We missed you at PIDT. What you missed were five other people offering their way to address the issues in IDT, IP&T, ISD, ITS, and all the other acronyms. Their views and approaches were just as thought-out as yours. So which is better?

“Effectiveness and efficiency are the only metrics ever really considered in traditional instructional design circles. Reigeluth added “appealâ€? to this list, but you hardly ever hear it mentioned in practice.”

Sounds like Merrill’s “Effective, efficient, and *engaging*.” Why doesn’t engagement (appeal) get researched? Because we haven’t developed any measure of it (despite the work in psychology on the topic).

In other words, you suggest a good model for new work in instructional research. But you offer no way to research it in a comparative or quantitative manner. This model (at this point) is no better or worse than the other ones out there.

Until we, as a field, stop formulating more independent theories than we have time to fully develop and research, our progress will be limited to isolated and disjointed pockets of knowledge that are even less effective than killing babies.

Isn’t that exactly why we are so keen on social networks and technologies that can support them to enhance teaching and learning? Because individuals do not scale does not mean that networks do not scale.

So…”intelligent tutoring systems” = “killing babies”? Nice analogy. You’re thisfar from falling prey to Godwin’s Law.

And wouldn’t you consider “effective” instruction to be one of the highest ethical ideals? Or do you believe it is ethical to keep learners in an environment where they don’t actually learn anything?

Efficiency isn’t such a bad goal either, particularly where resources are constrained–i.e., everywhere.

Or would you rather that we continue using instructional strategies that are *known* to be ineffective (like our favorite: auditory/kinesthetic/visual learning styles)?

When people avoid evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of their instruction–or discussing it–I tend to believe it is because the instructional approaches they advocate are neither effective or efficient.

As Chair of the IEEE LOM standard I was curious though about your opening remark “(remember the IEEE LOM documents saying people are learning objects?)” and wondered if you could point me to the document you are referring to? I’d like to understand the concern.

Perhaps this is in reference to the point that when providing metadata about content that is used for learning there is a need to have some metadata about people in relation to the content such as authors, contributors, learners, etc.? Indeed the scope of what the metadata could cover was purposely made extremely broad “any entity, digital or non-digital, which can be used, re-used or referenced during technology supported learning.” I suppose one could argue that this definition could include people as “non digital objects” but that’s a stretch and not the intent. The purpose of LOM is primarily to enable the broadest and most effective sharing, reuse, discovery and management of any content that could be used for learning. The full description can be found in the original statements of Purpose and Scope for LOM at http://www.ieeeltsc.org/working-groups/wg12LOM/lomDescription/

Thanks for the well done blog David and look forward to reading more.

Wayne Hodgins
Strategic Futurist,
Autodesk Inc.
See http://www.autodesk.com/waynehodgins for blogs, podcasts, slides and much, much more!

Chair,
IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee P1484.12
Learning Objects Metadata Group
http://www.ieeeltsc.org/working-groups/wg12LOM

It seems to me the ideal is not a learning experience based on any one of these by itself, but an appropriate mixture of all four. And you can come up with that ‘appropriate mixture’ only if you have the relationship to begin with. There are times when you need to focus on the relationship, times when you focus on content, and times when you turn them loose and let them explore for themselves. But just one of these, without the others, would never lead to a good learning environment.