Reading Old Books

A couple of years ago I paid a quarter for a book that our public library had taken off the shelf due to non use. The book "Instructional Design" has a copyright date of 1973, was edited by Robert Merrill, and contains chapters authored by himself, Gagne, Glaser, and others. At that time the new buzz word was programmed instruction based on B.F Skinners' work.

I am not ready to throw the baby out with the bath water with programmed learning. I know that is is passe in the current educational community but I am finding that they bring a lot of interesting questions to the table. In a chapter written by Glaser he makes the distinction between "discovery learning" and "learning to discover". He talks about the two elements of "content" and "components" in instruction. Content is the information that the student needs to obtain. Components are the methods for obtaining the information. Sometimes the objective of a lesson is the information itself , while other times the important thing for the learner to obtain is the ability to gain information.

Mike Spector, who I think would consider himself a constructivist, acknowledged that before a learner can profit from a simulator learning environment the learner must possess certain fundamental knowledge and this fundamental knowledge can best be obtained through well structured instructor-led training. I would extend this to include not only instructor-led but also machine-led (programmed learning). In 1973 much of the computer technology that we take for granted was not yet envisioned. I truly believe that recent advances make intelligent tutors possible.

I find it so interesting to see the cycles that learning practices go through. Not too many years ago (in old man years) the push was to create "independent learners". Now the push is to create "collaborative learners". I think we need to realize that there are times and places for each. Not all work is done independently neither is it all done in groups. There are even different personality types who prefer to work in one setting or the other and will gravitate to employment that allows their preferred type of work.