Reflection on Learning Objects

Learning Object Reflection

According to Wikipedia.com, a learning object is “a collection of content items, practice items, and assessment items that are combined based on a single learning objective…Learning objects offer a new conceptualization of the learning process: rather than the traditional ‘several hour chunk,’ they provide smaller, self-contained , re-usable units of learning.”

According to Koppi (2004), “there are many definitions of learning objects…Reusability seems integral to the concept…although it is conceivable that some learning materials or activities are so contextual that they are only used once.” He continues, “(t)he more inherently contextual an object is, the less reusable it may be.”

Articulation is also an important concept for learning objects. Koppi (2004) states that “articulation is something that the teacher does with the object by placing it into a context.” Learning object need not necessarily communicate with one another.

Merrill (1999) describes learning object as “containers consisting of slots including: name, portrayal, and description. The name contains one or more symbols or terms that reference the knowledge. The portrayal is one or more multimedia objects (text, audio, video, graphic, animation) that will show or represent the knowledge object to the student. The description slot is an open compartment into which an author can place any desired information about the knowledge object.”

I think that it is easy to see how learning objects would be useful to the instructional designer. As mentioned in the lecture, however, the ID needs to be aware of the context in which the learning object was created, lest his lesson become a patchwork quilt learning activities with little or no internal cohesion. There appears to be an economic side to the use of learning objects: indeed, it makes little sense to reinvent the wheel, and if someone has created a learning activity that can be employed within the lesson the ID is creating, it simply makes sense to integrate it rather than create a whole new learning activity. Thus time and money are saved. I think a lot of time might be spent hunting for the perfect learning object. As long as they are efficiently indexed, I see no problem with using them.

Certainly I would use learning objects in my lessons. They’re convenient, one draws upon the intellectual capital of other designers, and they can, as already indicated, save much time when putting a lesson together.

I found some great resources having to do with learning objects, such as this learning object tutorial:
http://www.eduworks.com/index.php/Publications/Learning-Object-Tutorial.html

And here’s a handy little repository from Rice University:
http://cnx.org/

Cognitive Flexibility Theory Reflection

Cognitive Flexibility Reflection

What would happen if the internet, with its hypertext capabilities, and constructivist educational psychology got married and had a child? I think the child’s name would be “Cognitive Flexibility.”

According to Jacobson (1995), CFT addresses “empirically identified problems associated with the acquisition and transfer of complex knowledge.” Using the study of a geographical location as a metaphor, he states that a “rich and flexible understanding of a complex conceptual landscape will emerge only after the learner has made numerous transversals of the domain from different intellectual perspectives.”

Jonassen (1992) describes Cognitive Flexibility (CF) as a theory that provides “a meaningful, case-based approach to accessing information. Learners access information that they need to solve (a) particular case.” He also maintains that “(c)ognitive flexibility theory avoids oversimplifying instruction, provides multiple representations of content, emphasized case-based instruction which results in context-dependent knowledge, and supports knowledge construction and complexity which enables the learner to investigate the multiple perspectives represented in the knowledge domain in an exploratory way.”

CFT prescribes the following five principles as antidotes for the oversimplification of educational approaches:

1. Use multiple conceptual representations of knowledge
“CFT recommends employing multiple ways to represent knowledge in instructional activities…to reflect more accurately the multifaceted nature of complex knowledge.”

2. Link and tailor abstract concepts to different case examples
“CFT recommends illustrating abstract concepts using multiple case examples to demonstrate to the learner the nuances of abstract conceptual variability associated with ill-structured domains.”

3. Introduce domain complexity early
“CFT recommends the early introduction of complexity in a cognitively manageable manner that still reflects some of the multifaceted interactions of various conceptual elements.”

4. Stress the interrelated and web-like nature of knowledge
“CFT proposes that the demonstration of conceptual interrelationships in multiple contexts helps cultivate a rich and flexible understanding of a complex content area.”

5. Encourage knowledge assembly
“CFT proposes that the learner assemble relevant abstract conceptual and case-specific knowledge components for a given application or problem-solving task.”

So what we have here is a methodology which adapts to the flexible way in which we store and retrieve knowledge. Given the epistemic paradigm that learning is more than rote memorization, and that there is no "one size fits all" educational experience, the learner utilizing this approach may expect to synthesize cases and adapt them for his/her use as necessary. This is, of course, an approach suitable for problem-based and case-based education where situations are ill-defined. It appears to be extremely well-matched with the hypertext language of the internet, and affords the learner the flexibility to explore knowledge and transverse the intellectual universe from all desired angles. As the lady in the video says, "you are the learning management system!"

I think that this is an incredibly well-thought out approach, but it seems that one needs a programmer well-versed in HTML and Flash in order to pull off a really good educational product. The subject being taught is also of importance: it is recommended for ill-defined domains such as law and medicine, where no two cases are exactly alike and thus must draw from different perspectives and situations. I would have liked to have seen an example of this approach in a domain other than history: my opinion of this approach is not as concretized as I would like, not having seen such examples.

Drawbacks naturally are the time and expense involved in creation of curricula using this approach. Once again, companies specializing in multimedia educational products could easily produce lessons in this format while the average classroom teacher is left in the dust. Students with the belief that ill-defined problems are best approached in this manner will clearly benefit, otherwise it could be wasted effort.

Given the resources, certainly I would use this approach when creating instruction. It adapts well to internet usage and is supported by research to combat oversimplified educational methodologies. Anyone with a website could put together a lesson with this approach, but, once again, you might need a crackerjack html programmer to help put it together.

Reflection on Case-Based Learning

Wang (2003) describes Case-Based Learning as “a means for collecting, indexing, accessing, and analyzing cases.”

According to the Queen’s University Centre for Teaching and Learning, the eleven rules for Case-Based Learning are:
1. Tells a story
2. Focuses on an interest-arousing issue
3. Set in the past five years
4. Creates empathy with the central characters
5. Includes quotations. There is no better way to understand a situation and to gain empathy for the characters
6. Relevant to the reader
7. Must have pedagogic utility
8. Conflict provoking
9. Decision forcing
10. Has generality
11. Is short

Case-Based Learning strikes me as being a very practical, well-thought-out technique for teaching certain courses which require higher-order thinking skills, foremost among them, problem-solving and synthesis. Synthesis requires that the learner take an idea and mold it to fit his situation. There are no “right or wrong” answers in this approach…just plenty of divergent thinking with the goal of producing multiple responses that would adequately fit the situations for which they are intended. Once again, learning is student-centered and there is plenty of room for collaboration, and situations are relevant as well as authentic.

Jonassen (2002) describes stories as “the most natural and powerful formalism for storing and describing experiential knowledge that is essential to problem solving…Problems are solved by retrieving similar past experiences in the form of stories and applying the lessons learned from those stories to the new problems.” He further describes the ability of human intellect to synthesize and incorporate ideas when he states that “(t)he memory structures used for understanding the story are the same as those used to carry out the task…(g)iven the lack of previous experiences by novices, experiences available through a case library are expected to augment their repertoire of experiences by connecting with those they have experienced.”

Creation of a case library is central to this approach. Jonassen (2002) states that “(t)he process of understanding and solving new problems using case libraries has three parts:
1. Recalling old experiences
2. Interpreting the new situation in terms of the old experience based on the lessons that we learned from the old experience
3. Adapting the old solution to meet the needs of the new situation



This approach simply makes too much sense. All of us, when faced with a difficult situation, have asked people whose opinions we trust how they dealt with that particular situation. More often than not, those people are glad to tell us their stories so that we may synthesize their previously acquired wisdom to fit our situation. This is education in its most natural form, and teachers and instructional designers should be encouraged to use it generously.

There are a couple of difficulties, however, with this approach. As usual, the time required to create CBL is prohibitive, unless it will be used with repetition. Mass production by an educational firm once again is the cure for that ill. There is also the problem of finding authoritative persons who will be willing to give of their time and efforts to relate their own experiences on a wholesale basis.

I would not hesitate to use this theory because of the philosophical basis upon which the theory is designed. Authenticity, well-adapted to multimedia making it accessible to any student at any time, students have the ability to draw upon the intellectual capital of others and synthesize it for their own purposes, the list goes on and on.

Educational modules can easily be presented via internet using video broadcast media including Youtube and Ustream. Wikis, chatrooms , and collaboration sites such as Elluminate and Skype are the perfect companion to video broadcast sites. Not to mention websites presenting the good old standby, text.

Many in this class have already taken ECI 716, “Design & Evaluation of Instructional Materials.” Those who have taken this course have already been introduced to case-based learning, as videos were created for that course that describe situations that instructional designers have faced and require that students reflect upon the material and draw information for their own purposes.