Handbook of Improving Performance in the Workplace, Instructional Design and Training Delivery

Wellesley R. Foshay, Kenneth H. Silber

• Publisher: Pfeiffer
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780470190685
• eBook ISBN: 9780470525067
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Personalmanagement

With the contributions from leading national and international scholars and practitioners, this volume provides a "state-of-the-art" look at ID, addressing the major changes that have occurred in nearly every aspect of ID in the past decade and provides both theory and "how-to" information for ID and performance improvement practitioners practitioners who must stay current in their field.

This volume goes beyond other ID references in its approach: it is useful to students and practitioners at all levels; it is grounded in the most current research and theory; and it provides up-to-the-minute coverage of topics not found in any other ID book. It addresses timely topics such as cognitive task analysis, instructional strategies based on cognitive research, data collection methods, games, higher-order problem-solving and expertise, psychomotor learning, project management, partnering with clients, and managing a training function. It also provides a new way of looking at what ID is, and the most comprehensive history of ID ever published.

Sponsored by International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), the Handbook of Improving Performance in the Workplace, three-volume reference, covers three core areas of interest including Instructional Design and Training Delivery, Selecting and Implementing Performance Interventions, and Measurement and Evaluation.

PART ONE

FOUNDATIONS

This is the part of the book you are most likely to want to skip, either because you think you already know the material or because you don’t see any reason to know it.

We suggest that, when you read this part, you are in for some great surprises. Did you know that:

• Cognitivism, not constructivism or behaviorism, is the learning theory that underlies most current ID.

• Inductive learning and learning styles, while popular, are not supported by most of the research as being effective.

• ID is not a process but a set of principles.

• ADDIE is dead.

• The seeds of ID were sewn in the early 1960s.

• Southern California was a hotbed of ID activity and ideas in the 1960s and 1970s.

This part of the book immediately immerses you in the major themes of the volume, with its review of learning theory, its presentation of a new model of ID, and the most comprehensive history of ID yet written.

Chapter One: Some Principles Underlying the Cognitive Approach to Instructional Design. The Foshay chapter on learning theory, based on a book by Foshay, Silber, and Stelnicki, highlights new cognitive research on how those who have done research on learning now believe people learn. It contains new, surprising, and useful findings on short- and long-term memory, cognitive load, encoding, and retrieval. It explains the difference between declarative and procedural knowledge and focuses on the importance of problem solving as the key learning challenge of today. It contrasts those with the older notions of behaviorism and explains why we now use these concepts as the basis for ID. The research findings discussed in this chapter will form the basis for much of what you will read in Chapters Eight, Nine, Ten, and Eleven, which assumes you are familiar with the basics of learning.

Chapter Two: A Principle-Based Model of Instructional Design. Picking up on much of the research about problem solving and combining it with research from other fields (especially architecture) about how people who design actually do their work, Silber (citing the work of many others who have advanced this notion) suggests that the ADDIE process model of ID is dead. In fact, that it was never how experts did ID at all. He goes on to explain how experts use principles, rather than procedures, to form the mental models that were discussed in Chapter One, and how those principles are put together by experts to solve problems. This insight, while relatively new to the ID field, fits with the way most other design fields now view their work. He ends by presenting a principle-based model of ID that previews many of the principles that will be discussed in the rest of this volume.

Chapter Three: Origins and Evolution of Instructional Systems Design. How did ID begin? Who are its founders? How far have we come in the more than forty-five years (yes, it’s been that long!) that the field of ID has been around? What were the predecessors of ID (including systems and programmed instruction), and did they morph into the ID that was discussed in Chapter Two? Who were the leaders of early ID who helped take it from its infancy to the robust field it is today? What was the first ID model (hint, it was not ADDIE), and how did it differ from what we do today? In his chapter, Molenda presents the most comprehensive, extensive, exhaustive history of the field of ID ever written, incorporating and adding to all existing histories of the field. His approach provides a new perspective on where we came from and who our founders were.

CHAPTER ONE

Some Principles Underlying the Cognitive Approach to Instructional Design^b

Wellesley R. Foshay

In the generation since the birth of the instructional design field, our understanding of the basic psychological mechanisms of memory, perception, learning, and problem solving has seen a great deal of development. Corresponding progress in our understanding of the psychology of instruction (or, if you prefer, design of learning environments) has led to important new definitions of principles of instructional design. For those familiar with the behavioral approach, this chapter will review what you already know and show how the cognitive approach differs. For those who have never had a formal study of the assumptions underlying the behavioral approach, this chapter will provide you with a theoretical understanding of the approach you probably have been using to date. Important additional principles are included in the chapters in Part Three. However, a full discussion of the psychology of learning and instruction is beyond the scope of this chapter and of this handbook. If you are interested in pursuing the subject matter further, references to sources from which this chapter is drawn are provided.

We do not mean to imply a disjunctive contrast between the behavioral and the cognitive approach, nor do we mean to imply that behavioral principles are obsolete—only that the cognitive approach often adds prescriptive utility to our practice over a wide range of training needs. Few instructional designers follow a purely behavioral or cognitive approach to design. Furthermore, in many cases the behavioral approach and the cognitive approach lead to similar design solutions. Therefore you may find that you are already using some principles of the cognitive approach in designing your instruction.

HOW THE BEHAVIORAL APPROACH IS DIFFERENT FROM THE COGNITIVE APPROACH

Generally speaking, behaviorism is a set of principles concerning both human and non-human behavior. One major behaviorist goal is to explain and predict observable behavior. Behaviorists define learning as the acquisition of new behavior as evidenced by changes in overt behavior. Behaviorism draws conclusions about behavior from research on external events: stimuli, effects, responses, learning history, and reinforcement. These behaviors are studied and observed in the environment and are explained with little or no reference to internal mental processing.

In dramatic contrast to behaviorism, a major tenet of cognitive psychology is that internal thought processes cause behavior. It is their understanding that can best explain human behavior. Cognitive information processing psychologists consider learning to be mental operations that include internally attending to (perceiving), encoding and structuring, and storing incoming information. Cognitive psychologists interpret external stimuli in terms of the way they are processed. They use observable behavior to make inferences about the mind. Furthermore, exciting new work in cognitive neuroscience is relating the structure of the brain to its function, and in the process, validating and elaborating on the accounts of processing and memory induced experimentally by the cognitive psychologists.

The difference in focus between the behaviorist and cognitive theories has important implications for instructional designers who seek design principles based on theory. The biggest differences are in these theoretical areas:

• What learning is

• Factors influencing learning

• The role of memory and prior knowledge

• How transfer occurs

• The goal of instruction

• The structure of instruction

• Specific instructional strategies

Different types of learning are best explained by each approach, and each approach provides basic principles that guide instructional design in different circumstances.

What the implications are for each of the above areas and how they differ in each of the two approaches are shown in Table 1.1. It is important to note that some of the differences are merely semantic (for example, “fluency” and “automaticity” both describe degrees of learning proficiency), while some are more substantive. For example, “emphasis on knowledge structures” reflects the cognitive theory’s recognition of the need to think about the parts of knowledge in any given subject and how they fit together.

Table 1.1 Differences Between Behavioral and Cognitive Approaches

Instructional Design Area	Behavioral Approach	Cognitive Approach
What learning is	“changes in form or frequency of observable performance”; what learners do	internal coding and structuring of new information by the learner; discrete changes in knowledge structures; what learners know and how they come to know it
Factors that influence learning	“arrangement of stimuli and consequences in the environment”; reinforcement history; fluency in responding	how learners attend to, organize, code, store, retrieve information as influenced by the context in which information is presented when it is learned and when it is used; thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and values; automatic responding
The role of memory	not addressed in detail; function of the person’s reinforcement history; forgetting results from lack of use	“learning occurs when information is stored in memory in a meaningful manner so it can be retrieved when needed”; “forgetting is the inability to retrieve information from memory because of interference, memory loss,
		or inadequate cues to access the information” given the way it is organized in memory; therefore, meaningfulness of learning directly affects forgetting
How transfer occurs	focus on design of the environment; stimulus and response generalization to new situations	stress on efficient processing strategies to optimize cognitive load; function of how information is indexed and stored in memory based on expected use of the knowledge; applying knowledge in different contexts by reasoning analogically from previous experiences; construction/ manipulation of mental models made up of networks of concepts and principles; learners believe knowledge is or will be useful in new situation
What types of learning are best explained by the approach	discriminations (recalling facts); generalizations (defining and illustrating concepts); associations (applying explanations); chaining (automatically performing a specified procedure)	“complex forms of learning (reasoning, problem solving, especially in ill-structured situations)”; generalization of complex forms of learning to new situations
What basic principles of the approach are relevant to ID	produce observable, measurable outcomes => task analysis, behavioral objectives, criterion- referenced testing; existing	All of the behavioral principles, and: student’s existing mental structures => learner analysis; guide and support for accurate
	response repertoire and appropriate reinforcers => learner analysis; mastery of early steps before progressing to complex performance => simple to complex sequencing; practice; mastery learning; reinforcement => practice. followed by immediate feedback and rewards; use of cues and shaping => prompting, fading, sequencing	mental connections => feedback; learner involvement in the learning process => learner control; metacognitive training; collaborative learning; identify relationships among concepts/principles to be learned, and between them and learners’ existing mental models => learner analysis; cognitive task analysis; emphasis on structuring, organizing and sequencing information for optimal processing => advance organizers, outlining, summaries; connections with existing knowledge structures through reflective processing => analogies, relevant examples, metaphors
Goal of instruction	elicit desired response from learner presented with target stimulus	make knowledge meaningful and help learners organize and relate new information to existing knowledge in memory
How should instruction be structured	determine which cues can elicit the desired responses; arrange practice situations in which prompts are paired with target stimuli that will elicit responses on the job; arrange environmental conditions so students can make correct responses in the presence of target stimuli and receive reinforcement	determine how learners’ existing knowledge is organized; determine how to structure new information to mesh with learners’ current knowledge structure(s); connect new information with existing in meaningful way through analogies, framing, outlines, mnemonics, advance organizers; arrange practice with structurally meaningful
		feedback so new information is added to learners’ existing knowledge
Specific instructional strategies	teach fact lesson first, then concepts, then principles, then problem solving; focus on algorithmic procedures for problem solving, including troubleshooting; teach each concept, procedural chain, troubleshooting approach separately; when mastered go on to next; focus on deductive learning; present principles and attributes; build generalization with extended realistic practice, often after initial acquisition	teach problem solving in authentic (job) context; teach principles, concepts, and facts in context as appropriate within the problem-solving lesson; focus on heuristic problem solving and generalization, even in troubleshooting; teach overall mental model, then use coordinate concept, principle, procedure/problem solving teaching to teach all related knowledge at or near the same time; focus on inductive learning; present examples; build generalization through practice in additional problems and contexts which...

Table of contents

• Handbook of Improving Performance in the Workplace
• ABOUT ISPI
• About Pfeiffer
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Exhibits
• Table of Figures
• List of Tables
• Introduction
• PART ONE - FOUNDATIONS
• PART TWO - ANALYSIS
• PART THREE - INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES
• PART FOUR - EVALUATION
• PART FIVE - MANAGEMENT
• ABOUT THE EDITORS
• ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
• NAME INDEX
• SUBJECT INDEX