The -ING and the -ERS (I thought to myself)…
I spent last night reading through all the suggested and optional readings for Module 2 of the course and found myself underlining, highlighting and doing a lot of general nodding. Analyse the ‘who’ – absolutely. Examine the ‘what’ – yep, no news there! Consider the ‘when’ – of course. Analyse the ‘where’ – for sure. Determine the ‘performance gap’ – most definitely.
So I started to think in a bit more detail about the learner and was given plenty of food for thought by Donald Clark (1995) and Regina Daigre (n.d.) and her contributors. Design around the participant – which I took as meaning with the participant as the focus rather than avoiding the participant in the design! Consider the ’stable same things’, ’stable different things’, ’samey changing things’, and ‘different changey things’ – all excellent stuff (even though I had never considered them in such a same, different, stable, changing sort of context). There was so much about discovering the interests, motivational level, attitudes, perceptions, self-concept, anxieties, beliefs and attributions of the learner. And there was this one sentence.
“Learner styles are key in developing effective instructional design materials.” Ah ha! (I thought to myself) Finally! Learner Styles! … but then there was … or Characteristics! So, I thought to myself, does she mean learner styles or learner characteristics? Because these are different are they not?
Different?
Not!
Aaah… (as opposed to an Ah ha!), I thought to myself. I’ve muddled things up. She is talking about learn-er styles, not learn-ing styles. So I continued looking for the ‘ing’ in amongst all the ‘ers’ and found… noth-ing! Now at this stage, please forgive me if I overlooked something, missed a page, fell asleep at the wheel or just plain ignored someone else’s post or the most important reading of the whole module, but I did not find anything relating to analysing the learn-ING styles of the learn-ERs.
Dr. Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory suggests that;
“…suggests that the traditional notion of intelligence, based on I.Q. testing, is far too limited. Instead, he proposes eight different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults…One of the most remarkable features of the theory of multiple intelligences is how it provides eight different potential pathways to learning. If a teacher is having difficulty reaching a student in the more traditional linguistic or logical ways of instruction, the theory of multiple intelligences suggests several other ways in which the material might be presented to facilitate effective learning.” (Armstrong, 2000)
So at the risk of err-ing, I would propose that there is much to be gained by carefully analysing the learn-ing styles of the participants in any course one is designing.
References:
Armstrong, T. (2000). “Multiple Intelligences.” Retrieved April 2, 2008, from http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.htm.
Clark, D. (1995, January 20, 2008). “Big Dog ISD Page.” Retrieved April 1, 2008, from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/sat2.html.
Daigre, R. M. (n.d). “Chapter 4 – Instructional Analysis: Analysing the Learners.” Retrieved April 1, 2008, from http://www.angelfire.com/la2/learners/learners.html.
