I am a real proponent of writing clear goals and specific learning objectives for all levels of instructional design.
Goals: High level goals center a designer and developer in terms of direction. They help justify the development to those who need to buy into the concept. They explain "what's to come" in terms of the design and delivery. I have recently gone through a bit of this as I have changed the goal of training at the University from a professional development focus to a training focus. Outlined as a goal in the cover letter on our new Learning Opps catalogue, the goal is helpful in explaining the directional change to campus constituencies.
Objectives: While I don't think they are easy to write, I don't know how you could design or develop instruction without knowing where you think you need to land. All of our courses here have objectives attached - though some are less robust than I would like for various and sundry reasons.
Obviously, my model will employ a healthy dose of goals and objectives development. I think it's foundational, no matter the learning context.
After having read the ISD vs. Constructivist article, I'd have a hard time arguing with your belief in using objectives, as opposed to considering a "collectively derived knowledge" method. Perhaps one way of using a Constructivist influence would be if you were conducting a focus group or brainstorming session with employees to come up with ideas for solving an administration logistical problem. I am working on such a problem at the moment, and my first inclination was to look at the organization from an "energy balance" perspective, meaning, how could I allocate excess energy being wasted in one place and use it where energy is needed? (you can define energy any way you want). In this training context, since the workers know the procedures better than anyone else, maybe they would be the ones to come up with the best reconfiguration? I'd have to think a bit harder to see how this example would fit into a generalizable ISD model, but the idea, like Constructivism, is only a tool, not a solution.
ReplyDeleteI think you are right on the money in your thinking Steve. I come from corporate America where I need to be sure that I am implementing what multiple parties need...and it needs to work. To insure that we're all on the same planet, I cannot imagine defining the objectives ahead of time. The environment would just not allow the potential mistake. But, a different environment may tolerate more creativity from the learners. Typically in corporate America, there is a "best solution" that is agreed upon and implemented.
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