Instructional Technology & Learning Sciences

I’m still struggling to understand the real differences between the fields of Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences. Are they two names for the same thing or is one just a branch of the other?

I went looking for some definitions and found the following:

Learning Sciences definition from Janet Kolodner (Educational Technology, 2004).

Learning scientists harvest theories of active, constructivist, and participatory learning to design software and learning environments and ways of educating that promote deep and lasting learning. As a parallel activity, they study people’s interactions and behaviors and learning in these engineered environments to learn more about both learning itself, how to promote better learning, and how to promote learning more effectively.

AECT defines Instructional Technology as “the theory and practice of design, development, utilization, management, and evaluation of processes and resources for learning.”

Well, we’ve got a lot of theory going on, we’ve got design, and we’ve got learning. Sounds pretty similar to me. From reading the Kolodner definition I can now see why Dr. Graham proposed they identified themselves differently because of their roots. Learning Sciences emerged from the constructivist theorists while Instructional Technology appears to have developed during the time when theories of  behaviorism were most accepted.

I’ve thought quite a bit about what Dr. Graham mentioned in class when he said IT does research in the service of design while LS does design in the service of research.  I think what he was saying is that IT does research to find better ways to help people learn (design). LS, on the other hand, is looking to discover more concrete theories of HOW people learn so they design tools and environments in order to study how learners interact.

So while coming from different backgrounds and approaching things a little differently IT and LS share the same goal–to help people learn.

Finally Jibing

This week the learning theories are starting to gel for me. I can say “constructivism” about 75% of the time without halting. I usually curse the acronyms we use in the IT world (see, there’s one right there!) but right now they don’t seem so bad. BLT for Behaviorist Learning Theory, CIP for Cognitive Information Processing and CLT for, well, you get the idea.

I posed a question this week in class about how constructivists explain where learning begins. Where does the “previous knowledge” that one is to build upon in the constructivist theory originally come from?  I guess I didn’t read Ertmer and Newby’s “Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective” article well enough the first time because as I reviewed the answer was right there

Introductory knowledge acquisition is better supported through objectivist approaches but suggests transition to constructivistic approaches as learners acquire more knowledge which provides them with the conceptual power needed to deal with complex and ill-structured problems.

Is this something that most learning professionals buy into–is it common to believe that different theories more aptly explain how one learns at certain points in their life and experience? If so, things just got a lot less confusing for me. I have a feeling this will be something I explore further in my first class assignment.

Based on this comic I’d say Calvin was ready for a new approach some time ago:

image courtesy Bill Watterson

What the Psychologists Say

I find it so ironic to be learning about theories of learning, wondering what is happening to me as I read and discuss and attempt to learn. Is the highway between my short- and long-term memories open for transit or is there a crash blocking the south-bound lanes? Can I say with any degree of confidence that “resistance is futile” and new information WILL be assimilated or will my internal framework have to make accommodations? And what’s up with the black box anyway?

Additional irony is that the subject of attention is what caught mine. This is particularly interesting to me because as I’ve grown older the ability to pay attention has grown weaker and I feel that damages my ability to learn. The inability to pay attention not only affects learning, but it has the potential to affect all aspects of life.

image courtesy Bill Watterson

Behavioral science writer Winifred Gallagher was recently a guest on KUER’s RadioWest. She was discussing her latest book Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. She suggests that the ability to focus differs from person to person not unlike personality and intelligence. She agrees with Driscoll in that attention is a finite resource. Apparently we only have enough attention for 173 billion bits of information over our lifetime. I think I used up 63 billion just today. This notion of capacity confuses me some as Driscoll points out that long-term memory can never be filled up. Why can’t attention also be unlimited if our brain has the storage room?

The good news is that you can “work out” your voluntary attention, also referred to as top-down attention, in order to have more disciplined focus. This, in turn, helps not only our ability to learn, but the general state of our mental health and moves us beyond the superficial to a richer life full of meaning and strong relationships. The quote that really stood out for me comes from William James: “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” This is seemingly obvious, but so easily overlooked as the tedious and unimportant often steal our attention. Remember, we only have 173 billion bits to work with.

image courtesy Ikea

It probably comes as no surprise that Gallagher, along with many others, argues the ability to multitask is a fallacy, that in reality is much less efficient then staying on task for a longer period of time (she suggests 90 minutes is pretty good). She also touches on technology and points out it should be used as a tool and shouldn’t be allowed to “choose our target” or determine our behavior.

If you have time you might give the program a listen. That is if you can focus for 50 minutes, 32 seconds.