Teachers CAN’T Do Instructional Design

I’m sorry but it’s true.  They just can’t do it…BUT it’s not their fault.  You can blame “the Man,” as long as “the Man” conjures up an image of the long entrenched educational complex guided by tradition, infrastructure, and the latest fads.  In my last post, I compared educators and instructional designers, and I think it is interesting how different their role is.  I had always considered the two synonymous.  I went to graduate school to learn about instructional design in a program that was designed for k-12 educators.  What I learned was a very effective model for designing instruction based on the ADDIE model.  It was a revelatory program that provided powerful insights into the creation of engaging, research-based, and most importantly effective learning experiences.   So it would seem to follow that educators can and should use the same model of instructional design in performing their work.  Certainly I thought so at the time, but I want to elaborate on why I think educators just CAN’T DO it, and as I mentioned before, blame “the Man.”  I think “the Man” has handicapped educators by blindfolding them, spinning them around, and not giving them a clear target.  Why should we be playing educational “Pin the Tail on the Donkey?”  But that is what I think is happening.

In my previous post I identified five reasons that educators cannot do instructional design, time, lack of meaningful analysis, lack of defined performance, lack of continued use, and lack of motivation. I want to elaborate on why this is, why it is important, and hint at what this implies about where  we need to make the biggest changes to the hulking and inertially impaired educational complex.

Problem #1 – Time

No one in education would disagree that teachers simply do not have enough time built into their day to do their job well.  That’s why the best teachers spend much of their evenings and weekends planning, grading work, and calling parents.  The problem is that if educators were to actually do instructional design, they would need to do even more than what they are currently doing, and that  means an investment of more time.  The Science of Learning by Robert T. Hays makes the point that Instructional Design is effective as long as it is done scientifically and methodically.  Teachers, however, tend to barely have enough time to Develop and Implement their lessons (the third and fourth letters in the ADDIE acronym).  In ADDIE, one of the most important steps is the Analysis.  By gathering information about your audience and the performance you are aiming to improve, you are able to tailor instruction so that it is successful.  For educators, there just isn’t time to gather and analyze this information, let alone spend the time to carefully Design the instruction you want to Develop before you Implement it.  Currently the vast majority of a teacher’s day is spent in Implementation, teaching the day’s lesson.  Also, it is difficult to have time to truly Evaluate the instruction as well.  Sure assessments and tests will provide some level of Evaluation of the success of instruction.  Plus teachers are constantly doing informal evaluations through a variety of means.  But Evaluation is meant to inform the instructional strategy itself.  It is a key element to the concept of data-based decision making because it allows for the instruction to be modified, re-designed, and improved.  Even if you have an electronic means of assessing students that provides analytics, you still need to interpret those analytics in order to determine how you should modify instruction and this takes time!  But time is probably the least of my worries for why educators can’t do instructional design, so read on.

Problem #2 – There is No Opportunity for Meaningful Analysis

Above I mentioned that educators don’t have the time to perform analysis, but lets say that they did.  What would they be analyzing?  Instructional designers are tasked with improving performance.  So what they are generally analyzing is prior performance.  For example, if a designer is tasked with improving the accuracy of TSA baggage security, they will analyze how the performance is currently being done.  They are detectives looking for clues to why the performance isn’t optimal and ways that it can be improved.  In the case of education, most likely what you are teaching is the first experience a student has with the material.  So what would you be analyzing?  At best you may be able to do a pre-test that lets you know what students already know, but how would this inform your instructional strategy which is the whole point of Analysis in ADDIE?  So you know what they don’t know.  That tells you that you need to teach it.  Big deal.  The instructional designer gets a lot more information from their analysis.  It tells you where the breakdown in performance is and will actually provide insight into whether the audience will need training, job aids, a change in the structure of the job, new equipment, or what.

Problem #3 – There is No Defined Performance

In my mind, this is probably the biggest problem and is the root of a lot of the problems that educators face.  If this were altered (as I will discuss in my next post ), it has the potential to solve some of the most niggling problems of education.  Here’s the problem:  Instructional designers know what they want the audience to do better.  If the audience is TSA baggage handlers, the designers know they want them to be more accurate in checking bags.  If the audience is the 7-Eleven employees that make the coffee, the designers know they want them to make the coffee in a reliably tasty fashion.   In order to improve performance, the designer may have to teach the audience a thing or two.  This may include facts, attitudes, a process, etc.  But the things being taught are important only because they are necessary in order to inspire performance.

Educators have no performance they are aiming for.  They are tasked with pumping facts and ideas into students’ heads without a context-of-use and without a desired performance where the facts and ideas are useful.  At best you could say that they want the students to do well on the standardized tests, and so the performance is that students should be able to use the massive array of facts and concepts they  learn to answer questions correctly in a testing environment.  Shoot, I don’t understand why our students aren’t motivated by that.  It’s almost as if what our educational complex is trying to prepare our students for is an international Trivial Pursuit tournament.  But guess what, in the future our students are not going to be playing Trivial Pursuit with China.  They need to be able to be innovators, hard-workers, creative problem-solvers, etc. in order to compete in the global marketplace, which is at least one of the goals of a good education.  But the only performance that we have identified is the recall and understanding of facts, concepts, etc.  There is not context-of-use for the information that we are teaching to students.  How are students supposed to use the information in the future?  What will be the context-of-use where this information will be important.  If educators were also provided with a guide to why the information is important, aside from the need for students to remember it on a test, perhaps instruction could be designed better.  In fact, that might be what we decide to test in order to define whether our efforts have been successful.  Some educators create project-based learning opportunities for students that create a real-world context of use.  This is great, but it takes time and requires the educator define the importance of the information.  If the local, state, or national entity that created the standards in the first place also identified how they expected this information to be used and why it is important, it could make instruction and the evaluation of success much simpler and more meaningful.  This will be the topic of my next post, because I think this point is very important, and I’m not sure I’m making it well here.  Essentially I think our standards need re-thought in two respects.

Problem #4 – There is No Continued Use

Another reason that instructional designers are able to employ the ADDIE model effectively is that there is an expectation that their target audience will continue to use the knowledge they acquire from any instructional intervention.  If they are taught the necessary information in order to perform their job more effectively, they will be constantly using that information in the future.  This is what makes it worth it for instructional designers to put significant effort into the ADDIE process.  The designer isn’t just focusing a day’s worth of instruction to teach a topic that will be irrelevant the next day and just needs to be remembered months later for a test.  The information has inherent value because it will be used again and again.   Let’s say an educator who teaches 7th grade science is planning to teach about photosynthesis in a unit about plants.  They are also expected to teach the structure and function, reproductive processes, and other important processes of plants.  Well the next unit may be about evolution.  Will photosynthesis be something that students will need to remember in detail for that unit? No.  Next year they will go on to physical science.  Will students need to remember photosynthesis then?  No.  When the child grows up will it be important to remember specific details about the process of photosynthesis?  No (unless they become a scientist).  Will they need to remember specific details about the process of photosynthesis for the test?  Yes.  The only future performance that is important is the test, unless the students were to become a scientist in the future.  A whole lot of effort will need to be employed to teach photosynthesis effectively so that students remember key details for a test, but to me that’s a lot wasted effort.  The students who will need to know about photosynthesis in detail will learn about it in depth when they have chosen a career path that will require the continued use of this information.  At that point, that knowledge will become important for a specific performance!   For average Joe student a lot of time will be invested into trying to force Joe to remember something that is ultimately value-less in his life, for a very meager payoff – the student just might remember tedious facts for the standardized test. 

Problem #5 – Lack of or Manufactured Motivation

This is another important difference between the job of an instructional designer and the job of an educator.  Instructional designers are lucky enough to be working with people that care about their job, at least they probably do.  Since they care about bonuses, advancement, job security, etc. the audience of an instructional designer is already motivated to a certain degree to do their job well.  Plus the audience may truly love what they do.  They already have an interest in the topic and skills related to the performing their role.  Sure instructional designers still have to worry about creating instruction that is motivating and engaging.  You can squander the motivational capital that the audience of an instructional designer brings with boring instruction, but for the most part the motivation is there and it is only possible to lose it. Educators are in a totally different boat.  Unless a student simply loves to learn or has an interest in the topic, the educator is tasked with imprinting that information in their brains whether the student cares or not.  Some teachers are masters of making things like photosynthesis seem like vital and interesting information, but that is a tall order, especially since students don’t know why this is important or how they will ever use it.  This lack of motivation, paired with the concerns above, is the key to why instruction tends to be ineffective.

Okay, so I’ve told you the five reasons that I think educators CANNOT do instructional design.  Here’s why I think this is important revelation.  I think educators should do instructional design.  It is an effective and proven strategy for designing instruction.  But I think that the system needs restructured in order to make this possible because there are significant barriers to making it possible for teachers to employ a proven strategy for quality instruction.  In my mind the first step in restructuring is to re-define the outcomes of a quality education.  Are we preparing our students for international trivial pursuit tournaments, which is what I think our current system is designed to do, or do we want something much more significant?  I think this goes back to the age old debate about standards-based education.  My 2¢ is coming soon to a blog near you, in fact it’s coming to this blog, in a post entitled Building a City, Building a Future.  That is, unless I decide to change the title.

The Importance of the Teacher in Transforming Education

The video, A Nation in Crisis: America[s Education System is Broken makes the argument that education is failing our youth, which I don't think many people would disagree with.  With increased globalization, our students need to be able to compete not just with their neighbors but with people they've never met in countries across the world.  "We are squandering a national resource," the brains and talent of our youth, with an educational system that is entrenched in tradition that is unable to adapt to the new realities of the 21st century.  The new global workforce needs to develop 21st century skills and be able to adapt and learn continuously, and our schools are simply not developing these abilities in students.

The video provides a powerful motivation for change, but does not outline a solution.  What will education that inspires students and develops the ability to change and shift look like?  What will the role of the teacher be in this new paradigm?  What is it that we need to do differently?

In a previous post, I present a worry I have about one view of the teacher role in any new paradigm.  Some people who adhere to the Plugged in Vision (PIV) for educational reform (hopefully a minority) believe that the teacher should facilitate education in a very narrow sense.  They see the teacher as simply a coordinator of the students’ experience with pre-made online curriculum.  On this model, software is selected for each subject and students work through the software at their own pace with the teacher monitoring and assisting as needed.  In my previous post I presented some of my concerns with this model.  But in regard to the teacher role, I believe this model represents a very impoverished view of the teacher role.  Teachers would not teach; they would manage.  A view of the teacher that I much prefer is presented in the video Networked Student.

In this video the teacher is vital to the learning in an environment where connections are what is important.  On this model, students learn from each other and by those outside of the classroom that are grappling with the same issues.  They evaluate and share resources, discuss both in web environments and in person.  They work together to construct meaning through connectivism.  As a final product they present their learning in wikis or other media so that their learning is shared with others.

In this much more robust vision of 21st century learner, the teacher is:

• Learning concierge
• Modeler
• Learning architect
• Connected learning incubator
• Network sherpa
• Change agent
• Synthesizer

His/her role is critical in guiding student learning.  To be proficient in this new role, teachers will need to be highly skilled in content, in web 2.0 technology, and in facilitating cooperation, discussion, and interaction.

The only question is whether the vision of 21st century learning outlined by the Networked Student video will resolve the problems presented in the A Nation in Crisis: America[s Education System is Broken.

TPACK & Learning by Design, my thoughts

In my last post I gushed about a framework for teacher knowledge that I believe is quite powerful, TPACK.  When I first learned of TPACK, I felt like a light went on.  Since I work in an edtech dept. for a school district, I quickly shared the framework with my colleagues.  Ever since, when I have planned professional development I have considered the framework the guiding principle.

Along with the TPACK framework, Mishra and Koehler proposed a strategy for developing TPACK called Learning by Design.  Here’s how I understand the strategy:  In order for teachers to develop TPACK, they should learn about technology in the context of solving a pedagogical problem.  For example, a small group of teachers might be asked to develop a learning experience for students to teach about the evidence for global warming.  In the process of designing this instruction, the teachers would consider what pedagogical strategies might help students to understand this evidence and what technology tools might help make this possible, easier, etc.

I think in general this strategy makes sense.  We want teachers to be instructional designers and consider technology use not because it would be “so cool” but because it is a natural fit.  If that’s what we want as an endpoint, why not start there?  … But I have reservations.  My thoughts on this strategy are shaped by my experiences as a student at SDSU and as a professional developer in a school district.

In my COMET masters classes at SDSU, learning by design is precisely the approach our professors are using to teach us about how technology can be used for instruction.  We are given a problem.  For example, create an educational video on the topic of your choosing.  The tool we use is completely open.  The video can be filmed, animated…be created in Flash, iMovie, Final Cut, Adobe Premier, etc.  If we don’t know the technology tool that will help us realize our vision, we learn it.  I think learning by design works in this situation very well.  But the reason it has worked in the SDSU classes is because the students are already at least fairly tech savvy, are motivated learners, and chose to participate in the program voluntarily.  We are ready and willing!

As a professional developer who develops pd for teachers who range from technology pros to complete newbies, I haven’t been convinced that learning by design would work as well in our district.  Here’s why:  I’ve worked for the past three years with a grant called ESETT.  ESETT’s goal is to help middle school science teacher integrate technology into their curriculum.  What we have found throughout the implementation of this grant (that has a heavy emphasis on professional development) is that in the first year of implementation, the teachers focus on learning the tools and dabble with finding ways to use it in the classroom.  In the second year, the teachers are at the point where they are using technology more frequently with students and feel more competent  In the third year, teachers can easily make choices about technology and explain why the tool is helpful in a particular situation.  Hence, it isn’t until the third year that most teachers develop robust TPACK.  It takes time.  It is only after teachers know what tools are available, have a rough idea of what the tools can do, and begin to feel comfortable with using technology in a supportive environment that teachers have developed TPACK.

In fact, when we begin to work with new teachers, we tend to tell them not to worry about the technology.  We encourage them to let us, as resource teachers, be the technology experts in the beginning.  Their job is to decide about the content and pedagogy and we help them find a good technology fit.  Once we help them plan, then we support them (if they want us too) by being in the classroom when they first use the new technology.  Now I don’t think this amount of support is always possible, but I do think that although the ultimate in professional development would be to develop grade-level/content area Professional Learning Communities that work together to design instruction while considering technology, pedagogy, and content, I think that getting to that point will generally require a bit of scaffolding.

Another strategy we have tried with our newest group of teachers in order to try to accelerate the development of TPACK is to have their first professional development experience be about seeing the technology work from the student perspective.  We created a Moodle course with a number of learning tasks (focused on our outcomes for the PD – i.e. developing an idea about how a classroom would be different with technology).  Each learning task had the teachers using some of the tools that they would have available to them once they are planning instruction.  For example, we showed them the basics of Inspiration so that they could brainstorm how the classroom would be different with technology and had them upload their work to Moodle as a student would.  Also, we had them synthesize their thinking in a ComicLife at the end of the day.  This way teachers learned using the tools that they would expect others to learn from.  This strategy helped them see how all of the tools can fit together in daily instruction, and there were many discussions toward the end of the day where teachers saw some natural fits with their curriculum for some of the tools and we began to help them plan those learning activities.

To sum up, I think generally there will need to be some kind of scaffolding before teachers will be comfortable learning using the Learning by Design approach.  Anyway, this is extraordinarily long for a post, so I had better stop writing, but thank you if you’ve been patient and read this far!

Micro Learning Spaces™ a lá Doug McIntosh

Since I work quite a bit with teachers who are using technology in their classes, I spend a lot of time thinking about what a classroom ought to be like that integrates technology successfully.  I work with middle and high school teacher, so I’ve mostly looked through the lens of secondary education.  I’ve considered, as all stakeholders in 21st century learning have,  many facets of the up-to-date 21st century classroom:

• harware and software needs
• building infrastructure
• professional development
• pedagogical concerns
• management
• scalability
• refresh
• collaboration
• etc.

kindergarten classroom from woodleywonderworks flickr photostream

One thing that I have never considered before are the needs of the physical environment – tables, chairs, and other furniture.  However, after a conversation with my colleague, Doug McIntosh at the SDUSD Edtech department, I’ve begun to see the need for 21st century secondary classrooms to take a cue from the classic elementary classroom.  Here’s his site on the subject, his blog post on the subject and his rLife page)

Elementary classrooms have stations and cozy places for different types of learning.  There are reading nooks, art centers, meeting tables, student desks, etc.  Incidentally, most workplaces have micro environments as well.  You have your personal desk, conference rooms, meeting rooms, reading rooms, storage rooms, labs, etc.

high school classroom from dave_mcmt's flickr photostream

With technology coming into the classroom, we need to rethink the typical secondary classroom design with tables and chairs that are arranged either facing forward or for group work only.  We need flexibility in the environment.  What we’ll need are micro-learning spaces.  Why do high tech  secondary classrooms need micro-environments?  Because high tech classrooms have the potential to innovate how we learn and teach.  If we don’t change the physical environment and secondary classrooms maintain their traditional arrangements, this is less likely to happen.  Students will remain in rows of individual desks, and instruction is likely to continue to be uniform and teacher directed.  Collaboration, differentiation, authentic tasks etc. aren’t as easy to achieve.  We need areas for group work, for individual work, for whole group meetings, for multimedia production, etc.  If every student has a computer, there are so many structures that are possible for learning that requiring students to face forward or even in small groups continually, will curtail the possibilities.  Plus, students don’t all have to be doing the same thing at a given time.  Students can go at their own pace, have different foci for their learning, have an experience that is tailored to their needs and abilities, etc.   Isn’t that part of the dream of 21st century learning?