1.4: Learner Characteristics
“Learner characteristics are those facets of the learner’s experiential background thatimpact the effectiveness of a learning process” (Seels & Richey, 1994, p. 32). Learner
characteristics impact specific components of instruction during the selection and
implementation of instructional strategies. For example, motivation research influences
the selection and implementation of instructional strategies based upon identified learner
characteristics. Learner characteristics interact with instructional strategies, the learning
situation, and the nature of the content.
Constructivism and Its Application to Game-Based Learning Activities
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Gaming is an activity enjoyed by many students, and when used for educational purposes, games can improve student motivation towards learning, particularly when used in the creation of constructivist learning opportunities. Applying constructivist principles to educational game-based learning activities yields an approach that puts students in the role of active learners and content creators.
I’ve written a paper (embedded below) which outlines the rationale for using games for learning purposes, and proposes a problem-based constructivist gaming model for educational game design. Aspects of the model include stating well-defined goals and problems, promoting student hypotheses for solutions to the problems, encouraging experimentation in the game world, delivering prompt feedback, and allowing students to reflect on their learning experiences. Simulations and virtual worlds are particularly appropriate game genres for constructivist activities. The games Civilization, Hephaestus, and Second Life are explained with the problem-based gaming model. A particular focus is placed on K-12 learning environments, illustrating how teachers may use these games to support young students’ constructivist learning.
Digital Parent: Facing Facebook
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A few months ago, I co-founded a project called Digital Parent with a few other educators across North America. The goal of Digital Parent is to deliver technology workshops for parents. The basic idea is to help parents better understand technology, and provide training that will benefit them as they seek to understand the benefits of educational technology, as well as technology tools relevant to their personal lives. The project is still in its formative stages, and although we’ve been on hiatus for awhile, I’m hoping with this new instructional project I’ve designed we can get the project moving again.
My original role in Digital Parent was simply to provide technical support. However, since I’ve been learning quite a bit about instructional design, I plan on taking the initiative and helping the team form organized models to develop and assess future workshops.
Below is the instructional design document for “Facing Facebook,” a workshop to help parents better understand how children use Facebook, and how to talk to their kids about the service. The document is a little long (it was written for a graduate school class), and I feel it could use some trimming so it only addresses the basic needs of any Digital Parent instructor who downloads and uses it.
I’ve realized that Digital Parent will need both formative and summative evaluations included in the process, which will be a daunting yet important task since the workshops will be delivered as downloadable “modules,” so the instructional designers will likely never see the instruction put into practice. We can still hold our own one-to-one and small group evaluations, however, but any field trials will likely consist of an actual instructor presenting the content to an actual group of interested parents, without the presence or the knowledge of the instructional design team. Every workshop module should have a summative assessment for all participants (teachers and students), accessible on the Digital Parent web site, that is automatically reported back to the Digital Parent team. This will allow us to keep a careful watch over the effectiveness of our instructional design projects, and be able to revise and improve our work.
Instructional Design Project #1
0I just finished my first instructional design project. This was a challenging but personally rewarding assignment. I will admit that actually creating a context analysis, learner analysis, task analysis, survey, and assessments provides a lot more insight into how all the aspects of instructional design fit together, than just reading about it in a long-winded textbook.
