Designing learning vs. Designing for learning
"Learning cannot be designed, it can only be designed for." ~E. Wenger
Over the last few weeks we have talked about learning with respect to communities of practice, trajectories of participation, emergent structures, boundaries, social power, engagement, alignment, and identity. We have tied in online communities, online identities, and Web 2.0 technologies to our discussions.
As we start the final Chapters of Wenger's Communities of Practice, we have one last piece of the puzzle to ponder and discuss: design. Learning can and should also be discussed with design.
Although, "one cannot design the practices that will emerge.. the identities that will be constructed.... the alignment of energies.. or even the meaning and/or learning," one can design for instruction that will lead to the occurrence of these practices in some form (Wenger 1998).
Wenger states that there are four dimensions in instructional design. Participation vs. reification, designed vs. emergent, local vs. global, and identification vs. negotiability. These dimensions present a give and take relationship where the following questions arise: How much reification is appropriate and necessary in learning? How can we minimize teaching and maximize learning? How can we link educational experiences to real world experiences and other content areas? How is success and failure negotiated in the design?
There are so many different questions that we can answer and prepare for in our instructional design, and yet, we will never be able to completely design the learning. For example, in our CI 597C: Disruptive Technologies course this semester, we never could have guessed that Twitter would be one of the most used technologies. In fact, the other members of the Twitter group and I (teamtweet) thought that Twitter was a bad choice of topic at first. Twitter soon became THE technology of use in CI 597C and learning did occur. The key was that our instructors Scott and Cole designed the course FOR learning. They did not know what would be learned or the alignment of energies to certain technologies.
At the end of the day, an instructional designer must be able to answer the question, Did I try to design the learning or instead, did I design for learning? If the answer was FOR learning, then the instructional designer can sleep well that night knowing that authentic (i.e. real) learning will occur.
Over the last few weeks we have talked about learning with respect to communities of practice, trajectories of participation, emergent structures, boundaries, social power, engagement, alignment, and identity. We have tied in online communities, online identities, and Web 2.0 technologies to our discussions.
As we start the final Chapters of Wenger's Communities of Practice, we have one last piece of the puzzle to ponder and discuss: design. Learning can and should also be discussed with design.
Although, "one cannot design the practices that will emerge.. the identities that will be constructed.... the alignment of energies.. or even the meaning and/or learning," one can design for instruction that will lead to the occurrence of these practices in some form (Wenger 1998).
Wenger states that there are four dimensions in instructional design. Participation vs. reification, designed vs. emergent, local vs. global, and identification vs. negotiability. These dimensions present a give and take relationship where the following questions arise: How much reification is appropriate and necessary in learning? How can we minimize teaching and maximize learning? How can we link educational experiences to real world experiences and other content areas? How is success and failure negotiated in the design?
There are so many different questions that we can answer and prepare for in our instructional design, and yet, we will never be able to completely design the learning. For example, in our CI 597C: Disruptive Technologies course this semester, we never could have guessed that Twitter would be one of the most used technologies. In fact, the other members of the Twitter group and I (teamtweet) thought that Twitter was a bad choice of topic at first. Twitter soon became THE technology of use in CI 597C and learning did occur. The key was that our instructors Scott and Cole designed the course FOR learning. They did not know what would be learned or the alignment of energies to certain technologies.
At the end of the day, an instructional designer must be able to answer the question, Did I try to design the learning or instead, did I design for learning? If the answer was FOR learning, then the instructional designer can sleep well that night knowing that authentic (i.e. real) learning will occur.
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Amen.