Designing Quality Topic 2
Learning within clearly defined trajectories that lead to mastery
VISION
Increasing learning by doing. In terms of the ICAP framework (Chi, 2009) this means increasing the proportion of constructive and interactive student engagement activity as compared to passive and active activities. Doing these complex constructive activities often involves applying tacit knowledge that experts do not realize they are using, and this knowledge can be a barrier to novice learners.
Chi, M.T.H. (2009). Active-Constructive-Interaction. A conceptual framework for differentiating learning activities. Topics in Cognitive Science, 1, 73-105.
- A generic trajectory regardless of content is key.
- Grain-size is important – breaking knowledge down to smallest knowledge components. Exploring tacit knowledge through subject-matter experts – it forces you to touch all the components and avoid the expert “blind spot”. Breaking it down to this extent through “storyboarding” helps reveal gaps and encourages creativity.
- Cognitive science – curriculum that uses knowledge components does better than those that don’t
- We think that in addition to being about to do something is as important to understanding why it is important and how they know?
- Once you generate a pathway you can analyze in terms of measure of quality.
- Being able to identify a clear definition of what the knowledge components for which you are assessing mastery.
- Should be assessments (embedded when possible); tool for the learner rather than just external mastery assessment; embedded with feedback to continue trajectory.
- Do it yourself, do with peer, teach it – mastery includes for self and in collaboration.
Contextual variety
Instructional development design process – ideal world:
- Identify knowledge components (small pieces of knowledge) you are trying to achieve mastery of – finer-grained breakdown of CCSS and 21st century skills – reinventing rather than repurposing. Alignment to standards.
- Tasks – large variety of tasks – Bloom’s Taxonomy. Task analyzed in terms of knowledge components and contexts.
- Trajectory is a set of tasks that address knowledge components in multiple occurrences and multiple contexts – Bloom’s Taxonomy for individuals. You need a lot of occurrences (frequency) in a lot of contexts to measure its quality. Do it yourself, Do it with someone else, Teach it to someone else
- Assessment of the knowledge components scattered or embedded (preferred where possible) in the trajectory. Assessment should be as much a tool for the learner as the assessor – for the learner by observable for another so you don’t have to do it again.
This is a costly form of instructional design that requires widespread adoption and use to reach as many learners as necessary to amortize the cost. To address the challenge, we recommend infrastructures of collaborative construction; open and public sharing of activities, design documents and rationales; connection of content, assessments; and view iteration and development over time.
- Technological infrastructure to make this easy for people to do this
- Process problems – legacy structure – incomplete structures or go back to original templates without improvements
- Time limitations to plan to this degree of detail – retrofitting a piece of a course rather than building from the beginning
- Scale – discussion and plan for scalability is required
- Design learning experiences that would be quality
- Focus on CCSS and 21st century skills
- To apply and use – break them down into knowledge components so they are manageable
- Sequence them into activities that include continuous assessment leading to mastery
- Determining knowledge components