A quick browse through this course quickly reveals that there is a definite lack of step by step instructions. Objectives, assignments and starting points are offered as well as links to additional resources. The responsibility for learning rests solely on the student. The instructors role in this course is one of facilitator--a guide on the side rather than a sage on the stage. The HHHMMM??? What does this button do? approach to learning had evolved into a fresh approach to learning called Inquisitivism. The following sections are excerpts from a major work in progress called: Inquisitivism or "The HHHMMM??? What Does This Button Do?" Approach to Learning: The Synthesis of Cognitive Theories into a Novel Approach to Adult Education. The ten key concepts of inquisitivism will explain how this course was designed and what you should expect. The following section on minimilism has been included to offer support and background for this fresh approach to learning. For a full explanation of Inquisitivism please refer to the above work in progress.
While Constructivism and many other cognitive theories and approaches examined in this investigation do stress that learner must be motivated, or at least have a predisposition towards learning, most do nothing more than state a variation of this fact. Experience in the past five years of instruction have revealed that you can have an adult learner who is motivated to learn, or at minimum predisposed to learning, and yet these same people have difficulty with the simplest of tasks and procedures. They want to learn; they paid their fee for their course, have shown up for the class or accessed the information online, yet they seem to be paralyzed. Why?
Fear! Fear of wrecking the computer; fear of breaking the system; fear of loosing their data and a whole host of related or even unrelated fears. Helping adult learners overcome their fear of technology is one of the first steps in creating a successful learning environment. Convincing an adult learner that there is nothing to be afraid of can be achieved through either explaining or demonstrating that the system cannot be broken or wrecked. In addition, it is just as important to demonstrate that mistakes will happen, the system will eventually crash, but it can simply be restarted. Finally, implemented effective backup procedures at the system level can help reduce or eliminate the fear of loosing data. Letting the learner know that working with technology, can and will at times, be frustrating will help reduce the amount of paralysis that can occur when things go wrong.
Dispelling the learners fear is only one part of the challenge in adult education. The second and often more difficult related challenge is stimulating the natural curiosity or inquisitiveness that decades of traditional formal education have so successfully squelched. There have been numerous studies conducted over the many years that clearly demonstrate the first six to ten years of a child's life (the actual period depends on the study) are the most critical period of development.
A young child is a natural scientist. This can be easily demonstrated by giving an infant a piece of paper or a toddler a stick. The toddlers natural inquisitiveness will motivate him to see what kind of an instrument the stick will make by shaking it or hitting it against another object. Next the child could check out engineering, mechanical or tensile strength of the stick by seeing if they can break it. The economic value of the stick can be assessed by offering the stick to another person. By placing the stick in their mouth the child is determining the chemical composition of the item. New parents find out very quickly that anything within reach become objects of investigation. This natural inquisitiveness is what adults need to adopt in order to not only succeed at learning new technologies, but also enjoy the experience.
For the past four years I have been using this example of the child as an investigative scientist to motivate adults to become inquisitive. In addition to the child scientist example, I also ask my new class of adults learners to think of their children; nieces, nephews, or family friends, when it comes to learning computer games. Within minutes of handing a computer program or game to a child they have it installed, clicked on every menu item and button on screen, and are well on their way to racking up a score that most adults could never dream to achieve. Children excel at the computer and other technologies because they follow the "HHHMMM??? What does this button do?" approach to learning. Adults can have almost the same level of success with technological learning if they allow themselves to be inquisitive.
Since "inquisitive" is defined by Websters as: 1) given to inquiry or research; eager for knowledge; curious. 2. unduly curious; prying; the label of "Inquisitivism" has been used to describe this approach. The approach should stand on its own rather then become a branch of constructivism, because without this level of preparedness, all the other aspects of learning will not occur. Once the fear has been removed and an adult learner is stimulated to find out just what every button on the screen can do, then and only then, can other concepts and principles of learning be applied.
Like minimalism, inquisitivism in not a static theory, but a dynamic approach to the implementation of effective learning environments. As was described earlier in this paper, Inquisitivism is a synthesis of other learning theories and approaches so many of the key concepts will be borrowed from these other theories. The key concepts of inquisitivism include:
Like the minimalist approach, inquisitivism is a huge departure from the familiar step by step procedures of the systems approach. Carroll's (1990) research has demonstrated the reason the systems approach is so ineffective is not that people are not capable of following step by step instructions, they just choose not to. Even though most people choose to ignore step by step instruction they will choose the systems approach over other learning methods.
Minimalism should be referred to as a descriptive approach to designing effective instruction. "One of the key ideas in the minimalist approach is to present the smallest possible obstacles to learners' efforts, to accommodate, even exploit, the learning strategies that cause problems for learners using systematic instructional materials." (Carroll, 1990) The minimalist goal is to get out of the way of the learner and let them get more out of their training (learning) experience by providing a less overt training structure.
Unlike many of the other learning theories and approaches minimalism has been developed from the empirical process. Carroll's research at the IBM Watson Research Center in the 80's revealed that traditional systematic instructional materials were very ineffective and often hindered the learning of new technologies by trapping the learner in error loops within the instructional material. Learners often experienced more problems working through the support and learning material than they did by simply attempting to learn the new system through discovery exploration (Carroll, 1990).
In the first of many experiments Carroll and his associates reduced 94 pages of the systematic training manual of the IBM DisplayWrite to 25 cards. The cards did not include any step by step procedures but provided general information for completing a task. The cards were intentionally created incomplete so that learners would focus on the task at hand and fill in the missing details which ultimately facilitated the construction of their own understanding. The learners were encouraged to work directly on the DisplayWrite system and use the cards for direction or guidance.
Out of a group of twelve participants, six used the guided exploration (GE) cards and the other six were given the traditional systems-style manual (SM). Both groups were expected to complete their respective training by working through either the drill or practice of the systems-style manual or the twenty five GE cards. Both groups were evaluated by being required to complete a real task of transcribing a one page letter into the word processor and printing it out. The participants were asked to think out load and their thoughts were recorded by research associates. In addition the session were video taped so that all the data could be collated and taxonomized to develop a qualitative picture of how GE learning was contrasted by SM learning.
The guided exploration cards allowed for much faster initial learning and more successful performance in the achievement task The learning time for the GE participants was less than half of what it was for their SM counterparts; 3 hours and 55 minutes vs. 8 hours and 5 minutes (Carroll,1990). Similarly, GE participants spent half the time on the achievement task as did their SM counterparts and the GE group achieved much greater success that the SM group. The GE group spent more time working on the actual system trying out more operations than the SM group who spent most of their time reading about the system. Not only did the GE group work effectively with the operations they need to complete their task, they experimented with many more aspects of the system.
The GE group had much more success because they worked with the system itself and took responsibility for their own learning. They demonstrated much more initiative and used errors as learning experiences. In contrast, the SM group often became trapped in error loops created by the systems-style manual. The problems the SM group experienced with the instructional material hindered, or in some cases even prevented the learner from working with the system they were attempting to learn.
Additional experiments were conducted over a 10 year period that demonstrated the minimalist approach to be much more effective than the traditional system approach in virtually all aspects of technical training involving adults. It is from this body of research that Carroll has developed the rubric of minimalist instruction. The nine concepts listed below make up the primary principles of Carroll (1990) minimalist approach:
A secondary key to the minimalist approach is the need to discover and support the learners sense-making efforts. This discovery is a dynamic approach that will not only involve the instructional designer but also the learner. There is no minimalist checklist that a designer can use to create effective instruction. Carroll (1990) states that taking checklists seriously is perhaps the most typical and debilitating design fallacy.
The minimalist approach to learning offers one of the best theoretical foundations from which adult instruction can be designed. Like many other approaches, minimalism is a synthesis of many other theories, that propagate the educational psychology landscaped. Despite offering many sound concepts for instructional design, the minimalist approach lacks a number of key components that are required for today's adult learner. Return to Inquisitivism
Conclusion
Perhaps it is the familiarity of step by step procedures that motivates people to choose this ineffective method of instruction. Even though guided discovery that has been implemented in the inquisitive approach as well as other learning theories and approaches has been shown to be a more effective way to learn, many students still seek the comfort and solace of traditional systems based tutorials and manuals. We truly are creatures of habit. Like the minimalist approach, inquisitivism has been showed to be successful. The successes and failures of this fresh approach to learning will be the basis of a subsequent discussion.
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