An interesting learner I've known

It was my first interesting experience of understanding how differently younger and older people are learning. This understanding caught me when I, being 30 years old, decided to take one not required and very intensive undergraduate level English language class for beginners.

I was really eager to take the opportunity of those English classes since I was planning to go for PhD and I had zero English knowledge (my second language was German).

Actually nobody from my master program supported my decisions since those English classes in our University were “famous” as really heavily loaded and very intensive. Some people were joking that English classes were sort of the “method” of the university to make some students pay tuition (only the students with “lower average grade” needed to pay tuition), since those intensive English classes had been badly lowering average grade for lots of students. In my class most students were undergraduate freshmen and several masters’ students who as me were much older (30 +), had families and were working and studying together. The professor, who taught this class, was really unpleasant one. She did not have good social and teaching skills to help us to manage our really heavy course load. She was not clear with her explanations, had quite threatening style of teaching (what is not the case in the USA :) as well as constantly gave us tests that encompassed some materials not “covered” in the class and only those students who were lucky to have some English from their high schools were able to get “B” or “A” on the test (what a strategy to teach the beginners in English!).

Most of masters students were frustrated with the teacher and created “a group” that was making bad jokes and severely criticizing the professor. Actually there were many reasons to be not happy and to be “right”, but after getting a really low score (even if I had had studied!) from the first test, I realized that it is not a good way to be just only frustrated and angry and that I needed to do something about it. First I recognized that after 5 years of teaching and not learning anything “totally new” my mind was sort of “rusty”. It needed some time and “exercises” to get its speed :) Then I compared master students who had hard time with this class with the freshmen and I saw a big difference. Not only those freshmen (girls most of) were doing much better on the tests then we, master students, they even looked differently: they were happy and relaxed as well as seemed quite positive toward this “hard” teacher, teaching methods, and workload. They seemed quite open to any learning experience and you cannot see any shadow of fear of failure in their faces :) What a difference! I realized that to survive in this class (it means to get at least B) I need “to choose” to which group I “belong”. And I “chose to be” a younger student. It means together with all my hard work I needed to become more relaxed, enjoyable and open toward the teacher as well as my learning experience :) It is a really hard to be an “older” master student, because your mind is always stressed out since you have so many duties, since you forgot how to learn, and since you have too many opinions -“no I cannot learn that, it is too hard form me”, “no this is not for me”, “ I don’t need that”, “this teacher is just bad one” etc. as well as expectations for everything. You are not so relaxed and open anymore. I think it is what impedes learning process and is part of reason why older people learn much slower than younger ones. To be able to learn fast and good your mind needs to be really relaxed and open to learning experience. Look how children are listening. They “listen” with “all their bodies”. They just really focused and relaxed at the same moment and they don’t afraid to make any mistakes, ask any time questions and be silly.

It reminds me the situation with my son, who first time got exposed to English language when he started to go to preschool. An interesting thing happened with him. Even if he was already talking in full sentences in Lithuanian language, suddenly he started babbling as 7-12 month children do. And it was not Lithuanian babbling, it was English babbling. It could look really strange or my disastrous for outsider’s eye, but it was his right way to learn perfect English. He wasn’t thinking about if he will look silly or inappropriate, he just enjoyed them self and the practice. In a few years he started to speak perfect English, while my English is still sometimes hard to understand for people :)

To learn more efficiently, I think adults need to be not only relaxed, positive and happy, but also need to be sort of childish - means to be capable to fully immerse themselves in the learning process, be relaxed and focused at the same time, open and trustful, enjoyable and silly and as well as insistent and eager to find their best way to learn.

I do not think that adults can have the same capability to learn as children do, but may those understandings of what impedes learning as well as “body memories” of how they successfully went about learning when they were kids can improve adults' learning processes.

As happy end, I got B from this intensive English class and quite good basics to build more English on that later.

Why Design Instruction II

Reflecting on my readings about online learning as well as on my little experience in ELP helping in design several online courses, I would state that all those written above benefits of the use of systemic design process are just essential in creating online course.

1) Creation of distance classes most of time is a team work and requires much more money and time then face to face classes. The use of systematic planning would increase more effective communication and will save time and money.

2) Online classes need to be thoughtfully designed, because students often have higher expectations for the quality of online classes, since most of times they are paying higher tuition for distance classes than for face to face.

3) To be effective, online classes always must be learner centered! It means that starting point here needs to be learner’s needs. In “face to face” classes especially in undergraduate classes learners are more ”homogenous” and instructor can “assume” needs of the general population, while in distance classes learners are more heterogeneous (age, occupation, nationality, geographic place). Because of that the learner’s analyze while creating/modifying online instruction is really crucial for the creation of the effective instruction. The instructor needs to investigate learners’ attitudes, expectations, learners’ context (family and work), etc. and then start to modify instruction – its scope, instructional strategies etc. Students’ preferences can be expressed as learning styles, preference to learn individually or in the group, even preferences for particular, meaningful to them content. A lot of distance learners are non traditional students that already have full or part time jobs. Using such data, the instructor can choose more appropriate instructional strategies (hands on activities versus readings and tests) as well as content that would make learning more meaningful for learners and would enhance their current carriers.

4) Online learning environment defers from “face to face very much”. In online learning environment the instructor cannot get instant impression of the students (are they satisfied or confused), as well as he/she can not instantly clarify some points of the course for everybody aloud as it can be the case in the “face to face” class. Why I think to be successful online classes need to go through a robust instructional design process, through many analyzes and evaluation processes and then must be presented to learners with clearly articulated goals, objectives , syllabus, policies, expectations, grading, means of feedback etc.

5) About the need of alignment of all elements. Online learning can offer high interactivity by using Message Board, Chat, Wimba, Group work, Audio, Video, social software etc. But the use of those communication tools needs to be reasonably aligned with course objectives, instructional strategy, assessment, etc. I came across some articles that analyzed a case when learners by using all kind of communication and productivity tools were engaged in social construction of meaning and problem solving activities that were targeted to foster higher order thinking, application and transfer, but at the end of semester students had to take a proctored test that measured declarative knowledge and to which insructor allocated most points of the grade. Such lack of alignment in objectives, instructional strategies and assessment could overload students, bring failure to lots of them or discourage them from the activities that were targeted for higher order thinking and transfer.

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6) About reusability. It is more common for distance classes to be created by one instructor or a team and then taken over by other instructor, why I think that logical, clear and systemic design of the course would ensure that the instructor who takes over the class won’t be lost :)

7) Another idea is that the engagement in the systemic design of the instruction could move the teacher for his/her comfort zone in using a particular learning theory as dominant (behaviorism or constructivism etc.) and would engage him/her in the design of the instruction were he/she would apply other learning theories too. For example, the teacher who uses “radical” constructivist approach will find that writing measurable performance objectives or appropriate chunking and sequencing of information make instruction more effective than the use of constructivist learning strategies alone.

Why Design Instruction I

Why design instruction?

My simple point would be that the use of the systematic design process of the instruction enables the creation of a really good (workable) instruction.

Even if this assignment is more about the reflection of our experience in education, I looked up in several instructional design books to get more insights on this question:

1) Some instructional designer point out that the use of the systemic design process brings effectiveness, efficiency of the instruction as well as the instruction can be created within reasonable cost and time. (Smith & R.J. Ragan, 1999; Morrison S., M. Ross & J. E. Kemp, 2004).

2) Dick, Carey & Carey (2007) articulate the idea that the ID process “shifts focus from the content to the learner” by bringing learners needs as starting point in designing instruction.

3) Morrison, Ross & Kemp (2004) state that good, effective instruction fosters positive attitude and motivation and, the most important, helps students to succeed in their learning. “A successful instructional program is one in which as many students as possible have succeed, reaching mastery level for accomplishing the specified outcomes (p.10)

4) Dick, Carey & Carey (2004) point out that the systemic instructional design insures that “the learner will be evaluated fairly with instruments that measure the skills and knowledge described in the objectives” (p. 10).

5) Systematically designed instruction can be reusable with as many learners as possible (Dick, Carey & Carey, 2007)

Summarizing those thoughts, the advantages of the systemic design of instruction would be the creation of the really good, effective and efficient (in time and cost) and learner centered instruction, where all elements of design (goals, learner characteristics, objective, type of instruction, assessment) are thoroughly analyzed, articulated and aligned; as a result of that, the most of students can be successful in reaching specified learning outcomes.

References:

Dick W., Carey L., & Carey J., O. (2007). The systemic design of instruction. New York: Longman.

Morrison G., R., Ross S., M. & Kemp J., E (2004). Designing Effective Instruction. NJ: Wiley.

Smith L., P., Ragan T., J. (1999). Instructional design. NewYork: Wiley.