By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning Development Cycle: Bridging Learning Design and Modern Knowledge Needs
George Siemens weighs in with another significant paper. Starting with the premise, established elsewhere, that "learning today has moved beyond courses," he outlines a model of four distinct learning domains: accretion, transmission, acquisition and emergence. Each demands a different sort of learning (not 'instructional design') and Siemens accordingly offers a learning development cycle that takes this into account. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Smith, Ragan: Instructional Design, Third Edition
McToonish points to this online support site for a textbook, Smith and Ragan's Instructional Design, Third Edition. Normally I am sceptical about such sites, and about instructional sdesign texts in particular, but the full set of presentations and illustrations from the book alone make a visit worth while. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Role of Metaphor in Interaction Design
I think metaphor is the foundation of human reason (more accurately, I think similarity is the foundation of human reason). So it should be no surprise that I would be interested in Dan Saffer's essay on the role of metaphor in interaction design. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Are the Basics of Instructional Design Changing?
Following what I thought was an interesting turn of discussion on ITForum (aggregated here) I wrote this item, first, to underscore the role of philosophy as informing educational theory, and second, to highlight the difference between online learning and 'traditional' distance education. I argue that the theory of distributed representation has a profound implication for pedagogy, as it suggests that learning (and teaching, such as it is) is not a process of communication, but rather, a process of immersion. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines
PDF. James Paul Gee asks, "How do good game designers manage to get new players to learn long, complex, and difficult games?" Here's how (quoted from the text):
- Learners feel like active agents (producers) not just passive recipients (consumers).
- Different styles of learning work better for different people.
- People take on a new identity they value and in which they become heavily invested.
- They can manipulate powerful tools in intricate ways that extend their area of effectiveness.
- Early problems are designed to lead players to form good guesses about how to proceed when they face harder problems later on.
- Challenges feel hard, but doable. Learners feel - and get evidence - that their effort is paying off.
- Repeated cycles of learners practicing skills until they are nearly automatic, then having those skills fail in ways that cause the learners to have to think again and learn anew.
- Give verbal information just in time and on demand
- Create simplified systems, stressing a few key variables and their interactions.
- Risks and dangers greatly mitigated (one of the worst problems with school: it's too risky and punishing).
- See the skills first and foremost as a strategy for accomplishing a goal and only secondarily as a set of discrete skills.
- People learn skills, strategies, and ideas best when they see how they fit into an overall larger system to which they give meaning.
- Make the meanings of words and concepts clear through experiences the player has and activities the player carries out. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Five Lenses: Towards a Toolkit for Interaction Design
This is a very nice paper that cuts through some of the issues I have felt (but never really discussed) in learning theory. Two major things. The first is the recognition that interaction theory (and by extension, learning theory), can be viewed from five distinct points of view: the cognitive, the anthropological, the artifacts, the social and the ecological. More...