I was recently challenged to write a personal definition of Learning Design. I was also challenged to select a visual representation of the definition. My definition was an ongoing struggle to achieve balance, and my visual representation was a stack of stones. You may have seen stacked stones in meditation gardens. The various forces at work on and within each stone are balanced in the stack. Each stone in the stack can be considered a component of the Instructional Design process. External forces like gravity represent unavoidable budget and timeline concerns. The shape and size of the lower stones determine the maximum height of the stack. The same can be said about the necessity of rigorous analysis. If we don’t understand the problem or the audience, we can’t hope to build something that serves them well.
Ellen Wagner, in her excellent article “In search of the secret handshakes of ID,” challenges instructional designers: “Theoretical foundations matter, but so do digital creativity and the ability to clearly articulate and represent meaning, probably just as much as do the skills to keep a project on budget and on time” (Wagner, 2011). The implication is clear—keep the forces in balance. You’re a product designer and must ensure the product is balanced. We cannot ignore business, specific technologies, or visual design concerns. The learning theory might be sound, and the ADDIE process complete, but there’s more to achieving balance.
My immediate goal is to examine the relationship between hypermedia and learning design practices. Does a hypermedia-driven learning platform naturally support a specific learning design approach? Do modern delivery systems favor a Constructivist approach? “Moreover, the ability of computers to present information in a wide variety of forms, as well as to allow learners to easily link to various content, has attracted the interest of instructional designers having a constructivist perspective.” (Reiser, 2001)
Building on those observations, I will explore the question, “What does a next-generation learning platform look like if it is designed around hypermedia principles and the specific learning design approaches that hypermedia prefers?” Wagner encourages instructional designers (IDs) to assume the mantel of product designers. What technological concerns must an ID address in designing and developing a Learning Management System? Does the selection of the development stack itself fall under the purview of the ID?
Finally, I want to develop a reference implementation of the learning platform recommended by this line of inquiry. This project will be released under an open-source license, feature-complete, and scaleable to meet the needs of modern training organizations.
This degree program provides me with the industry credentials necessary to design learning environments, and to create learning technology platforms from a learning design and educational theory perspective. Recently, I have been charged professionally with moving an eLearning platform toward a more Behaviorist content delivery model. The learner’s pathway through the content is tightly controlled (Ertmer, P. A. & Newby, T., 2018). I find myself thinking about gravity working on those stacked stones, or Wagner’s assertion that clients don’t care about the glory of the ID process (Wagner, 2001). I face the challenge of injecting some Behaviorist tendencies into a custom LMS without removing the opportunity for Constructivist features or environments.
In my current professional environment, articulating the balance between competing educational theories and features is essential. This program's content and the credentials associated with completion offer me a pathway to tremendous success in balancing the many forces working on modern e-learning projects.
What will we find at the intersection of hypermedia systems, educational theories, and learning management system design? I suspect we will see the specifications for a product. So, I contacted Greg Gay at Ryerson in Toronto, with whom I worked on funding the development of the ATutor LCMS in the early 2000s. Greg has been a strong proponent of empathic design since the mid-90s, and his work on the ATutor LCMS provided a fully accessible delivery option at a time when that was severely lacking in the industry. Sadly, the ATutor LCMS is currently without a primary maintainer, and my goal is to revive this project.
Rapid prototyping may be considered the “move fast and break stuff” mantra of the ID process (Reiser, 2001). I hope we can transition the ATutor system to hypermedia tools like HTMx using a rapid prototyping approach. At the same time, I want to explore blending features that are decidedly Behaviorist with more Constructivist features. Time will tell if the HTMx and Golang development stack lends itself to rapid prototyping of those features.
As a managing partner for a small IT consulting firm, I have the luxury of a dedicated hosting environment. To support my efforts with ATutor and in researching hypermedia I have provisioned several dedicated servers. These are an online lab of sorts. The next question is how to involve generative AI. This remains to be seen as I evaluate several code-generation tools.
Through this active research and development, I will explore how the definition and constraints of a hypermedia content delivery system align or deviate from major educational theories (Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism). I am also interested in how a hypermedia system's constraints align with best practices from learning object design, instructional objectives, and assessment strategies. Do hypermedia systems lend themselves to empathic design, learner-centered instruction, and communities of inquiry (Watson & Reigeluth, 2018)?
Ellen Wagner, in her excellent article “In search of the secret handshakes of ID,” challenges instructional designers: “Theoretical foundations matter, but so do digital creativity and the ability to clearly articulate and represent meaning, probably just as much as do the skills to keep a project on budget and on time” (Wagner, 2011). The implication is clear—keep the forces in balance. You’re a product designer and must ensure the product is balanced. We cannot ignore business, specific technologies, or visual design concerns. The learning theory might be sound, and the ADDIE process complete, but there’s more to achieving balance.
My immediate goal is to examine the relationship between hypermedia and learning design practices. Does a hypermedia-driven learning platform naturally support a specific learning design approach? Do modern delivery systems favor a Constructivist approach? “Moreover, the ability of computers to present information in a wide variety of forms, as well as to allow learners to easily link to various content, has attracted the interest of instructional designers having a constructivist perspective.” (Reiser, 2001)
Building on those observations, I will explore the question, “What does a next-generation learning platform look like if it is designed around hypermedia principles and the specific learning design approaches that hypermedia prefers?” Wagner encourages instructional designers (IDs) to assume the mantel of product designers. What technological concerns must an ID address in designing and developing a Learning Management System? Does the selection of the development stack itself fall under the purview of the ID?
Finally, I want to develop a reference implementation of the learning platform recommended by this line of inquiry. This project will be released under an open-source license, feature-complete, and scaleable to meet the needs of modern training organizations.
This degree program provides me with the industry credentials necessary to design learning environments, and to create learning technology platforms from a learning design and educational theory perspective. Recently, I have been charged professionally with moving an eLearning platform toward a more Behaviorist content delivery model. The learner’s pathway through the content is tightly controlled (Ertmer, P. A. & Newby, T., 2018). I find myself thinking about gravity working on those stacked stones, or Wagner’s assertion that clients don’t care about the glory of the ID process (Wagner, 2001). I face the challenge of injecting some Behaviorist tendencies into a custom LMS without removing the opportunity for Constructivist features or environments.
In my current professional environment, articulating the balance between competing educational theories and features is essential. This program's content and the credentials associated with completion offer me a pathway to tremendous success in balancing the many forces working on modern e-learning projects.
What will we find at the intersection of hypermedia systems, educational theories, and learning management system design? I suspect we will see the specifications for a product. So, I contacted Greg Gay at Ryerson in Toronto, with whom I worked on funding the development of the ATutor LCMS in the early 2000s. Greg has been a strong proponent of empathic design since the mid-90s, and his work on the ATutor LCMS provided a fully accessible delivery option at a time when that was severely lacking in the industry. Sadly, the ATutor LCMS is currently without a primary maintainer, and my goal is to revive this project.
Rapid prototyping may be considered the “move fast and break stuff” mantra of the ID process (Reiser, 2001). I hope we can transition the ATutor system to hypermedia tools like HTMx using a rapid prototyping approach. At the same time, I want to explore blending features that are decidedly Behaviorist with more Constructivist features. Time will tell if the HTMx and Golang development stack lends itself to rapid prototyping of those features.
As a managing partner for a small IT consulting firm, I have the luxury of a dedicated hosting environment. To support my efforts with ATutor and in researching hypermedia I have provisioned several dedicated servers. These are an online lab of sorts. The next question is how to involve generative AI. This remains to be seen as I evaluate several code-generation tools.
Through this active research and development, I will explore how the definition and constraints of a hypermedia content delivery system align or deviate from major educational theories (Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism). I am also interested in how a hypermedia system's constraints align with best practices from learning object design, instructional objectives, and assessment strategies. Do hypermedia systems lend themselves to empathic design, learner-centered instruction, and communities of inquiry (Watson & Reigeluth, 2018)?
References
Ertmer, P. A. & Newby, T. (2018). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing Critical Features From an Instructional Design Perspective. In R. E. West (Ed.), Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology. EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations/behaviorism_cognitivism_constructivism
Watson, S. L. & Reigeluth, C. M. (2018). The Learner-Centered Paradigm of Education. In R. E. West (Ed.), Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology. EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/lidtfoundations/learner-centered_paradigm
Robert A, Reiser (2001). A History of Instructional Design and Technology: Part I: A History of Instructional Media
Robert A, Reiser (2001). A History of Instructional Design and Technology: Part II: A History of Instructional Design
Ellen Wagner (2011). In Search of the Secret Handshakes of ID, The Journal of Applied Instructional Design, Issue 1
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