Some assemblage required

Assembling the heterogeneous elements for (digital) learning

Category: c2d2

Understanding approaches to improving a course

By

On May 18, 2008

In addie, c2d2, elearning, paperIdeas, Uncategorized

Theoretically the group I work with is charged with helping staff at CQU improve the quality of their learning and teaching. To improve the courses they teach. A task that is not particularly easy for any number of reasons. Including the one identifed by Farhad Saba in this post. i.e. that academics by nature are a fairly solitary bunch and aren’t used to, or particularly like, work with other people to help improve a course. I know this from two perspectives, working where I am now and because I was just such an academic.

Arising from this preference for solitary work is that most academics generally have their own ideas, preferences and methods for improving their courses. This is tied to their conceptualisation of learning and teaching and also their past experience. This variety in how to improve a course raises some interesting problems for those charged with helping them. How do provide assistance to a large number of people who are doing things differently?

One step towards answering that question might be to try and understand the full spectrum of different approaches that people are using. Perhaps if you understand this variety, a way forward might arise.

The following post attempts to formulate a framework to understand the full spectrum of different approaches that I have seen used. The aim is to be descriptive, to understand the different approaches. The intent is not to limit understanding to “proper” instructional design approaches, rather it is to understand all of the different approaches that are used.

The Framework

Within the information systems discipline (and others) two by two frameworks are all rage for this type of thing. So why should I buck the trend. Here’s a first stab.

framework_nothing-300x195

This framework concentrates on two particular dimensions:

  1. When is the improvement decided upon (the y/vertical axis).
    At some stage a decision is made about what improvement(s) will be made to the course. There are two extremes:

    1. Emergent – where there is no pre-determined outcome or idea about how to improve the course. What will be improved in the course emerges out of the improvement process.
    2. Pre-determined – the particular improvement is known prior to commencing the improvement process.

    There is a lot of space between the two extremes.

  2. The type of improvement process
    This dimension is concerned with the nature of the particular process used to improve the course. There are two extremes:

    1. Pragmatic – the process is aimed at making some form of pragmatic improvement to a particular aspect of the course. Much, even most, of the course will not change.
    2. Re-design – the aim of the improvement is a complete is typically aimed at a complete re-examination and re-thinking of the course.

Examples

Many 2×2 frameworks encapsulate 4 categories and seek to place examples into a particular box. This is not that type of framework. In part because this is a very rough, early idea and also because I’m not sure that the area of interest (how do academics seek to improve their courses) can be understood with specific categories. Each of the two dimensions in the framework are meant to represent a spectrum of possibilities. The framework is more a graph.

The placement of the following examples into the framework are meant to be broadly representative and illustrative and not quantitatively calculated, exact placements. I also expect that there might be some disagreement about the placement of some examples.

Constructive Alignment

Constructive alignment is a common type of re-design process and is the preferred method for CDDU.

Constructive alignment seeks to change the fundamental design of a course. It generally questions the conceptualisation of learning and teaching of the teacher. So it’s high on the re-design dimension.

The outcomes are pre-determined to some extent. The constructive part of alignment assumes that learning is best achieved when the student is actively constructing meaning. That “pre-determination” still allows for emergent design, as long as it tends to stay within the constraints of the constructive perspective. The alignment component also provides a bit of pre-determination.

constructivealignment-300x194

NCAT Program in Course Re-design

The NCAT Program in Course Re-design is also high up the re-design end of the process type dimension. In fact, one of the six characteristics common to these types of projects is “Whole course design” (Twigg, 2003).

However, a number of the other listed characteristics (e.g. active learning, mastery learning, computer-based learning resources) also act to increase the pre-determination.

ncat-300x195

ADDIE Model

The ADDIE Model is a generic design process (more a design model) and consequently doesn’t pre-determine anything. Knowledge found during the analysis, informs the design which identifies what will be done. However, it might be argued that due to the nature of human beings that such a generic process will be pre-determined due to preferences/experience of the designers involved in the process. But I’ll ignore that for now, this argument could be said to apply to all approaches.

However, ADDIE doesn’t necessarily have to produce a complete re-design. It might just result in a simple and small modification of one aspect. It can range over a broad area of the type of design process dimension.

addie-300x196

Problem-based learning

Using problem-based learning as basis for improvement will typically be a re-design process, at least if PBL isn’t already being used.

The outcome is, to some extent, pre-determined as use of PBL limits the possible improvements to those which are consistent with the beliefs/assumptions of PBL. Though, as with constructive alignment, this area of pre-determination is not exactly narrow.

pbl-300x196

Choosing a new textbook

The purists may not see this one as valid. However, it’s probably the most common approach in certain places.

As a process, it generally involves looking at all the relevant textbooks, choosing one and then modifying the content of the course to fit. Hence this is not likely to be a re-design of the course.

It’s also a fairly high on the pre-determined dimension as this approach typically assumes that the course will not change. The improvement is the new text and the use of its associated resources (lecture slides, quiz questions etc.). There is also not likely to be large change as most textbooks assume pretty much the same pedagogy (lectures, tutorials, assignments, exams).

Strategic approaches

This is what I’m calling the situation where the leadership of an organisational unit (be it program/degree, school, faculty, or entire university) decides to adopt a common approach to all courses. This might include a particular pedagogical approach (e.g. PBL) or delivery model/approach (e.g. all courses will have a website that follows a particular template).

Such an approach is generally pre-determined for all courses offered by the unit. The purpose of a strategic approach is typically to achieve a common goal for all courses.

These type of approaches can run the full spectrum from pragmatic to re-design depending on the nature of the type of improvement (from brand new pedagogical foundation through to adoption of a particular web site template).

strategic-300x195

Solution driven approaches

These are the type of approaches which can be said, from the most cynical perspective, to be “solutions looking for problems”. These types of approaches often arise from fads. Someone becomes aware of a new idea, approach or technology and decides to use it within their course. The Web, web 2.0, Second Life etc. are just some of the technical examples of this approach. But it’s just not technology. Small tactics or approaches (e.g. minute papers) can also be used this way.

These types of approach are typically pre-determined. It’s been decided to use the particular solution already. It’s just a matter of how.

They are also typically pragmatic. It’s only this particular solution that is being adopted to improve an aspect of the course. Not a complete re-design.

Extreme learning and teaching

The nascent idea of extreme learning and teaching is a one of mine and still somewhat questionable and under development. However, it is a little different and I thought I’d include to see if this might help me think more about where it fits.

Extreme learning and teaching takes it’s basic idea from extreme programming.
In particular the idea that there are some known practices/principles in software engineering that work. So, let’s take those to the extreme. Have a development process that focuses on them.
Extreme L&T draws on Chickering and Gamson’s 7 principles for good practice in education as the principles to maximise.

The idea is to identify how you improve a course you look at the 7 principles and seek strategies to maximise them.

Such an approach is to somewhat pre-determined, it has to maximise at least one of the 7 principles. But that is still a very large area of pre-determination.

It’s also likely to be a fairly pragmatic approach. It’s likely that entire courses wouldn’t be re-designed, but instead small, evolutionary changes. That said, it might be possible to re-design a course (just a bit unlikely).

extreme-300x194

Futher thoughts

How can this sort of thing help?

A group like CDDU, seeking to help people improve their courses, should be aiming to offer support for the methods that are being used to improve courses. Different areas along both dimensions of this graph/framework require different types of support. If you know where the approaches used by people are located you can target resources to provide the appropriate types of support.

Similarly, different parts of the framework are also going to have different characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. For example,

  • Approaches with high levels of pre-determination will not be able to adapt to differences in courses and context.
  • Approaches with high levels of re-design are likely to be much more difficult and time-consuming.
  • Very pragmatic approaches may not achieve large improvements in learning outcomes, but they’ll be a lot easier to implement.

The purpose of this type of framework is to help improve understanding. Being able to show people where their approach to improving a course fits and explain its likely needs in terms of support, its characteristics

Initial thoughts from CogEdge accreditation course

By

On March 16, 2008

In c2d2, cognitiveEdge, design theory, elearning, herding cats, information systems, missingPs, ple, thesis, Uncategorized

As I’ve mentioned before Myers-Briggs puts me into the INTP box, a Kiersey Archiect-Rational. Which amongst many other things I have an interest in figuring out the structure of things.

As part of that interest in “figuring out the structure” I spent three days last week in Canberra at a Cognitive Edge accreditation course. Primarily run by Dave Snowden (you know that a man with his own Wikipedia page must be important), who along with others has significant criticisms of the Myers-Briggs stuff, the course aims to bring people up to speed with Cognitive Edge’s approach, methods and tools to management and social sciences.

Since this paper in 2000, like many software people who found a resonance with agile software development, I’ve been struggling to incorporate ideas with a connection to complex adaptive systems into my practice. Through that interest I’ve been reading Dave’s blog, his publications and listening to his presentations for sometime. When the opportunity to attend one of his courses arose, I jumped at the chance.

This post serves two main roles:

  1. The trip report I need to generate to explain my absence from CQU for a week.
  2. Forcing me to write down some immediate thoughts about how it might be applied at CQU before I forget.

Over the coming weeks on this blog I will attempt to engage, reflect and attempt to integrate into my context the huge amount of information that was funneled my way during the week. Some of that starts here, but I’m likely to be spending years engaging with some of the ideas.

What’s the summary

In essence the Cognitive Edge approach is to take insights from science, in particular complex adaptive systems theory, cognitive science and techniques from other disciplines and apply them to social science, in particular management.

That’s not particularly insightful or original. It’s essentially a rephrasing of the session blurb. In my defence, I don’t think I can come up with a better description and it is important to state this because the Cognitive Edge approach seriously questions much of the fundamental assumptions of current practices in management and the social sciences.

It’s also important to note that the CogEdge approach only questions these assumptions in certain contexts. The approach does not claim universality, nor does it accept claims of universality from other approaches.

That said, the CogEdge approach does provides a number of theoretical foundations upon which to question much of what passes for practices within the Australian higher education sector and within organisations more broadly. I’ll attempt to give some examples in a later section. The next few sub-sections provide a brief overview of some of these theoretical foundations. I’ll try and pick up these foundations and their implications for practice at CQU and within higher education at a later date.

The Cynefin Framework

At the centre of the CogEdge approach is the Cynefin framework.

The Wikipedia page describes it as a decision making framework. Throughout the course we were shown a range of contexts in which it can be used to guide people in making decisions. The Wikipedia page lists knowledge management, conflict resolution and leadership. During the course there were others mentioned including software development.

My summary (see the wikipedia page for a better one) is that the framework is based on the idea that there are five different types of systems (the brown bit in the middle of the above image is the fifth type of system – disorder, when you don’t know which of the four other systems you’re dealing with). Most existing principles are based on the idea of there being just one type of system. An ordered system. The type of system where causality is straight forward and one that the right leader(ship group) can fully understand and design (or most likely adopt them from elsewhere) interventions that will achieve some desired outcome.

If the intervention happens to fail, then it is a problem with the implementation of the intervention. Someone failed, there wasn’t enough communication, not enough attention paid to the appropriate culture and values etc.

The Cynefin Framework suggests that there are 5 different contexts. This suggests an alternate perspective for failure. That is, that the nature of the approach was not appropriate for the type of system.

A good example of this mismatch is the story which Dave regularly tells about the children’s birthday party. Some examples of this include: an mp3 audio description (taken from this presentation) or a blog post that points to a video offering a much more detailed description.

The kid’s birthday party is an example of what they Cynefin framework calls a complex system. The traditional management by objectives approach originally suggested for use is appropriate for the complicated and simple sectors of the Cynefin framework, but not the complex.

Everything is fragmented

“Everything is fragmented” was a common refrain during the course. It draws on what cognitive science has found out about human cognition. The ideal is that human beings are rational decision makers. We gather all the data, consider the problem from all angles, perhaps consult some experts and then make the best decision (we optimize).

In reality, the human brain only gets access to small fragments of the information that is presented. We compare those small fragments against the known patterns we have in our brain (our past experience) and then choose the first match (we satisfice). The argument is that we take fragments of information and assemble them into something, somewhat meaningful.

The CogEdge approach recognises this and its methods and software are designed to build on this strength.

Approach, methods and software

The CogEdge approach is called “naturalising sensemaking”. Dave offers a simple definition of sensemaking here

the way in which we make sense of the world so that we can act in it

Kurtz and Snowden provide a comparison between what passes for the traditional approaches within organisations (idealistic) and their approach (naturalistic). I’m trying to summarise this comparison in the following table.

Idealistic Naturalistic
identify the future state and implement approaches to achieve that state gain sufficient understanding of the present context and choose projects to stimulate the evolution of the system, monitor that evolution and intervene as necessary
Emphasis is on expert knowledge and their analysis and interpretation Emphasis on the inherent un-knowability of a complex system which means affording no privelege to expert interpretation and instead favouring emergent meaning at the coal-face
Diagnosis precedes and is separate from intervention. Diagnosis/research identifies best practice and informs interventions to close the gap between now and the identified future state All diagnosis are also interventions and all interventions provide an opportunity for diagnosis

As well as providing the theoretical basis for these views the CogEdge approach also provides a collection of methods that help management actually act within a naturalistic, sense-making approach. It isn’t an approach that says step back and let it all happen.

There is also the SenseMaker Suite. Software that supports (is supported by) the methods and informed by the same theoretical insights.

Things too question

Based on the theoretical perspective taken by CogEdge it is possible to raise a range of questions (many of a very serious nature) against a range of practices currently within the Australian Higher Education sector. The following list is a collection of suggestions, I need to work more on these.

The content of this list is based on my assumption that learning and teaching within a current Australian university is a context system and fits into the sector of the Cynefin framework. I believe all of the following practices only work within the simple or the complicated sectors of the Cynefin framework.

My initial list includes the following, and where possible I’ve attempted to list what some of the flaws might be of this approach within the complex sector of the :

  • Quality assurance.
    QA assumes you document all your processes. As practiced the written down practices are quite complete. It assumes you can predict the future. As practiced by AUQA it assumes that a small collection of auditors from outside the organisational context can come in, look around for a few days and make informed comments on the validity of what is being done. It assumes that these auditors are experts making rational decisions, not pattern-matchers fiting what they see against their past experience.
  • Carrick grants emphasising cross institutional projects to encourage adoption.
    Still thinking about this one, but my current unease is based on the belief of the uniqueness of each context and the difficulty of moving the same innovation across different institutional contexts as is.
  • Requiring teaching qualifications from new academic staff.
    There is an assumption that the quality of university learning and teaching can be increased by requiring all new academic staff to complete a graduate certificate in learning and teaching. This assumes that folk won’t game the requirement. i.e. complete the grad. cert. and then ignore the majority of what they “learnt” when they return to a context which does not value or reward good teaching. It assumes that academics will gain access to the knowledge they need to improve in such a grad cert. A situation in which they are normally not going to be developing a great deal of TPCK. i.e. the knowledge they get won’t be contextualised to their unique situation.
  • The application of traditional, plan-driven technology governance and management models to the practice of e-learning.
    Such models are inherently idealistic and simply do not work well to a practice that is inherently complex.
  • Current evaluation of learning and teaching.
    The current surveys given to students at the end of term are generally out of context (i.e. applied after the student has had the positive/negative experience). The use of surveys also limit the bredth of the information that can be provided by students to the limitations enshrined in the questions. The course barometer idea we’ve been playing with for a long time is a small step in the right direction.

There are many more, but it’s getting past time to post this.

Possible projects

Throughout the course there were all sorts of ideas about how aspects of the CogEdge approach could be applied to improve learning and teaching at CQU. Of course, many of these have been lost or are still in my notebooks waiting to be saved.

A first step would be to fix the practices which I believe are now highly questionable outlined in the previous section. Some others include

  • Implement a learning and teaching innovation scheme based on some of the ideas of the Grameen bank.
    e.g. if at least 3 academics from different disciplines can develop an idea for a particular L&T innovation and agree to help each other implement it in each of their courses, then it gets supported immediatley. No evaluation by an “expert panel”.
  • Expand/integrate the course barometer idea to collect stories from students (and staff?) during the term and have those stories placed into the SenseMaker software.
    This could significantly increase CQU’s ability to pick up weak signals about trouble (but also about things that are working) and be able to intervene. Not to mention generating a strong collection of evidence to use with AUQA etc.
  • A number of the different CogEdge methods to help create a context in which quality learning and teaching arise more naturally.

There are many others, but it’s time to get this post, posted.

Disclaimers

I’ve been a believer in complexity informed, bottom-up approaches for a long time. My mind has a collection patterns about this stuff to which I am positively inclined. Hence it is no great surprise that the CogEdge approach resonates very strongly with me.

Your mileage may vary.

In fact, I’d imagine that most hard-core, plan-driven IT folk, those in the business process re-engineering and quality assurance worlds and others from a traditional top-down management school probably disagree strong with all of the above.

If so, please feel free to comment. Let’s get a dialectic going.

I’m also still processing all of the material covered in the three day course and in the additional readings. This post was done over a few days in different locations there are certain to be inconsistencies, typos, poor grammar and basic mistakes.

If so, please feel free to correct.

Dealing with "users", freedom and shadow systems

By

On January 14, 2008

In c2d2, elearning, enterprise 2.0, information systems, Uncategorized, webfuse

Apparently Accenture have discovered “user-determined computing” and associated issues.

The definition goes something like this

Today, home technology has outpaced enterprise technology, leaving employees frustrated by the inadequacy of the technology they use at work. As a result, employees are demanding more because of their ever-increasing familiarity and comfort level with technology. It’s an emerging phenomenon Accenture has called “user-determined computing.”

It’s not new

This problem, or aspects of it, have been discussed in a number of places. For example, CIO magazine has a collection of articles it aligns with this issue

This has connections to the literature on workarounds and shadow systems. Practices by which people within organisations workaround the official organisational systems or hierarchies and do things their own way.

This is not a problem limited to IT departments. I work within a group responsible for curriculum design, e-learning and materials development at a University. We’re a provider of services for academic staff. Those staff can and do workaround the services we provide.

The question is, what should we do? How should we handle this?

Reactions from IT folk

I find it interesting that a common knee-jerk reaction from IT folk tends towards the negative and/or aggressive. Check out some of the comments on this blog post or one of the Time to rethink your relationship with end-usersCIO articles.

This is often seen in the official reaction of IT departments to shadow systems. “SHUT THEM DOWN!!!!”. It’s a discourse that have been circulating at my institution in recent times.

Having been a creator and heavy user of shadow systems it’s not an approach which I believe is productive. In fact, some colleagues and I have argued that there is a much better approach. From the abstract

Results of the analysis indicate that shadow systems may be useful indicators of a range of problems with enterprise system implementation. It appears that close examination of shadow systems may help both practitioners and researchers improve enterprise system implementation and evolution.

The gulf

The users who know too much CIO article puts it this way

And that disconnect is fundamental. Users want IT to be responsive to their individual needs and to make them more productive. CIOs want IT to be reliable, secure, scalable and compliant with an ever increasing number of government regulations. Consequently, when corporate IT designs and provides an IT system, manageability usually comes first, the user’s experience second. But the shadow IT department doesn’t give a hoot about manageability and provides its users with ways to end-run corporate IT when the interests of the two groups do not coincide.

Other earlier work has suggested that this gap or gulf, in some cases a yawning chasm, is created by a number of different factors.

Perhaps it is the fundamental nature of some of the factors that create the gap which contribute to the negative reactions. The perspectives creating the gap are so fundamental that the people holding them never question them. They don’t see that their view is actually counter-productive (in some situations) or that there are alternatives. They simply can’t understand the apparent stupidity of the alternate perspective and the hugely negative ramifications.

Super-rational versus complexity

One of the fundamental outlooks which contribute to this gap is that most IT, and most organisations, are based on the ideal of top-down design (teleological design). I’ve written about this previously.

That previous writing includes one of the more interesting characterisations of the difference in these two fundamentally different perspectives. I’ve included it as an mp3. It’s by Dave Snowden, and is an excerpt from a presentation he gave in Helsinki on sense-making and strategy. In the excerpt he describes two approaches to organising a child’s birthday party. One based on traditional top-down approaches and another based on complexity.

What should we do?

This is a real problem which we have to address. How do we do it.

The users who know too much CIO article suggests the following principles as starting points

  1. Find out how people really work
    This connects with ideas in our earlier articles. Look at the shadow systems people are using and understand the factors leading them to use them. We need to know much more about how and why staff are doing curriculum design, e-learning etc.
  2. Say yes to evolution
    On reading the article I wonder if “don’t say no” might not be a better name for this principle. One of the nice quotes in the article is “No one will jump through hoops. They’ll go around them.”. We have to make it easy and safe for folk to do their own thing. Not just understand what they are doing, but allow them to evolve and do different things and keep an eye on why, what and how they do it.
  3. Ask yourself if the threat is real
    There is often a reason why IT believes a shadow system is bad – security, inefficiency etc. This principle suggests spending a lot of time considering whether or not this is really a big problem. In our line of work that might be equated to telling an academic that a particular learning/teaching approach is less than good.

    Another quote from the article ” When a CIO….is setting himself up as a tin idol, a moral arbiter. That’s a guaranteed way to antagonize users. And that’s never a good idea.”.

  4. Enforce rules, don’t make them.
    Some recent local experience reinforces the importance of this. It’s not the support group saying no. It’s the rules that were created by the appropriate folk within the business. As an addition to this I would suggest: “Make sure everyone knows who made the rules.”.
  5. Be invisible.
    This principle relates to the “important things” a service division should do. For example, an IT department is responsible for ensuring security of important data. The processes used to do that should be invisible. It shouldn’t cause the users grief in order to be secure. It should just happen.
  6. Messy but fertile beats neat but sterile.
    It’s not included in the article as one of the principles, but it is used as the closing section and I think it deserves to be included. To much of what goes on in organisations is based on the idea of having tidy diagrams, one way to do something of being neat and sterile. “messiness isn’t as bad as stagnation” and “If you want to be an innovator and leverage IT to get a competitive advantage, there has to be some controlled chaos.”

    Another approach

    Nicholas Carr argues for one response in terms of IT departments.

New approaches to curriculum design informed by complexity

By

On December 11, 2007

In c2d2, Uncategorized

For a long time I’ve felt disquiet about the “super-rational” approach to design and development. I’m including both for information systems development (my original discipline and interest) and curriculum design/e-learning (my current job).

The “super-rational” approach is based on the assumption that human beings are supremely rational and that an expert can analyse the problem, identify an optimum solution and implement it. With curriculum design this can be seen in days spent by an curriculum design expert, usually in collaboration with a subject matter expert, going through a rigorous process of analysis.

My two big problems with this approach are

  1. Resourcing – this approach simply doesn’t scale. At CQU we have 2 curriculum designers and in 2007 offered 1000+ courses. The process I see at the moment is taking weeks of time. If we say it takes 3 weeks (much shorter than it actually takes). It will take 28.8 years to to a full curriculum design on all CQU courses, assuming of course there aren’t new courses introduced in that time.
  2. Irrationality – human beings are not rational beings. We’re pattern matching machines. Everyone’s rationality is bounded. This means that even with an expert, the quality of the solution is going to limited by the rationality of the participants. Even more likely is that the solution will match what the subject matter expert or the curriculum designer have done before.

What’s the alternative

This rambling is informed/sparked by two recent bits of information that I’m attempting to digest

  1. Complexity and Education: Inquiries into Learning, Teaching and Research – a book by Davis and Sumara. The first line of the book description on Amazon is “This book explores the contributions, actual and potential, of complexity thinking to educational research and practice.”.
  2. Sense-making and strategy a presentation/MP3 from Dave Snowden.

What I currently am taking from this (and remember my rationality is as bounded as anyone’s and more than most) is that traditional approaches to design (both IS and CD) are based on the unquestioned assumptions of science/mathematics from Euclid and Newton. Assumptions which include that there is one right answer to find, that we’re rational, that these things can be analysed and the answer found.

It appears that these approaches do not take into account some of the interesting insights which complexity science can bring nor do they take into account how the pattern matching nature of the human brain. One possibly interesting alternate approach to take would be approaches more informed by complexity theory.

One (of many) problems for this idea is that the traditional analysis approach is so embedded into everyday practice. It’s just not a habit that has to be broken but a fundamental way of understanding the world. It’s not something that I’ve personally succeeded in doing and I’ve been trying for a while.

One description/comparison of the difference is encapsulated in this mp3 by Dave Snowden. It is an excerpt from a presentation he gave in Helsinki on sense-making and strategy. In the excerpt he describes two approaches to organising a child’s birthday party. One based on traditional top-down approaches and another based on complexity.

Which one do you think is most appropriate.

What’s the mean in reality?

Who knows? I don’t. I’m still grappling with what it means for curriculum design in a form that I’m happy with. But an initial attempt, drawing on the Snowden excerpt, follows

  • Complex system.
    The design process has to take place within a “complex system”. For curriculum design this might mean a largish number of academics all going through the process, perhaps supported by appropriately skilled staff. i.e. not a one on one between designer and subject matter expert.
  • Draw boundaries.
    Not sure what that might be in curriculum design. Perhaps a delineation about what is being discussed….more work needed.
  • Catalyst/attractor.
    A simple and attractive activity or task which generates interest and starts the components of the complex system talking and interacting. In the last week or so I’ve been sent a question checklist which is designed to be used by a group of three people. The questions are about the design of a unit of curriculum. The questions are answered verbally by a single person and others grade it. I’m assuming discussion ensues.
  • Magnifying the positive and killing off the negative
    There needs to be some process by which the good is spread and the bad gotten rid of.

The catalysts have to be simple tasks that attract people but generate emergent, positive activity. Not detailed, top-down analysis plans and processes. You don’t start with curriculum mapping and other big up front analysis.

It appears to be “nice” in the limited, poor abstract manner outlined. How all that works in practice is another matter all together.

Perhaps now it is time to refer to the literature, like any good researcher should.

Page 2 of 2

Previous

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén

css.php