Once a course or lesson has been installed and is in process, the design takes over. Students and teacher (if there is one) and materials and the design rock back and forth and interact with each other in a ‘response environment’ for learning. If your decision-making has been good in creating this environment there is a good chance that it will have success. Your students will learn and will learn in a way that they like. Continue reading 5.3 On-the-spot designing
Tag: Test and revise
5.4 End evaluation
Once a course or lesson you have designed is over, you will need to look into the mirror of an end evaluation (activity 1). You will need to validate the quality of your own design decision-making. This end evaluation is always a moment of truth. You will be surprised (sometimes pleasantly and some-times not so pleasantly) at what you see. Continue reading 5.4 End evaluation
5.5 Case study no. 6: Troubleshooting refrigeration systems
The usual long, hot summer. In Townville, Illinois, manager Joseph D Doe of the Buy-It-Here supermarket chain is getting hot under the collar. For the sixth time in three days he is listening to another complaint from one of his branch managers about ‘poor freezer maintenance service’. There is a pattern in the complaints which come from different areas in the state. Continue reading 5.5 Case study no. 6: Troubleshooting refrigeration systems
4.1 Introduction
Every freshly made course or lesson is unique. It carries the fingerprint of its designer’s design decision-making. The last convolutions in the print come from decisions made as you test-and-revise (activity 4.3) a thought-up, worked-out design. The test is made with the help of a small group of learners, chosen at random but representative of the student population for whom the course or lesson was designed.
In the programme writing practice that I knew in New York in the ’60s and ’70s, it was the custom to use eight learners in a try-out. Such a ‘jury of eight’ were able to pick up most of the design mistakes that had been made in preparing self-study programmed learning systems. The eight usually represented a heterogeneous population of several hundred users. Habit, and previous good results, would make me choose eight for testing the design of a new course or lesson today. Practicality might, of course, make one settle for a smaller group of three or four or even two.
4.2 Testing for the unexpected
4.3 Some common mistakes
4.3.1 The missing imperatives
4.3.2 The missing overview
4.3.3 The impracticality of a design
4.3.4 The-missing-melody
4.3.5 The non-integration problem
4.3.6 Some minor but critical faults
4.3.7 An always avoidable fault
4.3.8 A fundamental fault
4.2 Testing for the unexpected
In the developmental testing of a design, you are testing for the unexpected: for unexpected wrong responses, unexpected interfering responses and unexpected attitudes of learner and teacher (if one is involved). These things are ‘unexpected’ because with the help of the four referents and the protocol for working out a design, you have done your best to avoid unwanted results. But in this respect, ‘all that glitters is not gold’. You must expect the unexpected. The symptom that all is not what it should be is an unexpected low rating on one or more of the elements in the Emax Vmax Lmax E’max criteria. Continue reading 4.2 Testing for the unexpected
4.3.1 The missing imperatives
Learners can like being told what to do. ‘Think aloud’, Draw a diagram’, ‘Talk to yourself about….. ‘Label this picture’, ‘Explain this to….. ‘Match the items in List A with those in list B’, ‘Conjure up a mental picture of….’Explain to your neighbour….. ‘Listen to the silence in this film’ — these are some of the imperatives you can use to sharpen the pace of the learning process. Continue reading 4.3.1 The missing imperatives
4.3.2 The missing overview
Learners like to know where they are going. They need some navigational aid (verbal or visual) at the very start of the course or lesson which maps out, or hints at, the response route they are going to take. In the world of design at the micro level, this is often called an ‘overview’. This overview can, in a subtle way, anticipate things which later in the course or lesson will be very critical. Continue reading 4.3.2 The missing overview
4.3.3 The impracticality of a design
‘Nice’, ‘good’, ‘beautiful’, ‘exciting’, but remaining for ever gathering dust in its worked-out form on the designer’s shelf: this is sometimes the fate of a good design. Continue reading 4.3.3 The impracticality of a design
4.3.4 The missing melody
An S-R event in which the primary goal is `to instruct’ has a sharp, business-like sound to it. It has to deliver some pre-defined knowledge or skill. In contrast, an S-B, event which is an ‘encounter’ gives the learner plenty of room to respond in her or his own way. An encounter has no end-performance goal. It has an evocative sound to it. Events which have to ‘explain’ or to ‘tell’ have goals and sounds somewhere in between. In the Think Tank workshop we nickname these four types of event thang’, thung’ and thong’ events (see Table 7). Continue reading 4.3.4 The missing melody
4.3.5 The non-integration problem
How many times as a teacher or designer have you heard the complaint that the separate parts of a course ‘don’t seem to belong to each other’? You have probably had to respond to the complaint of non-integration in a course or lesson more than once. It’s a common problem. Continue reading 4.3.5 The non-integration problem