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PART 1
Define the Problem
Overview
Chapter 1. Examines the similarities and differences between âeducationâ and âtrainingâ, defines the term âinstructionâ as used in this book and introduces âsystems thinkingâ as a unifying set of concepts and techniques for instructional design.
Educational technology is treated as a multi-faceted concept and the more restricted concept of âinstructional technologyâ is identified as the principal area of interest of this book. Nevertheless, related technologies (eg for the control and maintenance of performance, for organization development, etc) will be considered in order to give a total view of the design of instructional systems.
Any technology is seen as the creative application of knowledge (science) to a practical purpose (or problem). The systems approach is put forward as the most adequate general methodology for such creative problem-solving. The systems approach is seen as very much a heuristic process, rather than an algorithmic sequence of steps.
Thus the purpose of the book emerges as the presentation of heuristics for the application of the systems approach to the design of instruction. Each of the five main stages of the systems approach is seen to involve all of the three types of thinking generally associated with problem-solving and productive or creative activity: analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
The charts at the end of this chapter summarize some of the heuristics that will be examined and applied in more detail in later chapters. These charts also serve to illustrate the overall structure of the book.
Chapter 2. Analyses how problems differ in terms of the system characteristics that are used to define the problem (inputs, processes or outputs).
A brief analysis of theoretical viewpoints on learning and on instruction (both in the education and training contexts) attempts to explain the past tendency towards undue stress of one system characteristic at the expense of the others. A more balanced, total-system viewpoint is proposed.
The design of instruction is seen as a cycle of activities which should consider inputs, processes and outputs in relation to each other.
Chapter 3. Delineates general aims and precise objectives. Instructional objectives are seen as micro-level objectives which should generally contribute to the achievement of other macro-level objectives of the wider systems (society, organization or the individual). A method for the statement of objectives and for the examination of their relevance, measurability and viability is presented.
Some difficulties and objections to the use of performance objectives are examined. However, it is shown that they are necessary as controls at every stage of the systems approach. The tables (or maps) at the end of the chapter present some ways of overcoming the difficulties in using performance objectives.
Chapter 4. By means of several analogies and case studies, this chapter attempts to encourage the reader critically to evaluate problems and their proposed solutions. It shows that problems are not always quite what they seem to be when first presented. The need to analyse the problem and to pre-evaluate any proposed solutions by reference to the context of the wider system is stressed. The case studies present some techniques for such pre-evaluation, such as the preparation of systems diagrams, consideration of hypothetical âbeforeâ and âafterâ steady states in the system, etc. One encounters the need sometimes to restate the problem before attempting to solve it.
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1. Instruction, Instructional
Systems and the Systems Approach
1.1 Education and training: a question of goals
âTrainingâ is akin to following a tightly fenced path, in order to reach a predetermined goal at the end of it. âEducationâ is to wander freely in the fields to left and right of this path â preferably with a map.
This quote is the only thing that has stuck in my mind, from an otherwise forgotten lecture I attended some time in the early 1960s. I cannot even remember the theme or the speakerâs name. Perhaps they were rendered insignificant by the philosophical depths of this opening statement. It says in two sentences what many writers have tried to say in whole books.
At about the same time, Professor B F Skinner, the father of programmed instruction, was somewhat less generous when delivering a lecture at University College, London. While discussing the use of precise objectives as the key to efficient instruction, he concluded by saying that
those of us who know where they are going, and can define the path that leads there, are in the business of training, whereas those who neither know their destination nor the means of getting there are in education.
Who sets the aims?
This somewhat extremist view would not be shared by most educators. They would claim that they do have some idea about their ends and the means of reaching them, but that their ends are general and there are many means of reaching them. Certainly, it is true that some educators have argued strongly against predetermined aims. They consider that it is the learner who should establish his own aims, with only minimal guidance from the teacher. Once the learner has established his aims, he should merely be given the resources required to discover the means of achieving them. This âfree discoveryâ movement has its supporters, but is by no means the mainstream of educational thinking.
Who chooses the means?
At the other extreme, the various multi-media, personalized or resource-based schemes which have recently gained popularity offer the learner a variety of pre-prepared paths towards predetermined goals. The learner may choose his route, but he always ends up at the same place. In between these extremes are a number of other models in which both goal-setting and path-choosing are joint teacher/learner activities.
The education-training continuum
Where exactly to draw the line between training and education in this continuum is not clear. But perhaps it is also not important. Perhaps it is more important to realize that most teaching/learning situations contain something of each.
Even if we are primarily concerned with herding the learners as fast as possible along that tightly fenced path, we seldom achieve our goal without some straying along the way. The fences may be hedgerows, interesting and nutritious in themselves. And in practice the fences are not learner-proof. Many gates and gaps appear along the way, allowing all to glimpse the wonders that lie in the fields and some to stray in and perhaps be left to wend their own way.
If on the other hand we are concerned primarily with the open fields, we have to consider the question of the map. Should we provide one? If we do, we should first make sure that our learners can read the map. Maps have conventions and learning to read these conventions and so to interpret the map constitutes training, at least in so far that it involves predetermined goals. Thus whether we adopt the multi-media or âorienteeringâ approach (by specifying the learnerâs goals and giving him the freedom to choose what he considers the most efficient route) or the free-discovery âtouristâ approach (in which both goals and routes are at the learnerâs discretion) there is nevertheless an obligation on the part of the teacher first to make certain that a satisfactory standard of âmap-readingâ has been achieved.
If we are not concerned with the tourists or the boy-scouts, but with the ârealâ explorers who must find their way through previously uncharted territories (researchers and scientists for example) we cannot and indeed do not wish to provide a map. But this does not eliminate the training element. The pioneer must have appropriate terrain-reading skills, adequate survival skills and map-drawing skills, in order that he may return successfully from his voyage and then inform others how to follow in his footsteps. Much of these skills he would gain most effectively through pre-planned, goal-oriented teaching, ie through training.
1.2 Instruction: what this book is about
As most training involves some unplanned learning (educational effects) and most education involves some planned, goal-oriented teaching (ie training) the value of these two terms as discriminators is somewhat dubious. Indeed perhaps the simple view that âeducation is what goes on in schools and training is what goes on in industryâ is as useful a definition as any. The use of the term âinstructionâ may help to both distinguish and unite the two processes.
A working definition
By âinstructionâ we shall mean a goal-directed teaching process which is more or less pre-planned. Whether the goal has been established by the learner or by some external agent such as a teacher or a syllabus is immaterial. What is important is that a predetermined goal has been identified.
Figure 1.1 A definition of instruction
Whether the routes to the goal are then unique or various, whether they are prescribed by the instructor or chosen by the learner is immaterial. What is important is that pre-planning has taken place to establish and test out viable routes, or failing this, that pre-planning has taken place to enable the learner to test out the viability of any route he proposes to take, to check his progress along the way, and to âmapâ it so that he (or others) may retrace his steps.
Instructional systems design
It is thus the presence of precise goals or objectives (however arrived at) and the presence of careful pre-planning and testing out that shall be taken as the main characteristics of our use of the term âinstructional systemâ. Instructional systems design is therefore a three-phase process of establishing precise and useful objectives, planning viable routes and testing them out. We shall be concerned with analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
However, we shall make it our business to attend to the needs of the signpost-following âtraveller-in-a-hurryâ who seeks the shortest path to his objective, the âorienteerâ who wishes to examine and compare all possible routes, and the âtouristâ who is not yet sure at which of the many attractive objectives open to him he will decide to aim. Thus we shall not be concerned with only one recipe for instruction. We shall examine when and how the instructional system should establish the objectives, and when and how the learner should do this for himself. We shall examine ways of signposting clear pathways to these objectives and of he...
