This is a slideshow on mobile “stuff”, but I think the same could be said about any type of design these days for teaching and learning. Specifically, if you look at the last few slides – 90-93, we have to design for:
- diversity
- interruptions
- personal time
- health/learning/quality of life
This certainly presents an interesting set of challenges, but just seeing these out there makes those who care, at least conscious of some of the things that they can’t take for granted anymore – namely the captive attention of an individual in a known location, who’s time is commanded by an authority figure and where the individuals’ prior experience and conditions are not relevant.
In my personal take, I’m thinking that when looking at any new or revised instructional design, we should take into account that the control is increasingly going to the student and that student is in an increasingly unknown environment. This makes assumptions dangerous.
But as so much of teaching/story telling/life sharing is based on assumption, where can we start from if we can’t assume some manner of common origin? I’m thinking, we work backward. If we know where we want the students to go, we can let the students fill in their own gaps between where we provide the information/resources and they provide their current understandings. Sounds familiar… doesn’t it?
I think it might just be the kicker we need to bring back objectives (learning and otherwise) to the design of out materials. That would seem to me to be the only way that we can reliably get everyone to the same level at the end of the experience. The caveat being of course, that in designing paths to reach these objectives, we can’t go around assuming things either, we need to provide all manner of templates for students to follow and understand that some of them may very well find their own way to the objective – and we have to be fine with that.
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