The E-learning Curve at Edublogs

Onwards with our investigation of the e-learning ecosystem and learning & development in organizations. Today’s post looks at the similarly-sounding but fundamentally different Systems Approach to instructional design and learning, and why the doubtful provenance of ADDIE combined with a misunderstanding of the role of content delivery channels have failed a generation of e-learners.

Now read on.

I have suggested that a growing number of researchers and learning professionals (Dillon & Hallett, Jonassen, Rosenberg etc) are recognizing the negative affect of what Brown, Collins, & Duguid (1989) call the “breach between learning and use” (p.1) of training interventions in organizations. We have seen that both instructor-led and ‘traditional’ self-paced learning courseware is relatively limited in its application, and is most effective in a restricted range of circumstances. Brown, Collins, & Duguid elaborate:

Many teaching practices implicitly assume that conceptual knowledge can be abstracted from the situations in which it is learned and used. [The authors] argue that this assumption inevitably limits the effectiveness of such practices. Drawing on recent research into cognition as it is manifest in everyday activity, the authors argue that knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used.

(p.1)

To meet these conditions, we can say that it is appropriate to adapt both pedagogical approaches and the technology resources now available to enhance learners performance.

Marc J. Rosenberg concurs:

Although e-learning began as a new way to deliver training, it cannot remain that way because it is no longer able to adequately support all the learning needs of individuals and organizations by itself - if it every was. E-learning has moved in a new, somewhat unanticipated direction that is not always reminiscent of an instructional framework. To be more influential, e-learning must be reinvented. While continuing to provide a viable instructional option in a formal learning setting, it must also move toward informational and collaborative solutions that focus more prominently on the specific jobs people do. It must move beyond courseware and classrooms and into work. To reinvent e-learning is, in many ways, to reinvent learning itself.

In essence, this means transforming workplace learning, so that learning activities and resources are situated around the learner, their work environment, and their tasks, enabling learners to construct their own knowledge in the context of what resources they need to carry out their work effectively. As David Jonassen says:

In constructivist learning environments, technologies are used to situate learning tasks in a variety of contexts. With video, very rich and engaging contexts can be created.

He asserts that in the traditional organizational approach that

[u]nfortunately, most e-learning replicates the worst features of face-to-face instruction. So, it may be cheaper to “deliver” knowledge over the Internet, but it will not be more effective.

This is commonly known as the systems-based approach to instructional design & development (ISD). A system is a set of elements or components that must integrate to perform a specific function. Every job in an organization is used by the organizational ecosystem to produce a product or output. The product or output is the means by which a organization generates its assets and remains self-supporting.

There are four inputs necessary in every system to produce a product or output:

• People: The workers making up a group and linked by a common activity.
• Material: The raw products which go into the system.
• Technology: The technique for achieving a practical purpose or goal.
• Time: The measured period during which an action or process begins and ends.

In learning and development, this systems-based approach is epitomized by the ADDIE conceptual framework (see Figure 1), most notably refined by Dick & Carey in The Systematic Design of Instruction (1996).

Figure 1. The ADDIE ISD Heuristic

The ADDIE approach has been one of the core tenets of instructional design for the best part of two decades, but curiously, it may not exist! In his article In Search of the Elusive ADDIE Model (2003), Michael Molenda of Indiana University, the author undertook a Livingstonian attempt to discover the source for the original reference to the ADDIE model. Molenda’s research uncovered no original reference for the ADDIE model. This lack of an original reference led Molenda to write,

I am satisfied at this point to conclude that the ADDIE Model is merely a colloquial term used to describe a systematic approach to instructional development, virtually synonymous with instructional systems development (ISD). The label seems not to have a single author, but rather to have evolved informally through oral tradition. There is no original, fully elaborated model, just an umbrella term that refers to a family of models that share a common underlying structure.

Hence my suggestion above that ADDIE is more proerly labeled a conceptual framework; I would go so far as to say that it could more properly be called a set of heuristics or “rules of thumb” to develop learning content by adhering to the precepts of the systems approach (see Table 1).

Table 1. Formative evaluation is present in each stage of the ADDIE process.

2. Summative evaluation consists of tests designed for criterion-related referenced items and providing opportunities for feedback from the users.

Once they have undergone formative and summative evaluation, learners are encouraged to review and revise the courseware as necessary, until they have successfully passed the proscribed tests

The transactional nature of the systems approach assumes that the very act of communicating information to the supplicant (sorry, learner) results in the output of “learning.”

Adhering to this content development methodology, instructors consider that the channels used to “deliver” knowledge are cognitively neutral and merely replicate and modalities of the classroom - voice-over narration equating to instructor explanation, the screen being equivalent to the overhead projector or blackboard, computer-mediated interaction being the essentially the same as teacher-student interaction, and so on.

By balancing the cognitive load across the learning modalities, it is supposed that knowledge can be effectively delivered, and the student will “learn.” A corollory of this is that the learning delivery channels (visual, audial, text-based, and so forth) themselves have no affect upon the learner’s interpretation of the content, so to all intents and purposes, the “sage on the stage” transforms into the “guide by the side.”

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References:

Brown, J. S. Collins, C. & Duguid, P. (1989) Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning [Internet] Educational Researcher 18(1), pp. 32-42, Jan-Feb 1989. Available from: http://tiger.coe.missouri.edu/%7Ejonassen/courses/CLE/index.html [Accessed January 12th 2007]

Dick, W. & Carey, L. (1996). The Systematic Design of Instruction (4th Ed.). New York: Harper Collins College Publishers.

Dillon, P. & Hallett, C. (2001, October). Powering the leap to maturity: The eLearning ecosystem. Cisco Systems white paper.

Exclusive Interview with Professor David Jonassen (2001) IN: elearningpost [Internet] Available from: http://www.elearningpost.com/articles/archives/
exclusive_interview_with_professor_david_jonassen [Accessed 12th January 2007]

Molenda, M. (2003). In Search of the Elusive ADDIE Model. [Internet] Available from: http://www.indiana.edu/~molpage/
In%20Search%20of%20Elusive%20ADDIE.pdf Accessed 12 May 2008

Rosenberg, M.J. (2001) What Lies Beyond E-Learning? learningcircuits.org e-zine [Interent] Available from: http://www.learningcircuits.org/2006/March/rosenberg.htm Accessed 14th April 2007

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