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Week 12 Reflections

Think about the term “Human Performance Technology”. What do you think of? Do you have a picture in your mind of what that means and of what someone who works in this field does? Now, I know that we have been studying this field for a little bit now in class so most of us do have some level of basic understanding of it at this point. I know that when I first saw that we were going to be studying this topic in this class, I really didn’t have any concept in my mind of what it might be. From the articles that we read this week, it seems that I am not the only one who was like that. In fact, according to Pershing, J. A., Lee, J. & Cheng, J. (2008), “In some European countries the term human performance technology is regarded as yet another American buzzword, lacking substance” (p. 9). They may have a general and vague idea of what HPT is but for many it seems that the term and idea have no more weight that the idea of being an “Instagram influencer”. For this post, I just wanted to get into some of the general issues that HPT runs into.

First, many of those who are in an organization that uses HPT do not even know what exactly it is and why they need it, and this comes down to lack of fundamental marketing skills in this field (Pershing et al., 2008). This is absolutely key because the organization and the individuals in it need to be sold on the unique value of HPT if they are ever going to buy into the concept and support it as it needs to be supported in order for it to be effective. Pershing et al. suggested that “One way to achieve this is through clarifying in simple ways what the field of HPT is and explicitly demonstrating the unique contributions of HPT to organizations” (p. 15). This may sound simplistic, but HPT needs to buy into the state of Missouri’s state slogan. Missouri is famous for being the “Show Me” state. I do not know how the State got this moniker, but my Grandmother was from Missouri and liked to bring this up a lot. When it comes to marketing HPT and getting buy in for its importance, HPT needs to operate under the mentality that everyone else is from the “Show Me” state of Missouri and make demonstrating the value that HPT brings one of the top priorities if not the top priority.

Second, another issue that HPT faces is that far too often HPT just becomes the source of quick-Band-Aids for resolving performance issues rather than doing the work to understand and address the root causes of issues and create remedies that are not just temporary ones. “The practice of seeking simple solutions, too often with the clients’ encouragement, is very likely to produce substandard work” (Pershing et al., 2008, p. 15). It must be understood that this can be the fault of either HPT itself or the client or both. The problem could be that the client wants a simple solution and fast or already has a solution that they are set on and are unwilling to listen and consider other recommendations. The problem could also be that HPT doesn’t feel like putting in the due diligence and the hard work when there is an easy quick fix dangling in front of them or they would be willing to do the necessary work but are just tired of trying and failing to convince the client to do things in a proper manner. This goes back to the job that HPT has to market itself and its methods. It is especially helpful if HPT can sell some of the leadership up the chain on its importance because they will then have an ally to champion its cause and give push-back when clients want to skimp on the process.

One thought that I had when reading this week about how much trouble HPT has with selling itself to the business world is that the name itself may be an issue. When you see a job title, especially in the business world, it usually not difficult to grasp a basic understanding of what the job entails. Using the words “Human” and “Technologies” in a job title is just confusing for most people. I had to take this class just to understand what was really meant by “Technologies” in IST. Maybe we like to use oblique jargon in the educational field, but that just does not work well in the business section. HPT ought to be changed to a term that fits with modern business jargon. When you consider what HPT does, it really is doing the work of a consultant. In fact, in the business world the first inclination when a problem needs to be addressed or help is needed in some way is for the business to bring in a consultant or consulting firm. HPT is doing the work of a consultant when it comes to performance issues. So, I believe that the field would be better served if it changed its name to “Performance Consulting” and the individuals doing the work would be “Performance Consultants”. I think that this would give the field a lot more clout and recognition in the business world. If all they did was change their name, they would start to be viewed differently and in a way that the business world already understands and accepts. This is just my opinion though as a brand-new student of HPT. 😊

Pershing, J. A., Lee, J. & Cheng, J. (2008). Current status, future trends, and issues in human performance technology, part 2: models, influential disciplines, and research and development. Performance Improvement, 47 (2), 7-15.

Week 11 Reflections

Socrates once said, “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom”. As we look at this issue of ethics not only in the field of Human Performance Technologies but also in our daily lives, the sentiment of “knowing thyself” seems both straightforward and incredibly complex all at the same time. Most of us believe that we do have a good understanding of ourselves and what motivates how we think and act. I would say that many of us would even claim that we do a decent job at trying to be objective in how we view the world around us. How objective are we really though? How can we claim to be truly objective when we are our own judge of whether or not we are being objective? According to Banaji, M. R., Bazerman, M. H., and Chugh, D. (2003), “more than two decades of research confirms that, in reality, most of us fall woefully short of our inflated self-perception” (p. 56). Most of us would like to believe that we are more righteous than we really are. Now there are definitely people in this world who knowingly acknowledge that they believe and act in ways that are not ethical even by their own standards of what is ethical. We are not talking about those people though. We are talking about the majority of us who are trying to be objective and ethical in how we work and live. With this acknowledgement that we can never truly be objective in judging ourselves on how objective or ethical we are, how do we in the field of HPT or IST help ourselves to act in appropriate or ethical to the best extent possible? It seems like such a forbidding task, but the readings this week gave some advice.

Banaji et al. (2003) described how a major part of our issue in judging ourselves correctly is that we all have unconscious influences acting upon our mind and that they are very hard to know or counteract because they are, after all, influences that we are unconscious of. If we were conscious of them, the issue would be much more straightforward. The writers then suggest that the best way to attempt to counteract or adjust for unconscious biases is to develop conscious strategies that would compensate for these unconscious influences. One way they suggest is to consciously consider “counterintuitive options in the face of conflicts of interest, or when there’s an opportunity to overclaim, can promote more objective and ethical decisions” (p. 64). As it seems, playing the Devil’s Advocate with ourselves can not only help us to be more thorough in our decision-making but also to possibly be more ethical in it as well.

In speaking specifically of HPT, it is important to strive for being ethical for a couple reasons. First, HPT deal with a number of stakeholders in the process so it is expedient to consider what may be influencing our decision-making in determining how we go about our business and what we are trying to achieve. Second, Guerra (2006) brings up a couple excellent points emphasizing that HPT need to establish ethical standards for working with clients. Due to the service-offering nature of HPT and the fact that there are usually other stakeholders in the process besides just the main client, it would behoove us to develop core principles that will help guide us and our clients in setting expectations and in working together especially in those tricky “gray” areas of ethics. Guerra further goes on to recommend that we develop an Ethical Code or Standards by which we adhere to. According to Guerra (2006), “Both standards and codes of ethics are intended to guide professional practice in a given field” (p. 1039). It is not unusual for a profession to have such codes or standards. In the military, we have our quite famous “Military Code of Conduct” which were specifically written to help service member know what the right way was to act if captured as a prisoner of war. Another profession that is famous for its ethical standard or code is the medical field. Two of my younger brothers are doctors and they (and their fellow doctors) all took the Hippocratic Oath which serves as an ethical guide for how they do their business and make decisions in their work.

Of course, we know that just because people vow to uphold a certain ethical code does not mean that they will, but, for most people who vow to uphold it, the code serves as a guide in their work and especially when it comes to making difficult decisions. Ethics becomes an especially important topic when it comes to the difficult decisions, the decisions where it is hard to determine the right thing to do. As Smaldino, S. E., Donaldson, J. A., & Herring, M. (2018) describe it, “Ethics, by definition, can be a very subjective element as we put our values into practice. Many of the ethical decisions that we have to make are not black and white; they are gray and fuzzy” (p. 346). It is in these difficult decisions that our values and beliefs that guide how we will live our lives get put to the test. Nothing important is every easy though. We must define the standards by which we want to live and work in order to do our best to do right by others and our own conscience.

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Banaji, M. R., Bazerman, M. H., & Chugh, D. (2003). How (Un) ethical are you? Harvard Business Review, 81(12), 56-64.

Guerra, J. A. (2006). Standards and ethics in human performance technology. In J. A. Pershing (Ed.) (2006), Handbook of human performance technology (3rd ed.) (pp. 1024- 1046). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Smaldino, S. E., Donaldson, J. A., & Herring, M. (2018). Professional ethics: Rules applied to practice. In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (4th Ed.), (pp. 303-308). New York, NY: Pearson Education. (see also video interview with Dr. Smaldino (43:59): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOjhdH4dAE4

In the wedding scene at the end of the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, the father of the bride, Gus, makes a toast in which he refers to his family and his new son-in-law’s family as “apples and oranges”. He then makes this statement, and it is one of my favorite quotes in the move: “Here tonight, we have, ah, apple and orange. We all different, but in the end, we all fruit.”. I believe that this statement applies no less to our discussion about the differences and similarities between HPT and IST. For this post, I want to discuss some of the similarities and differences between the two that I observed from this week’s readings.

First, I want to discuss one of the primary differences between HPT and IST, and that difference is that HPT is very much focused on producing results that are aligned with the goals of the organization as a whole. The question then is “How does a Human Performance Technologist” do that?”. The answer is that the HPT needs to identify the strategic direction of the organization and once this is identified the goals of stakeholders need to be analyzed and evaluated for how they fall within the strategic direction (Watkins, 2006). Of particular importance is remembering that “partners and stakeholders in projects will have both unique and shared criteria in defining success. As a result, for the performance technologist, recognizing and attending to the multiple strategic goals and objectives of the partners and stakeholders in the project are critical, and since it is unlikely that any performance interventions will completely meet the demands of each of these perspectives, prioritizing these various criteria for success is important.” (Watkins, 2006, p. 199). A lot of the time, IST is primarily focused on what an individual or small group of individuals needs to accomplish within a defined learning environment. HPT is different in that it first focuses on what the organization needs to accomplish at the strategic or macro level and then it moves down the chain to determine what needs to be done within the organization to support that strategic goal. Eventually, the HPT will then evaluate what learning on the individual level needs to occur in order to support the strategic goals from the ground up. This way of looking at things is because of the HPT focus on results. What learning needs to occur cannot be identified until the desired results are identified, and the desired results cannot be identified until the HPT has determined what the organization and its stakeholders are actually trying to accomplish. So, it is very much a top down approach. As Watkins (2006) says, “By defining the common goals and objectives both within the organization and among the stakeholders outside of the organization, strategic planning initiatives can begin to define the results that all agree must be achieved” (p. 193).

Second, I want to discuss one of the ways that HPT and IST are very similar. One of our strongest similarities lies in the fact that both enterprises for the most part use models to support their work. According to Wilmoth, F. S., Prigmore, C., & Bray, M. (2010) in referring to HPT, “The key concept here is the ability of the individual, when looking at any complex activity, to conceptualize a myriad of causal relationships and chart them in some manner that can be communicated to others” (p. 6). This is no less true for IST. HPT and IST both use models because models can provide a logical support system and guide for analyzing, evaluating, and determining potential issues and solutions. These models also can help to “visualize and then communicate the process logic” to others who are invested in the process as well (Wilmoth et al., 2010, p. 6). Basically, it is the facts that our work process is so similarly structured and that our work will in the end seek to determine what changes in the learner or the learning process need to occur that make HPT and IST so similar.

Watkins (2006). Aligning Human Performance Technology Decisions with an Organization’s Strategic Direction. In Pershing, J. A. (Ed.), Handbook of human performance technology (pp. 191-207). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.

Wilmoth, F. S., Prigmore, C., & Bray, M. (2010). HPT models In R. Watkins & D. Leigh (Eds.), Handbook of improving performance in the workplace, vol. 2: Selecting and implementing performance interventions (pp. 5-26). Silver Spring, MD: International Soceity for Performance Improvement.

George Bernard Shaw once said that “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”. I have always loved this quote not only because it serves as an excellent reminder that our view of what has been communicated may not be how someone else views it but also because it serves as an inspiration to keep working to find ways of assessing to see if our communication had the effect that we wanted it to have. I believe that this view of communication no less applies to the field of education and training.  Just because we developed training or instruction does not mean that it accomplished anything. In fact, if we want to claim that it did accomplish something, we need to define what that accomplishment is in order to see if we achieved it. Designing instruction and training is not an abstract, theoretical activity that is done in a vacuum. It is supposed to be a productive activity that is a means to an end. This is where we begin our discussion of Human Performance Technologies.

First, I want to go over what we are referring to when we discuss Human Performance Technologies because if you are like me then this week was the first time that you had heard of the term. Pershing (2006) defines HPT as “the study and ethical practice of improving productivity in organizations by designing and developing effective interventions that are results-oriented, comprehensive, and systemic” (p. 6), and Carliner (2014) defines it as “a systematic methodology for developing performance in individuals and organizations” (p. 33). Though they appear as two different definitions, they are in truth saying the same thing. HPT isn’t just about creating a training that the company will use to help its members learn a specific concept. Rather HPT is about effecting positive change that will enable both the company and its individual members to achieve organizational related objectives and goals.  In fact, when a Human Performance Technologist analyzes the situation, they may determine that training is not the factor that will cause change in a particular situation (Pershing, 2006). You may have heard of a “whole person” approach in a variety of settings. Well, instead of a training and instruction only approach, HPT represents a “whole organization” approach to identifying and addressing performance issues within an organization.

Second, now that we have a general understanding of what HPT is, let us look into how HPT conducts its business. HPT is primarily focused on results as “performance is the achievement of results” (Carliner, 2014, p. 34). HPT will conduct analysis to determine what the issue may be and what combination of models, methods, and materials might be best in addressing the issue (Pershing, 2006). Whether the issue is seemingly simple or complex does not matter as the goal of HPT is to develop a solution that has scientific workability. The initial proposal for a solution is actually a hypothesis of what will work, and the job of HPT is to test that hypothesis and change it if needed. If the data coming back does not support the current hypothesis, then the hypothesis must be reevaluated and changed. To quote an old phrase, “the proof is in the pudding” or, as Pershing (2006) puts it, “Results must be tangible and measurable, due to a performance improvement initiative, and positively affect an organization. They must create value for the organization, its members, and its customers. In short, they must have a positive impact” (p. 13).

Finally, we need to consider why HPT serves an important role within an organization. HPT is important because it has the ability to enact change not only on an individual but also on an organization as a whole. By using a data driven approach that builds its reputation on scientific workability in achieving results, HPT can assuage the concerns of stakeholders and organizational leadership by demonstrating the return on investment (ROI) for enacting recommended changes (Ferond, 2006). I particularly like how Ferond (2006) states that “HPT gives leaders a clear competitive advantage by providing them with the means to make informed strategic decisions about what constitutes valuable change in any area of organizational functioning and for a broad set of stakeholders” (p. 156) . In summary, HPT contributes not only to the tactical, day-to-day operations of an organization but also to the strategic, high-level ones as well.

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References:

Ferond, C. (2006). The origins and evolution of human performance technology. In Pershing, J. A. (Ed.), Handbook of human performance technology (pp. 155-187). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.

Pershing, J. (2006). Human performance technology fundamentals. In J. A. Pershing (Ed.) (2006), Handbook of human performance technology (3rd ed.) (pp. 5-34). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Carliner, S. (2014). Human Performance Technology and HRD. New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 26(1) p 33-41.

As I read this week’s readings, I began to imagine that this entire discussion about media and learning was actually the script for some Shakespearean type play only one whose artistry was drawn from the field of instructional technology. Perhaps it was like “Hamlet” and his famous soliloquy “To be or not to be”. Only this time that monologue would be called “To media or not to media”. The more I read and thought about what was being argued, I began to think that perhaps a better representational play would be “Much Ado About Nothing”. Finally though, I came to the conclusion that the best play to represent this discussion based on the readings is “The Taming of the Shrew” with media being the shrew that is wrangled in to be able to be able to meaningfully contribute to the process of learning.

I want to first discuss Clark (1994) and his propositions as they are what really are the catalyst to what is being discussed this week. When I first started reading his paper, I could not decide whether I agreed with him or not. I then began to somewhat agree with him as I also can logically acknowledge that “only the use of adequate instructional methods will influence learning” (p. 27). However, he then went on to make the argument that “We need to ask whether there are other media or another set of media attributes that would yield similar learning gains…It cannot be argued that any given medium or attribute must be present for learning to occur, only that certain media and attributes are more efficient for certain learners, learning goals and tasks” (Clark, 1994, p. 22). I then realized that he was arguing that one cannot claim that media have any intrinsic learning value if the learners could learn the same thing some other way. He is arguing that media itself has no influence on learning if other forms of media could have the same influence because this shows that the change in learning was not necessarily brought about by the media. However, this same logical argument could be made for instructional strategies as well. If you could lead learners to the same learning using different instructional strategies, then we cannot say that instructional strategies have any impact on learning.

 I see that Clark (1994) is trying to make the point that learning will not be better simply because one used media. This is absolutely true and is something that we would do well to keep in mind especially in today’s culture. We do often make the mistake of assuming that as long as we create learning that incorporates media or is on a media platform then it is going to be effective by the mere fact that we used media. So, in that sentiment, I agree with Clark. I do not agree with him though that media have no intrinsic value for learning. I believe that the strategic use of media is an instructional strategy. Let me give a very basic illustration. As a teacher, I actually had a Black Board (not green chalkboard but rather an old fashioned black one) in my first classroom. This technically was a form of media though a very basic one and it was really all I had. Truthfully, I could have taught without one. However, I was able to use that Black Board to illustrate things to my students that I really could not have done verbally. This board allowed me to be more creative in my instructional strategies especially incorporating the visual aspect or the tactile as I let my students use the board as well. Clark would argue that my media was not what had the impact. I agree that the board sitting there by itself brought no learning value. However, nothing intrinsically has any impact on learning. It is how we use it. I was able to use the Black Board to teach in ways that I could not have without it. Just because a dry erase board or a computer could also have been used to achieve the learning does not take away the value that I gained from this particular media form. To me, Clark is just arguing semantics. It is like arguing that the refrigerator is not what keeps your food cold it is the cold air being circulated in it. Ok, semantically that is true, but you are missing the big point of what value a refrigerator brings to the situation.

I very much liked how Kozma (1994) summed up how we should think about media and its relationship to learning. “I believe that if we move from ‘Do media influence learning?’ to ‘In what ways can we use the capabilities of media to influence learning for particular students, tasks, and situations?’ we will both advance the development of our field and contribute to the restructuring of schools and the improvement of education and training” (p. 18). This provides a much more useful discussion than the primarily semantic one that Clark sought to have.

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Clark, R. E. (1994). Media will never influence learning. ETR&D, 42(2), 21- 29.

Kozma, R.B. (1994). Will media influence learning? Reframing the debate. ETR&D, 42(2), 7-19.

Someone once said that “You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve come from.” I believe that this no less applies to our field of Instructional Systems Technology. For this blog post, I want to specifically focus on the history of our field and how our current ways of viewing instruction and learning came to be.

As a member of the US military, I was very surprised to learn from this week’s readings how much influence and impact the US military had on our field as we know it today. The more that I read the articles and thought about the history the more it truly did make sense and I started to connect some of my own experiences and observations from my time in the military to what I was reading in the articles. Before I get into the part of our history where the military comes in, let me first begin with a general overview of the history of technology in education and training.

The history of the integration of technology is very much based on the rise of various forms of media and other technologies within society at large. From Molenda’s article (2008), we can see that there was the advent of radio and other forms of media and as the use of the technologies became more prevalent within society, the educational community desired to enrich learning with these new media forms. In the 1960s, a high interest in Behaviorism came along with a new interest in teaching machines. The 1980s, the computer became more widely available and the focus shifted to the incorporation of computers into learning. With the turn of the century and the boom of the Information Age, the integration of both computers and the World Wide Web have created an unparalleled wealth of technologies that can be used for educational purposes.

Now I want to focus on where the military came into this story line. According to both Molenda (2008) and Reiser (2007), the push for training using new technologies, such as film, were heavily reinforced by the strong demand for both fast and effective training for allied forces during WWII. The US Navy and Air Force both commissioned research projects to study instructional films and their effectiveness. I did not realize until reading this article that Hollywood even became involved in making millions of training films. Additionally, “During the war, a large number of psychologists and educators who had training and experience in conducting experimental research were called on to conduct research and develop training materials for the military services” (Reiser, 2007, p. 24). Throughout the war, they continued to develop scientific research on how to achieve training that was not only efficient and effective but also standardized. They also applied their research skills to assess the training that had taken place. After the war was over, they continued their work in applying scientific workability to instruction (Reiser, 2007). This led to the field of Instructional Systems Technology as we know it today.

As is standard with the military, the military wanted the educational psychologists to develop standard procedures for developing training. The resulting procedure, or shall we say “model”, was along the lines of “analyze, design, develop, implement, and control” (Molenda, 2008, p. 13) and eventually, this became the ADDIE model: Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate. The military was the first to demand a “systems” method of developing training and “from the entry of the systems approach into the field of educational technology, it was recognized by its advocates as a loose set of guidelines that were applicable to the complex problems of human learning only by analogy and not the completely deterministic and completely controlled methodology described by some of its detractors” (Molenda, 2008, p. 13). The procedures were not meant to be a rigid set of restrictions to develop good training but rather be a way to standardize the process for developing training in order to create a more effective and efficient process that could be applied over and over again.

At the start of this semester as I began my journey of learning about Instructional Systems Technology and the models that oversee our work, I remember thinking that these processes reminded me very much of the models that the military uses for planning purposes. My last job in the Navy was as a Planner for military operations. The military uses planning processes (or what we would call “models”) for planning everything from joint operations to crisis action responses to intelligence. These models are all more alike than different and serve as a standard guide to address situations as they come up. They are a way to ensure that planners do due diligence to the matter at hand but are also broad enough to apply to almost any planning need and yet flexible enough to be able to accommodate time constraints or complexity differences in planning situations. Now I see why the instructional design models struck me as so familiar. They had their roots in military planning processes that were developed to plan military training.

At the end of the day, the instructional design models that we use truly are simply tools for planning the instruction that we believe will fulfil the learning need that has been identified and these models and the research that they are founded in are “rooted in a primordial human drive to find ways of teaching that are efficient” (Molenda, 2008, p. 4). According to Molenda (2008), our field found inspiration for developing new forms of instruction from the learning theories as they emerged and had their impact on the educational community. I do not believe that the various theories necessarily changed the existing models at their foundations but rather they have given rise to more diverse end-of-process products as a result of the influence of whichever theories were used with the model. To me, the models pretty much stay the same but the learning theories act as a lens through which we see and use the model.

Molenda, M. (2008). Historical foundations. In J. M. Spector, M. D. Merrill, J. V. Merriënboer, & M.P. Dirscoll (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (3rd ed.) (pp. 3-20). New York: Taylor & Francis Group.

Reiser, R. A. (2007). A history of instructional design and technology. In R. A. Reiser, & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (pp. 17- 34). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Week 6 Reflections

Have you ever watched a spectacular dance like the one in the video clip above and marveled at the incredibleness of it all? The dancers’ feet are moving so quickly with such perfection and in absolute harmony with each other and the music. As a beginning student in ballroom dance, I start to think about how much time and effort and learning must have gone into being able to perform such a dance at that level. So, this week I have decided to discuss the theories of learning that we have been reading about through the lens of learning how to dance.

As a student of dance, I have noticed that though every teacher at my studio is following the same overall dance curriculum and curriculum goals they all have a different teaching style. The teaching styles I believe reflect their different beliefs about learning though they may not realize it or may have never even heard of Cognitivism or Constructivism. Though their methods of instruction may vary, the goal of every dance instructor is to have their students learn the art of dancing and they will design their dance instruction in order to accomplish that goal. As Driscoll (2012) reminds us, “Regardless of the differences among psychological perspectives on learning, an underlying assumption of most is that instruction will bring about learning” (p. 35).

Let us start with what Behaviorism looks like in the world of dance. According to Behaviorism, learning comes about as the learner is confronted with various stimuli that reinforce certain behaviors and learning is empirically measured by the exhibition of certain behaviors (Driscoll, 2012). The dance instructor who takes this view of how learning occurs would provide the dance student with various cues for certain behaviors, or in this case dance steps or moves, and then would reinforce the behavior based on how well the dance went. The important point here is that all learning is viewed as coming from the external cues and training the body to automatically respond to those cues. Behaviorism especially plays a large role in evaluating dance as the majority of judging criteria are based off of defined behaviors such as specific dance steps and moves that the dancer must exhibit.

Now, let us look a Cognitivism. Cognitivism believes that learning involves the mind of the learner. It purports that the mind processes information much like a computer processes information and as such the goal of the instructional designer is to find the best way to program the learner’s mind so that the information is understood and remembered. “To assist learners in processing information, practitioners have incorporated strategies into their instructional designs that direct attention, facilitate encoding and retrieval, and provide practice in a variety of contexts” (Driscoll, 2012, p. 37). My dance instructor, Eric, is a perfect example of a dance instructor who probably has a Cognitivist view of learning. Before learning a new dance step, he will explain it to me and then try to show it to me. Then he will have me try the move with him. We will work on one part of the move and then if I get that we will move on to the next move. Eventually, we will put all the pieces of the move together. If I do not get it, he will come up with another way to explain it and then he’ll start to get very creative with how he demonstrates it. Then once I finally do it correctly, we will go over it many times so that I start to put it to memory. Then later in the lesson after we have moved on to something else, he will have me do the move again to see if I remember it. The next time I come for a lesson, we will review this move and he will see if I can do it a week later. If I cannot, we continue to work on it. If I can, we build other moves onto it. I call this method of teaching “teaching for mastery”, and I must admit that I prefer learning dance this way. His teaching style suits me.

Finally, let us consider Constructivism. Constructivism seeks to provide the learner an environment where they can construct their own learning. One of the tenets of Constructivism is that its goal is to “engage learners in activities authentic to the discipline in which they are learning” (Driscoll, 2012, p. 41). One of the other teachers at my studio tends to lean towards this theory of learning, I believe. Whenever I’ve had a lesson with him, he does not start off with going over what we were going to learn and how to do it. Instead, he would put on a song and start dancing with me. There were always elements in the dance that I did not know but he wanted me to use the moves that I did know and then just figure out what other moves I was supposed to do as we moved throughout the dance. Sometimes it worked out sometimes it didn’t. He would just keep dancing with me until I figured it out. I am somewhat over-generalizing his instruction though as he would eventually stop and explain specific points of technique. His style of instructing a one-on-one dance lesson was very different from how Eric taught it. Frankly, I think that a combination of their two different teaching styles would be ideal for any aspiring dancer. So, I mainly take lessons with Eric, but I still take a lesson with him occasionally as well.

I believe that the three main learning theories are not an “either/or” scenario but rather a “both/and” one. According to Sawyer (2006), modern learning environments are about addressing not only the instruction but also the learner and how the learner actually learns. In the world of dancing, some elements of Behaviorism are needed because the dancer does need to develop some automatic responses that do not require engaging the mind at high levels. The stimulus/response model will work just fine for those situations. Cognitivism can be extremely useful because dancing is by nature a subject that builds on itself. The dancer needs to master certain techniques at each level of progression. Of course, Constructivism is where the dancer is truly able to apply intuition to a learning environment and thus perhaps end up performing a move they had not yet learned or been taught. An accomplished dancer will have encountered all these learning theories in instruction throughout their dancing career.

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Driscoll, M. P. (2007). Psychological foundations of instructional design. In R. A. Reiser (Ed.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (2nd ed.) (pp. 36-44). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Sawyer, R. K. (2006). The new science of learning. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (pp. 1-16). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Think back to the last time that you played a board game especially a game that you did not know well or one that you were learning for the first time. There sat the board game with its brightly colored design and interesting little pieces. It was all very intriguing but you may have felt nervous because you also suddenly realized that there were a lot of things that you did not know about this game that you needed to know. For example, you may ask yourself “What do the different colors in the various boxes mean?” and “How do I know if it is my turn”. From there, your mind turns to more strategic questions like “How do I protect myself yet gain the advantage over my opponents?”. The whole concept of a relaxing evening playing a board game with some friends has now become an event that is both exciting and terrifying at the same time. Whether you realize it or not, your true challenge in playing this game will be a test of how quickly and how well you can learn its rules and strategies. You are an instructional designer so you start to ponder what some of the various learning theories would say about how learning occurs and how best to support learning. It’s been a while since you were studying these theories in graduate school, so let us take a walk down memory lane (and for you Cognitivists this will be the Long Term Memory lane), shall we?

Let us start with Cognitivism. According to Cognitivism, “the human learner is conceived to be a processor of information in much the same way a computer is. When learning occurs, information is input from the environment, processed and stored in memory, and output in the form of some learned capability” (Driscoll, 2013, p. 74). The mind’s ability to process information is the central focus of Cognitivism. Facets of the mind such as memory and how memory functions are fundamental to this theory (Silber and Foshay, 2006). An instructional designers job from a Cognitivist point of view would then be to figure out the best way to get information processed into the learner’s memory and then how to get it processed in such a way that it stays in the memory. Similar to how a computer breaks down information into smaller portions in order to process or transmit it, breaking information down into portions that the learner’s mind can best handle is a primary recommendation of this theory. Some of the main recommendations to instructional designers are that they need to ensure that information is presented in an organized manner to learners and that they help the learners commit the information to memory by providing diverse and substantial practice with the information (Driscoll, 2013).

Now, let us consider Constructivism. To Constructivism, the learners are not just a participant in their learning rather they are the architects of their own learning and they create their own meaning (Driscoll, 2013). The learner already has their own understanding of how the world is and they are just continually adjusting that understanding based on new perceptions that they have. Additionally, the learner’s mind is not just a machine that can be programmed with information, rather the learners construct their own knowledge as they conduct critical thinking or problem solving in various environments.

To illustrate these theories with a somewhat simplified example, consider the board game scenario above. What would be different about the way that a Cognitivist Instructional Designer would design instruction to teach you the game versus what a Constructivist Instructional Designer would do? The Cognitivist would probably begin by finding out what you already know about the game and then designing instruction to build your knowledge from there. This instruction would be well organized and would focus on developing “chunks” of information for you to learn (Driscoll, 2013). Perhaps this would include time spent studying the rule book and practicing certain elements of the game before moving on to playing the game from start to finish. Eventually, you would move on to higher level strategies once your knowledge in the game was solid. The Constructivist would approach the design of the instruction somewhat differently. In fact, the Constructivist may decide that the best way for you to learn would just be to put you in the game and let you figure it out as you play. You would be learning the game while in a very realistic game environment. The Constructivist believes that you will seek out the pieces of information that you need by either consulting the rule book, asking someone else, or by just watching others play because it is believed that your desire to play the game will cause you to do so (Driscoll, 2013). Additionally, the social aspect of this game will be another element to help you construct your knowledge of it. The Constructivist would design instruction to help you construct your own knowledge of the game.

Personally, I believe that either method of instruction would work in this scenario. Both methods take different paths, but it seems that they most likely end up at the same spot. Perhaps the best method would be a combination of the two methods. Learning is a complex activity no matter what view you take of it so it only seems right that our design for instruction that supports learning would be no less involved and diverse.

References:

Driscoll, M. P. (2013). Cognitive information processing. In Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.) (pp. 71-110). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Driscoll, M. P. (2013). Constructivism. In Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.) (pp. 385-410). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Silber, K. H., & Foshay, W. R. (2006). Designing instructional strategies: A cognitive perspective. In J. A. Pershing (Ed.), Handbook of human performance technology (3rd ed.) (370-413). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Those of you who are fans of the Office may remember the infamous prank that Jim pulled on Dwight. If you have never seen the scene or you would like to watch it again, you should definitely click on the clip above to watch it. The inspiration for Jim’s prank was a science experiment that he learned about as a kid. That science experiment was the “Pavlov’s Dogs” experiment that came to shape the foundation of the field that we know as Behaviorism (McLeod, 2018). We can get a hint of what the premise of Behaviorism is from the video scene above but let us have a little bit more in depth look in the paragraphs below.

Though Pavlov is generally more well known because of his experiment with the dogs, when it comes to the field of education B.F. Skinner is truly the theorist who laid the foundation for Behaviorism as it applies to theories of learning. Skinner believed that by controlling stimuli in the environment of learning the learning itself could be controlled (Driscoll, 2005). In Skinner’s opinion, experimentation with variables that influence behavior was how the path to true learning would be discovered and he “defined learning as more or less a permanent change in behavior that can be detected by observing an organism over a period of time” (Driscoll, 2005, p. 34).

The influence of Behaviorism in the field of education and training can be seen in almost every area of this field to include the area of instructional design. Consider, for an example, the instructional designer who is tasked to develop training to improve job performance for new editors in a publishing firm. The instructional designer is going to first analyze the job itself to establish what are the expected tasks that need to be performed and to what level they need to be performed. Essentially, these tasks are “behaviors” that the editors will be expected to complete with proficiency. The designer will then analyze to see what the differences are between the expected “behaviors” and the “behavior” that the editors currently exhibit. It is then the designer’s job to decided how best to get the editors to change their “behavior” so that it matches the expected behavior. Whether or not the editors had learned how to do their job better would primarily be demonstrated by to what degree their behavior changed. “In fact, behaviorists would argue the only evidence we have of learning comes from students’ behaviors” (Driscoll, 2005, p. 58). As the field of instructional design very much relies on being able to meaningfully measure whether the design of the instruction is accomplishing the learning that it was intended to accomplish, then aligning more with a Behaviorist view of measurement provides a concrete method of gauging actual impact. In my view, this is probably the strongest tie to Behaviorism that instructional design has.

My own view of Behaviorism as a theory of learning is that though it does explain some of human learning very accurately, I do not believe that it is able to explain all of human learning. The Behaviorist viewpoint is valid yet too simple in my opinion. Skinner wrote of how great advances were being done in regards to animal training with methods in alignment with Behaviorism (Skinner, 1954). These methods were then applied to humans as well and in many cases were also successful. I believe that the problem with the Behaviorism theory is that for the most part it stops there. Humans and animals can only be compared to a certain point with learning, and once that point is reached then humans have to be thought of differently than animals. Behaviorism does not take into account the facets of human nature that encompass the moral, spiritual, and reasoning part of our nature. These tend to be facets of our nature that can influence learning no matter what stimulus is applied. The concept of “intrinsic motivation” is one that Behaviorism does not and cannot address.

I believe that instructional designers ought to consider multiple theories of learning when deciding how best to create a program of learning. There are many theories of learning because each theory of learning is addressing a different facet of the human mind and how it processes information. All of these theories have truth to them and ought to be used appropriately. As Foshay wrote (2001), “As a field of practice, we need to recognize that no theoretical framework will meet all our needs, and pragmatically apply the framework to each problem which seems to work best” (p. 2). I believe that the human mind is far too complex to be simplified into one theory of learning. Rather, it is an amalgamation of many theories on how the mind works.

Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Radical behaviorism. In Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.) (pp. 29-69). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Skinner, B.F. (1954). The science of learning and the art of teaching. Harvard Educational Review 24:1: 86-97.

Foshay, R (July 2001). Is Behaviorism dead? Should HPT care? ISPI News & Notes, 1-2

McLeod, S. A. (2018, October 08). Pavlov’s dogs. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/pavlov.html