6.1 Levels of design decision-making
Didactical design decision-making takes place at three levels. Policy decisions are made at the macro level. Curriculum plans and statements are made at the meso level. The courses and lessons implied in the curriculum statements are created at the micro level. At the micro level the designer is faced with the very specific question: ‘What design (didactical strategy) can I use in this piece of instruction for these students so that they will learn what they need to learn in a meaningful way, and in a way that each of them values?’
6.2 Design
A design is something we experience. It exists first as a concept in the privacy of the designer’s mind. It must then be given concrete form (be worked out). In the case of a course or lesson, the design is the plan, structure arid strategy of instruction, conceived so as to produce learning experiences that lead to pre-specified learning goals. A shoe, a chair, a spaghetti fork, a piece of research, a course and a lesson all have a design.
6.3 Stimulus-response (S-R) language
The S-R paradigm is the recommended language for use in a dialogue with oneself or others while thinking up, working out and testing-and-revising a design at the course or lesson level. The S-R paradigm sees the events in a course or lesson as stimulus-response events. The event must contain the appropriate stimuli (S) to which the learner responds (R) and, as a result of this response (R), learns. The S-R paradigm contains, in principle, the prescription for any learning event.
6.4 Learning experience
A learning experience (Tyler, 1949) refers to the interaction between the learner and the external conditions in the environment to which he can react’. Well designed learning experiences will respect (and take explicitly into account) the truth that a person is made up of an intellectual, emotional, spiritual and physical quadrant.
6.5 Design success
An indicator of a design’s success is the learner’s rating of the learning experience (which the design generates) as effective, valued, liked and efficient. The goal of every designer of a course or lesson or teaching-learning event is that it will score high against the Emax Vmax Lmax E’max criteria; E = effective, V = valued, L = liked and E’ = efficient. A design which is efficient is a design in which the learning goal is met with a minimum expenditure of time and energy.
6.6 Design decision-making process
The course or lesson design process usually begins with an evaluation of an existing design. The evaluation data are the basis for a `Go’ or ‘No Go’ decision. A ‘Go’ decision is made when the problem and its solution is seen as a plan-structure-and-strategy-of-instruction one. A needs analysis leads to a specification of the needs in terms of five things: the end goal, the criteria used to measure end success, the content to be covered en route to the end goal, first thoughts about method-and-media, and the constraints which need to be respected but outwitted. The needs specification is the basis for decision-making at the learning experience design step. Learning experience design recognizes three sub-steps: thinking up a design, working out a design, and testing-and-revising a thought-up, worked-out design. Testing and revision of the design is followed by the installation of the course or lesson and an end evaluation. If the end evaluation exposes the need for further work on the design, this is carried out before the course or lesson begins its life (as a regularly offered course or lesson) in its curriculum.
6.7 Four referents
Four decision-making aids that can be used to accelerate the process and optimize the choice of a plan, structure and strategy of instruction are: referent 1 (a set of criteria for a good design), referent 2 (the nth generation of the specified needs), referent 3 (an appropriate model), and referent 4 (an effective response-environment organizer). Together they make a ‘paradigm’ which remains in the background providing a framework in which the process of thinking up a design is embedded.
Referent 1
Referent 1 is a set of criteria against which to test an idea that is being thought about as a plan, structure and strategy of instruction. The criteria explicitly stimulate the designer’s thinking. They are concerned with:
- active rather than passive learning
- the generation of didactically meaningful responses
- the assignment of control over the learning process to the learner and/or teacher
- respect for constraints
- the provision of feedback
- the critical use of media
- the possibility of extension to accommodate the needs of slow and/or fast learners
- the basing of design decisions on the specified needs.
Didactically meaningful responses
The things which the design requires the learner to do must be meaningful. Each must be relevant for the objective, necessary, possible and effective. ‘Effective’ means that the response (which may be invited or spontaneous) must result in some increment in learning or in the strengthening of some learning that has already taken place. Many faults in designs are the result of non-meaningful responses.
Assignment of control
A design assigns control of the learning process to the teacher or to the learner or divides it between the two. The teacher may be personally present or merely present in the materials which are being used. The best designs let teachers and learners share control of the teaching-learning process..
Referent 2
Referent 2 is the nth generation of the specified needs. The content of referent 2 is the designer’s current specification of the end goal, success criteria, content, method-and-media and constraints. The elements in referent 2 change subtly from moment to moment as the design is thought up. Referent 2 acts as the designer’s databank and is constantly being corrected and updated as the ideas for a design ebb and flow and vibrate in the designer’s mind. The items in the current (nth) specification must always complement each other. Each must also always reflect respect for constraints.
Referent 3
Referent 3 is an existing design which serves as a model and can accelerate the designer’s thinking. The existence of the other three referents ensures that the model chosen is an appropriate one. Complete design transplants are strongly discouraged. Transplants kill creativity and original thinking.
Referent 4
Referent 4 is a response environment organizer (REO). REOs are ‘special bits of content’ which accelerate design decision-making and frequently result in a mental ‘click’. The special bit of content triggers a picture in the designer’s mind of what the teaching-learning situation is going to be. After migrating into the heart of the design, the same special bit of content serves as an anchor and organizer for the learner. REOs are very personal things. A bit of content serving one designer as referent 4 is not necessarily effective for another designer of a course on the same subject for the same students and with the same goals in mind.
An REO is discovered or invented or meticulously constructed. To qualify as an effective referent 4 a special bit of content must pass a test which reveals its capacity to:
- generate the responses needed for learning
- serve as the focal point of learning
- act as an anchoring idea or organizer
- generate an insightful view of the teaching-learning process
It must be chosen with the other three referents in mind.
6.8 Types of stimulus-response (S-R) events
In working out a design it is useful to recognize four types of event: those which have to instruct, to explain, to tell and to let encounter. The S-R events in the best courses and lessons have elements of instruction, explaining, telling and letting encounter in them. In this book these are nicknamed respectively `ching’, `chang’, ‘chung’ and `chong’ events.
6.9 Sequence
It is useful to recognize five types of sequence when arranging the S-R events in a course or lesson: chain, necklace, spiral, network and hybrid. A ‘backward chain’ sequence is one in which the last step in a process or procedure is taught first, the step preceding the last step is taught second, and so on until the first step is reached. A ‘spiral sequence’ allows a subject or topic or skill or attitude to be treated several times and at a successively higher level of complexity. There is never any one best sequence.
6.10 Common faults
These include the missing imperatives, the missing overview, impracticability, the missing melody, non-integration, and minor but critical faults such as: technical faults in content, too early use of a term, non-critical use of artwork, use of non-critical information, unclear transitions, insensitivity, and lack of pace. Additional faults include faults in the build-up of the databank and insensitivity to the four quadrants.
6.11 On-the-spot designing
Ad hoc designing is done by the teacher (or via a system of alternative ‘learning pathways’ when no teacher is used) to accommodate unanticipated needs of learners. In this context, prevention is always better than an on-the-spot cure.
6.12 End evaluation
In the end evaluation the designer’s interest is in the didactical effect of the design, the quality of each student’s learning experience, and how the design fits into the system. The quality of the learning experience can be assessed with the help of four questions, which concern: anything the learner might have needed and missed, whether or not the learner would recommend the course or lesson to another student, the. sharpest memory of the learning experience, and the student’s rating of her or his experience against the Emax Vmax Lmax E’ max criteria.
Some ‘think’ exercises
The following exercises invite you to do some design thinking and not design decision-making. The latter can only be done when you are in full possession of or have immediate access to all the facts that you would need when doing a first evaluation, making a Go or No Go decision, doing a needs analysis and so on, right up to the stage when your decision-making has created a course or lesson that is ready for developmental testing. To emphasize the fact that the exercises are design thinking exercises they are named think 1, think 2, think, 3 and think 4. You can do these ‘thinks’ on your own but you may find it helps to join another reader, or several other readers, and then ‘think’ together. It is recommended that you think quickly. Give yourself a maximum of 20 minutes for each think.
Think I
What ideas (for subject matter, goals, plan-structure-and-strategy-of-instruction, and so on) come into your mind when you think about creating a six-hour course on the subject of ‘prevention of fire in hotels’? The course is for hotel managers, telephonists, receptionists, kitchen staff, restaurant staff, room staff and maintenance staff. You will need to be thinking about such things as ‘learning not to panic’, ‘being familiar with escape routes and fire fighting systems and how to use them’, ‘the most common causes of hotel fires’, ‘how to help guests in an emergency situation’, ‘combustion theory’, etc. Picture the course in progress and the trainees’ activities in the video of your mind. How many S-R events do you visualize? How are they sequenced? What is going on in each event? Give each of them a name. Use a name that excites the interest of the trainee and hints at what the event’s goal and activities are going to be. What method-and-media are you thinking of using? Why these media? Can you think of a special bit of content (perhaps an incident, or a definition, or a fire prevention rule) that contains the quintessence of the training message that you have in mind? What will your end test (success criterion) be? Will it be the same for each sub-group of the target group?
Think 2
You are a course and lesson designer in a service department of a university. A professor in logic and philosophy has asked you to help him design a 50-minute lesson on the subject of ‘fallacious argument’. The class is for first-year students from all university disciplines. It is a required course. The lesson is the first in a series of lessons that have the goal of mobilizing a student’s love for logical thinking. The professor is anxious that all the 40 students who attend this first introductory class should rate their learning experience as effective, valued, liked and efficient. He wants them to want more! In the class time available he wants the students to have met and to be able to recognize the following fallacies in logic: argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority), argumentum ad misericordiam (appeal to pity), argumentum ad ignorantiam (argument from ignorance), argumentum ad hominem (argument to the man) and tu quo que (you too). (See definitions and examples in Table A.)
Look into your mind. What do you see? What are the students doing? What is the professor doing? Is use being made of a visitor? of incidents from real life? Are there newspapers around? Are stills from a video film dancing their way into the room? What stimuli are being used? What responses are the professor and his expert knowledge trying to evoke? Think about each of the criteria for a good design — active participation of the learner, meaningful responding, critical use of media, and so on — are they cared for? The professor is giving an end quiz so that the students know for themselves whether they have learned (in the relatively short space of 50 minutes) to recognize and distinguish between five types of fallacious argument. What form does the quiz take? Is it written? Verbal? Is it done with the help of a video? What is its content?
Table A: Examples of fallacious argument
argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority)
A conclusion is based on an appeal to expertise or authority which is not relevant to the conclusion,
eg ‘The Rietveld garden spade is the best: it’s used by 90% of professors in the University of Utrecht’.
argumentum ad misericordiam (appeal to pity)
The fallacy occurs any time pity or sympathy is appealed to for the sake of a favourable conclusion,
eg ‘He was in an orphanage for twelve years! I vote he gets the loan’.
argumentum ad ignorantiam (argument from ignorance)
The fallacy occurs when the truth of something is concluded because it has not been proved not to be true
eg ‘It has never been proved that there is no Supreme Being, therefore a Supreme Being does exist’.
Argurnentum ad hominem (argument to the man)
The fallacy is present when an attack on the person is used in place of a rational argument to disprove
an assertion that the person in question has made, eg ‘Her conclusions about nuclear armament are questionable.
She is a member of women’s lie.
the tu quoque (you too) fallacy
The fallacy exists when one answers a charge by a similar counter-charge,
eg your neighbour defends his rudeness to you by pointing out that you are rude to the owner of the local shop.
When you have finished your think along these lines, visualize your concept for the lesson’s plan, structure and strategy of instruction on a blackboard or a sheet of paper. Explain your ideas with the help of this visualization to someone who is interested in new ways of teaching old subjects.
Think 3
Think about the design for a course in which you have to teach the participants the basic facts and drills for escaping from a car that has dived into the water. The mini course must be no longer than 90 minutes long. It is a prerequisite for entering a practical course in which the participants actually do learn to escape (with other passengers) from a car under water. There are 15 learners each time the course is offered. What basic questions are you going to need answered before you can decide on the content of this prerequisite course? Make a list of eight questions. How are you going to involve the learners in a not too theoretical way? Will you use slides? critical pictures? How are you going to get the `ching, chang, chung, chong’ melody into the mini course? Are you going to have time to deal with fear in your course? If so, how? Imagine yourself trapped in a car under water: how do you feel? What does this projection say to you about finding a good design? Are safety belts a help or a hindrance in such a situation? How long (in minutes) do you think you would have to escape? Are there some simple rules which you might concentrate on and teach? Pick up the phone (or ask your ‘think’ partner to pick up the phone) and do a quick needs analysis via someone who you think may be able to tell you what you need to know. Who might that ‘someone’ be? your neighbour? your bank manager? a local fire chief? Finally, think up an appealing and assuring name for your course.
Think 4
‘A customer bursts into tears.’
‘An assistant loses her cool.’
• • • •
Think up six events (routine and unusual) from a day at the counter of the ‘client service department’ of a busy department store. Let the content of the six trigger some ideas for the content and goals of a course on ‘client service’. Feel out their combined content as the system of stimuli that could serve as an REO and referent 4 for your course design decision-making. Listen to what the events are saying to you as the designer of the course.
Finally, talk to yourself for a few minutes about being a designer of courses and lessons at the micro level of design decision-making.
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What does a designer of instruction do?
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What is a design?
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Where does the design process at the micro level begin and end?
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Is there a special language of design?
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What is a learning experience?
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How does a designer know when she or he has had success?