Replying to LO28938 --
Dear Organlearners,
Terje Tonsberg <tatonsberg@hotmail.com> writes:
>An Instructional Design process in terms of knowledge
>outcomes is not necessarily much different from that of
>an Learning Design (LD) process, ut since ID is focused
>on feeding pre-digested knowledge (highly structured
>and "complete" information, including even "examples" to
>build "experience" or "tacit knowledge"), learners do not
>strengthen their capability to learn by themselves. This
>leads to having a weak learning engine available to deal
>with ambiguity. An analogy would be a person who only
>eats only pre-digested food; eventually his stomach will
>be too weak to handle any other food.
Greetings dear Terje,
Thank you for your thoughtful and authentic contribution. I think much the
same as you have articulated above.
But I am intensely aware of two things which we have to bear in mind.
The first is that we have so many different synonymous words of a variable
thing which in essence is the same thing. For example, think of words like
instructor, trainer, teacher, educator, mentor. master and many more. They
refer to the one major party in organisational learning. Think of words
like trainee, learner, pupil, apprentice and many more. They refer to the
other major party in organisational learning.
The second is the relationship which these two parties have to each other.
Do both parties act as irreversible, self-organising systems which
interact to the benefit of both, or does the learner party depend on the
teacher party as an external support system without which it cannot
organise self any further?
In the case of the support system the prevailing model is
. instruction-information(input) => system => learned-response(output)
It is for me but a mental model in which the instructor's seniority is
mistaken for superiority and authority. Teaching, instruction, training
or whatever we may call it is never like pressing key A on the key
board and then letter A appears on screen as its outcome. Notice
also that the learner and whatever goes on within the learner does
not even figure in this scheme.
As for myself, I desire the former case which I might symbolise as
. environment => LEARNER => knowledge
. /\ ||
. || \/
. environment => teacher => knowledge
I do hope it comes clearly. Here the primary focus is on the learner
who has to live with body and mind in a particular environment,
needing primarily inner knowledge to do so. Between the learner
and teacher there is a bi-directional flow of information.
>We could say that instructional design is OK for
>knowledge fixes (a good ID process can have excellent
>results), bad for independent learning.
Yes. But in light of the confusion of information with knowledge, I myself
would have written "information fixes". This is unknown while "knowledges
fixes" is known.
>Using the 7Es effectively needs practice, and it needs
>to become a habit. This means that they need to be used
>during both during digestive and emergent phases at least
>some of the time. If all learning is based on highly efficient
>ID, then these skills and habits are impaired. The result is
>a learner that is not effective at building and using knowledge
>under ambiguity. The learning engine is too weak to draw
>upon existing knowledge effectively, to rearrange current
>structures, etc.
I agree, but again I would have used "information" rather than
"knowledge". Nevertheless, what I think we all must try to become aware of
and even to understand it, is that this "highly efficient ID" is nothing
else than and external support system WHICH has a detrimental effect on
both the necessary condition for learning (free energy dynamics) and the
sufficiency condition (all 7Es). It is like pushing someone in a wheel
chair who is capable self of walking. After a year that person will not be
able to walk ten metres.
>A tentative conclusion is this: knowledge analysis and
>categorization in the style of Instructional Design is useful,
>but needs to be applied wisely so that learners still need
>to use the skills of the 7Es.
I agree should I cater for Instructional Design .
But again I would have used "information" rather than "knowledge". The
"analysis" of knowledge which lives within a person is far different from
the analysis of information which exists utside. First of all, whereas any
qualified specialist can analyse such external information, only that
person self can "analyse" the inner knowledge. Secondly, I use "analyse"
in quotation marks because that person cannot break the inner knowledge up
into separate pieces as can be done with information.
>Does Learning Design need to be used throughout the
>process, or is it enough to use ID and then after basics
>go to a stage where skills pertaining to dealing with
>ambiguity are "trained"? I would like to suggest that it
>may be at times, especially if the learners are good at
>learning, but perhaps the problem with this is that there
>will be a break in the behavioral pattern from "being fed"
>to "feeding oneself." So even if one has reasonably good
>skills, there is an established pattern that is hard to break?
Yes, there is indeed an established pattern very hard to break. It is that
most people in first world countries depend on external support systems
acting "automated" for them in all walks of life. The "automated" here
means that these support systems are run by specialists. This established
pattern had a vicious impact on all education, whether formally in public
instutions or informally in private organisations through internal
training programs bought from training specialists.
>Also, part of the problem with pre-digested knowledge
>is that connections with the minds existing knowledge
>structure will probably be weak, since minimum processing
>was involved in "understanding" it in the sense of seeing
>relations of the new material to what you already know.
>You were told what the relations were instead of
>discovering at least some of them by yourself.
Yes, but again I think of this "pre-digested knowledge" as 2nd hand
information. Is a fact of life that we often have to deal with 2nd hand
information sources, especially so here in South Africa with its limited
resources and thus information sources. Such 2nd hand information sources,
especially when they have been pre-digested for the purpose of teaching
and learning, become nothing else than an external support system -- a
wheelchair to psug somebody around perfectly capable to walk self.
>Problem: the external environment imposes restrictions
>on learning in terms of required skills. These skills need
>to be reached within a certain timeframe. The function
>of knowledge analysis and instructional design then
>becomes to make sure that these requirements are met
>for individuals, even on an almost rote level. How can
>this be changed on a massive scale without demanding
>too many resources?
You have identified a hot problem of which very few even are aware of. The
problem exists because of wasting resources and time on teaching&learning
which does not improve knowledge, seen as the capacity to act in any
particular environment. If I would be allowed to make an estimate, which
might not be far off because I have often contemplated this waste
(formal-public and informal-private), but not actually tried to make an
audit of it, I would say that here in South Africa it is in the order of
4/5ths (80%). I would be surprised should it be less than 2/5ths (40%) in
any other country.
>Related Problem: people vary a great deal in the
>ability to use the skills of the 7Es both due to
>learning history, developmental stage and intelligence.
>This means that students are best taught individually,
>but this is very demanding on resources, so dividing
>into homogeneous groups according to ability would
>be a logical choice. I don't think you'll like this
>(fragmenting) much At, but I want to tease out your
>thoughts on the matter...;-)
It depends on how much humans are willing to evolve in knowledge. Think of
my discovery of the 7Es as the discovery of Copernicus that the earth
rotates around the sun. By then Chinese fire works and rockets were
already known! Yet it took more than 500 years afterwards for humankind to
launch the first satelite around the earth!
Did you know that whenever Copernicus spoke of of his passion for his
heliosentric insight (yes, it is an insight rather than a theory), he
spoken of it as a "sacred fury". The clergy, from the top to the bottom,
had not even the slightest idea what this heliosentric insight had in
stall for them.
The 7Es are seventh-fold more complicated than the heliocentric insight.
Take wholeness for example. How many people riding on the bandwagon of
holism have every study the seminal book Holism and Evolution (1926) of
Jan Smuts? Sometimes on our local TV I see the new rulers speaking that
they will do this or that holistically (having been trained by consultants
from abroad to utter such a magic word) and almost in the same breath
scolds the past white political leaders for what they have done for this
country. I still have to hear one admit: "Thank you Jan Smuts that you was
a leader of South Africa and not another country."
>(At, is the ability to ask good question the best measure
>of the strength of the processing engine?)
Well, I myself cannot think of any better word than measure. Nevertheless,
there is nothing better to indicate the strength of learning than asking
questions -- good and bad ones. Often the good ones are not so good while
the bad one were really the very good ones.
>There are two basic reasons why people to ask questions:
>1. Learning for the function of knowledge.
>2. Learning for the love of knowledge, or passion.
How right you are. I wish that we may have some day a dialogue on various
intellectual passions -- and asking questions as a result of them. It is a
fascinating topic which, to my knowledge, only Michael Polanyi have given
fair attention to.
>OK, so if passion in learning is related to
>(study --> emergence --> pleasure of discovery) then
>we can more clearly see how it is killed. One way is .....
(snip)
Yes, yes, yes.
>How easy to destroy it!
Yes, and that is what is hampering education of today
>But why is there pleasure in discovery? One part of it
>could be genetic, but there is also the element of feeling
>of accomplishment.
A deep question which I will answer to next time. I now have
to rush.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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