A Graduate School Victory

I was just reading an article by Walter Dick about instructional design and creativity and whether or not the ISD model so commonly used prevents creative instruction. He made some excellent points about how there will always be constraints with different value placed on them by different consumers, and that often come at the expense of each other. So there is no perfect design method that will excel in accommodating all constraints with no conflicts.

I thought this made a lot of sense in the distance education context. Some people/institutions really care about cost, and so distance ed might be the most cost-effective way to provide instruction. Perhaps this comes at the expense of learner-teacher interaction, which is often the most difficult to scale across large groups (thank you for pointing that out in your class presentation on Tuesday John). Others might really value a cutting-edge feel on a media rich environment, but that could come at the expense of simplicity of use for the less-technologically literate learners. It seems as though the trick is to be able to clearly identify and prioritize values and then communicate them well to designers. Dick also pointed out that designers must also be in a climate that supports whatever those valued constraints are. For example, if you don't have enough time or resources to make instruction creative, it does not necessarily mean that you can't or wouldn't design creative instruction. I liked that he pointed out management's responsibility to provide the correct design environment.

I suggest an alternative definition for creative instruction. The two definitions given in the article included instruction that keeps learners motivated while accomplishing the objections of instruction and instruction that engages the learners and goes beyond their expectations. These both seem somewhat limited. What about instruction that turns learners into creators? What about instruction that produces something as an end result beyond just a bunch of test scores.? I think creative instruction creates creators and creations. Learners are empowered to create knowledge out of raw information, interactive relationships with instructor and other learners, and solutions to problems and products out of processes. There is something highly motivating in exercising power of creation for any learner when given the right context.

Hence, our class requirement to "create" posts on our blog.

The Graduate School Victory is just that I thoroughly enjoyed and at least somewhat understood an article that I was not technically required to read and may or may not get credit for reading. That sounds more like a graduate student than much of my experience so far.