MOATS

Module Organizer and Teaching Suggestor

Jean Kreis

NLII 2004 Fellow

Research Proposal

March 21, 2004

Brief problem statement: While much attention has been paid in the last few years to developing knowledge databases for storage, retrieval, and sharing of content, there has been less effort focused on developing support systems for utilizing those content objects in theoretically varied contexts. Each knowledge content repository tends to include a lesson planner tool for organizing the material, but with few exceptions (ALEx http://schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/CurricularDev/alex.asp; CLOE http://lt3.uwaterloo.ca/CLOE ; LAMS http://www.lamsinternational.com [jmk1] ) no tool is offered to present an array of different instructional strategies based on contextually appropriate learning theories for the user to utilize.

Within the NLII experience this is also substantiated. The initial virtual community of practice project, the Teaching and Learning VCOP identified this need as the single greatest need for not only faculty in higher education, but for personnel tasked with supporting them. The need extends not only to use of content repositories, but to the appropriate use of learning technologies. The need for an instructional support tool or database of instructional strategies utilizing technologies in excellent schemas to facilitate transformative teaching and learning practices that are organized in such a fashion that permits multiple entry points for either faculty, or instructional support staff is a challenging problem. The challenge is beyond how to structure such a tool or database of to accurately and easily permit access by multiple users with a wide range of needs. The challenge lies in the very nature of instructional design theory, which is divided into descriptive theories (how learning takes place) and iterative practical theories (how to teach using this theory). However, because even though the “practical” instructional design theories may offer fairly detailed suggestions on implementation of the methodology, the implementation is always a recursive process. How is this able to be introduced and captured in a technology? How is this able to be merged with other technologies? And, how if the technology is able to be created to mime the iterative process using multiple content repositories, how is it able to adjust to both the user’s individual needs and select from among the multitude of theories which don’t agree on word usage for some of the same instructional strategies?

Purpose of the proposed work: I propose to research the material and develop the content for creation of a specific instrument with which personnel described below can enter an instructional problem or goal and a wizard will suggest an array of solutions or processes to attain it. The following array will be displayed along a continuum based on the inputs concerning the user’s goals, preferences, and/or key instructional variables such as learner characteristics, subject matter content and learning task characteristics, or other contextual variables such as course level, class size, and teaching philosophy.

I envision that those interested and who would benefit from such material would be staff and others closely associated with faculty development centers, teaching excellence/resource centers, and educational/instructional technology departments, such as:

Instructional Theorists/Learning Theorists

Instructional Designers

Instructors/faculty

Instructor Assistants

Support Personnel/Technologists

There may need to be different structures in the tool/database to differentiate how each of the audiences would utilize the content for their own needs, but each of the uses would all be focused around the same instructional design content. The technology would only be a subset of the content and, in fact, would be multiple subsets given multiple technologies options and different instructional strategies for different instructional goals and outcomes.

Approach: I envision and have begun to implement a five-tiered approach.

1) Working with Wayne Brent, I designed conceptual format of the MOATS project at the University of Arizona in the last year. The site was initially developed to capture the multiple dimensionalities of all of the possible elements, which I am not developing this year, but rather focusing on the above description. The university has given me the support of a partial team (project lead, programmer, and web-developer) and time to put my NLII research findings into the development of the initial instrument. It is part of a larger project called the VALA-system.

2) There are many articles written about instructional design for both the business community and the K-12 community. The higher education community is not so fortunate. Research needs to focus into the iterative practical instructional design theories and apply them to higher education’s unique environments and challenges. Any theories that are particular to other learning environments require amendments to be written and where possible, formative research opportunities set up with faculty/course teams.

3) Rubrics; learning activities; technologies; assessment tools and community evaluation of each of these needs to be captured and imported into the research and instrument. I see using this material to enrich the MOATS structure. I believe adding case studies/scenarios that make connections to different technologies for different audiences how these studies can be extrapolated and utilized (possibly for other disciplines, other class sizes, other learners, other institutions) will be an additional way of extending the reach of the research and instrument. I’m still working on what that might look like.

4) I have been working with Tom Carey, of the University of Waterloo and a recent member of the NLII planning committee, to seek funding to find more resources similar to the MOATS project. As in the problem statement above, the deficit of this kind of instrument and the need for it is not limited to the United States. The need exists internationally. This requires funding. Tom’s work on educational rationale metadata abstracts the instructional strategies into a chart of words that are easily used by either faculty or instructional designers as one way to easily tag their case studies (or, as he shows, a learning object) for others to use. I continue sharing my findings with Tom and he continues the international contacts in order to filter them back to my work.

5) The fifth approach is via the Bridging Community of Practice, now in the initial stages of formation via the 2004 Spring Online Focus Session/Workshop. In it the Bridging Core Team is utilizing an organizational change methodology, Appreciative Inquiry, as one way of both soliciting the strengths and experiences of the participants and of forming the disparate group of people situated across a nation into a cohesive community who can work together as within a domain that encompasses the transformation of instructional design and pedagogical practice through enhanced engagement with learning science research. The focus will be on the use of institutional communities of practice as agents of change to transform this practice in order to promote the most appropriate and effective use of technology to promote learning. With my involvement as a co-facilitator, I envision that the topics the community will address and will wrestle with will inform my research. I also envision inviting the community participants to share case studies of their own; to share their instructional strategies; to research at the level they are comfortable at; to review my work; to challenge not only my ideas, but each others so that we can effectively create an instrument and knowledge that is useful to the higher education community in the service of transforming teaching practices within context of learning science.