to theoretical knowledge (to know facts, numbers, biographies, grammar, literature) or a practical knowledge (how to build a bridge, how to speak a language, how to do lab research). Different subjects have different «habits of mind» and different approaches to what learning is. In my opinion, «knowledge» is a mixture of theoretical data (and, by using this definition, I’m centered in a more traditional concept of learning) and of practical skills.

So, this complexity brings challenges to curriculum developers and to teachers. How is it possible to combine these two fields? What «kind of knowledge» do you want to develop in your students? What do they need, in order to get a job or to improve their skills?

The way we learn will be important for the learning outcomes and that’s why learning design is important… That’s why we are here… ;)

[Rob Nelson (L'il SQUID)]

Hi Yishay and my fellow MOOCers.

 

"Knowledge is what I am told" implies that the transfer activity is prmarily in one direction. This seems a very traditional view - it certainly fits much of what I learned in my younger days in my trade training and initial HE experiences.

 

I work primarily with international students for whom English may not even be their second language. Like Xin, they had to pass a language test to gain entry. Those tests rely on translation ability - they aren't necessarily focused on thinking ability, or the ability to apply concepts from one context to another.

 

What I'm facilitating for in my classroom-based work, and what I'm training for in my corporate work, is inherently the ability to come up with real-world solutions to real-world problems. The theory (knowledge) is a useful guide to the outcomes that my learners need to deliver. Before "letting an assessment loose" on the learners, I'm having this constant internal dialogue, as well as an external dialogue with my network, about how the transfer of training can be most effectively measured:

• To satisfy stakeholders who need to see evidence of academic rigour.
• To satisfy stakeholders who need to be able to reliably/consistently solve real-world problems, or have them solved.

That means the transfer measurement evolves at about the same pace as the content and delivery choices. It needs to be customised to the needs of the individual, organisation and industry. As facilitators of learning we need to be brave enough to accept there is no one-size-fits-all answer to Xin's question, and bold enough to experiment in search of the most appropriate answer for our situation.

 

Cheers

 

Rob
 

[Ida Brandão]

Olá Luis and colleagues,

I think that the purpose of Education can't be reduced to prepare for a job, in such unstable and changing times, one has to be prepared to face uncertainty and acquire the capacity to adapt and to learn in new contexts.

Education must have a broader scope and I would like to remind John Dewey, thinking of students:

«to prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities";

"education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction".

And considering the role of teachers:

«The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these Thus the teacher becomes a partner in the learning process, guiding students to independently discover meaning within the subject area.»

Muitos autores recentes têm reproduzido estas ideias do princípio do séc. XX. Recordo o livro de Prenski «Teaching Digital Natives».

[Heather Peters]

Hi Yishay,

I think 'knowledge is what you are told' is too narrow a definition. Knowledge, to me, means is not only what a person is told but what they discover for themselves. In this context discovery can be as simple as picking up a book or watching ants dissect a dead insect and carry it home to their nest. Discovery often involves piecing together 'bits' of knowledge in new ways or applying them to solve new problems - creating new knowledge. Or is that 'learning'? If it is, can learning occur in the absence of knowledge?

Cheers,

Heather

[Paige Cuffe]

Heather I would agree with your point about knowledge being acquired in many forms and many ways.

However, the point Xin has raised about the ability to convert knowledge into an application of your learning is a distinct and important part of the overall learning process.  This surely needs to be explicitly incorporated into our learning designs?  I have worked mostly with first year university students and am constantly reminded that this is not an automatic development, the relationship between facts, understanding and application can't be taken for granted.

Good to reading other people's thoughts on this, it pushes us to think about what we think, doesn't it?
Paige

[Apostolos Koutropoulos]

This is an interesting question, thanks Xin for bringing it up and Yishay for highlighting it (otherwise I would have missed it in the crazy amount of messages in the MOOC ;-) )

On the one hand, I do agree with the aspect of knowing = doing.  If I've learned something, then that knowledge is particularly useful if I am doing something with it.  I think there are two elements, however to consider:

• My view/opinion of acting upon my knowledge may be different than yours. Here is an example from my own education: When I was an MBA student I had to take Accounting - this was a required course. Do I know certain things about accounting? I sure do! But, I am not an accountant, nor do I want to be an accountant!  When I need to reference something, I pull out my textbook and refernce it, and I know that for a variety of things I should really talk to people who are "geeks" in accounting (just like I am a geek in other things). I learned how to do things in accounting, and I have some knowledge, but not nearly the amount of practical hands on experience (or interest) in doing accounting myself.
• The second thing about knowing is that you can CHOOSE to not change your actions.  You may go through a course and learn things, but choose to not change your personal actions. For example, back to my MBA days, I had to take 2 finance courses. I took them and passed (just like I did with accounting). I found the topic fascinating, but in some instances the morals of certain actions did not connect with my own sense of morality. Think of abritrage for example, where currency X is traded for currency Y, which is then traded for currently Z, which is then traded back for X in order to take advantage of small marker fluctuations and make money on this. I happen to believe that this is wrong (and certainly nothing that most individuals can benefit from since you need a lot of capital in order to make money in this). Did I learn about arbitrage and prove that I know about it?  I sure did :-) But I chose to not do anything with this.  I suppose me writing about now might be construed as "doing something" with the knowledge....but then again, we're back to bullet point #1 ;-)

A pragmatist view of knowledge is very limited.  My father reads a lot for example, but doesn't just read about his own discipline (auto mechanics), but about other things as well. He isn't always in an environment where he can act upon the knowledge he received, but does that mean he does not know certain things?

[Apostolos Koutropoulos]

I don't quite agree.

Information is what you are told.  Knowledge is what you get by applying (testing?) that information and incorporating it in some way to you toolbox :)

[Apostolos Koutropoulos]

It's very interesting when you say " However, in reality, Native English speaker doesn't always speak English the way it supposed to be spoken, you don't say 'university" , instead, you say "uni"  Not to mention slang, idioms and phrases.  It took me a couple of years to get my head around and I am still trying to bridge the gap."  :-)

This is the prescribed use of language, and in reality language is more messy than what we have in the classroom.  I can certainly relate to this because I had to learn English again when I was a kid.  What you are taught in class is certainly one variety of language, no more, or less, valid that other varieties.  What it comes down to is context, and in which context it is appropriate to use which variety of the language.

Even the tests (IELTS, TOEFL, GRE. etc.) test certain varieties of language, and those aren't necessarily what you need in all context :-)

[Heather Peters]

Hi Paige,

I can see the distinction you are making. There are particular skills need to transform knowledge, in terms of how you are defining it, into application. Do you think those skills are also knowledge?

Heather

[Paige Cuffe]

Ah.  Heather that's a good question.  Thinking about it know, yes, they are also a form of knowledge and can be 'learnt' and 'taught'.  Indeed, they must be learned this is not innate knowledge.
But is other knowledge only information without this separate 'application' knowledge? 

Paige

[Diana Laurillard]

Ida I like your reference to Dewey - always good to remember that there are few insightful things we can say about education and learning that were not said by Dewey a hundred years ago. 

And the job focus is certainly not sufficient. When I was on the Dearing Committee (Nat, Cttee of Inquiry into HE, back in '97), we had to restate 'the purpose of universities', and decided to approach it afresh, not go back to the Robbins Cttee, which was the only forerunner in the UK, back in '62. After long deliberations we came up with 3 out of 4 exactly the same: developing the individual, developing new knowledge, and preparing the workforce (in that order, though Robbins put that last one first). The only difference was that Robbins also had 'transmitting a common culture', and we could not accept either 'transmission' or 'common culture', so our fourth one was about developing the citizen in a diverse culture. Those four are a good definition of the purpose of education in any sector, I think, although 'developing new knowledge' would be a higher priority in HE, perhaps.

[Scott Johnson]

Can we think of knowledge as evidence of an activity informed by learning? If we are in a constant state of making sense of the world then we may be looking at a continuous fluid process without compartments of this or that which we have been told or absorbed. Our brains operate continuously and might reference bits of understandings loaded into them in an educational setting but how would my brain distinguish a deliberate effort to train it from the whole landscape it must operate in? My experience of the world is being in a constant state of filling gaps to explain what I'm sensing and some gaps may prompt me to seek explanations of others with more experience but I can also find completion from scraps of incomplete thoughts and structures built completely within the black box of my imagination where anything can be made to appear connected to something else. So maybe knowledge is the ability to chain together a sensible world we can live in at some level of stability? Of course we need to also operate in the world outside our own heads so maybe we as social animals have a more sophisticated strategy for sense making within a group of minds that allows us to trade packets of understanding amongst each other and this process is learning?

I wonder Xin if knowledge proves itself in activity that it is close to being organic and somehow can be nurtured or directed to grow in a particular way? Sorry if this sounds like I'm thinking out loud but my experience tells me people can make sense out of virtually anything but that doesn't mean every constructed sense-object is useful; and some may be very toxic. And here I'm stuck...

[Denise Ozdeniz]

I think we have different types of knowledge 1. cognitive knowledge ( knowing about things, how things work in theory, naming things). 2. procedural knowledge ( applying what we know to operate in the world and within a social group.) This can be the skill of doing something such as driving a car or the skill of back channelling and showing that you are following a conversation in a culturally appropriate way. 3. Metaknowledge ( knowing how to learn, how to organise learning and being creative e.g.) This is the kind of knowledge that Bloom's taxonomy of critical thinking skills deals with.

 

Metaknowledge is essential to all three types of knowledge. The more metacognitively aware a learner, the more they are capable of learning independently and collaboratively.  Educators often use the acquiring of cognitive knowledge to strenghten a person's ability to think critically. If a historian spends hours learning the Hitite language and script, this 'information' would not exist in isolation in some part of thier brain - the whole process of learning would have heightened their pattern recognition ability, their ability to recall information via a system of memory anchors etc, which could then be transfered to other parts of their live. I do not think any type of knowledge exists in isolation- synergy dominates.

 

Have you read the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell-  knowing things without being able to articulate how we know them and what processes are going on in our bodies at the time?

Denise

[LesC]

Didn't Montaigne ask the same question centuries ago "Que sais-je?" - What do I know? 

Here's a personal story: I was visiting and staying with an elderly friend on Waiheke, an island in New Zealand close to Aukland. They regularly have water shortages and most people collected rainwater in huge storage tanks that acted as their household supply. I was helping do the washing up after having had a glorious meal of fish that we had caught that day and in the process my friend said "New Zealanders always say, 'stack the dishes' " and she mimicked the New Zealand accent, we laughed and we continued on doing the dishes ( I did stack them - not thinking why and nor did she offer any further explanation). Now move on several years later and I was living back in the UK and found myself temporarily without running hot water so was relying on boiling a kettle. That was when I discovered that stacking the dishes before placing them in the sink reduced the amount of water needed dramatically.

So here's my question: did she teach me that? I already had the knowledge that this was done but I learned from that knowledge by being in a new situation and applying it as a response to that situation.

So, is knowledge information? - in whatever way it is gathered, not necessarily by being told. I could gather information about lots of things independently in lots of different ways; observation, experience, investigation, experimentation ....

Is any of this relevant to this discussion?