The Learning Context & Instructional Design- Models and Needs Assessment
Context: a multilevel body of factors in which learning and performance are embedded. Essentially, learning contexts are the who, what, when, where, and why individuals learn from instruction. Several factors can define instructional contexts and are grouped into categories of: physical, social, and motivational.
Physical: the tools and instructional media existing within the environment
Social: The social constructionism approach where learners interact with peers and other instructors
Motivational: wether or not the learner connects with the content, and subsequently provides the learner with satisfaction once learning has been achieved.
What I found particularly interesting about context, and the unavoidable role it plays in facilitating how we learn, is that "highly motivated learners are less susceptible to influences of physical comfort conditions, but learners engaged in problem solving tasks are more susceptible to noise" (Tessmer, 88). And then to dive a little further into the unknown, these contexts are also broken down to constitute "sub-contexts" that all play a cooperative role in completing the entire instructional experience.
Orienting Context: precedes the learning event and contains factors that influence the perspective student's motivation and cognitive preparation to learn
i.e: a teacher's comments about an upcoming class determines the level of motivation and cognitive preparation to learn
Instructional Context: the factors and environments that are directly involved in the delivery of instruction: the immediate physical, social, and symbolic resources outside the person
Transfer Context: environment to which this learning will be applied...the "payoff" context.
i.e: For example, in college I gave very little thought, concern or effort to complete the readings for classes like "art history" or "u.s history". Why? Because the "payoff" context wasn't there, I was not going to be applying that new knowledge to my career or life outside the classroom. I did what I needed to do in order to get the grade I wanted, but my motivation was far less than my motivation in graduate school.
This Transfer Context falls inline with "perceived utility of instruction", where learners achieve optimal learning when they believe that the upcoming instruction can be useful.
"This multi-level nature of context means that different spatial and temporal levels of contexts need to be considered, such as the immediate and surrounding contexts".
So, knowing that learning contexts effect learning outcomes, and motivation is a strong factor influencing how the learner learns, it seems right to reason that nearly every possible aspect of the environment that can be controlled, should be controlled. I feel it may be difficult and certainly not always a reliable option to control someone's motivation, but you can regulate other variables within the context. Tessmer notes that "contextually, learning is affected by sensory conditions, seating arrangement, instructor/learner roles and task perception"(96).
An interesting article on the effect of the physical learning environment on learning, suggests that there are a variety of physical conditions that influence a learning space, some of them being temperature (heating & air quality), chronic noise, and even color choices contingent on the age of the learner. This point sticks out to me because it seems like a context lost when designing MAGNET. The spaces seem a little to stark, and the freezing temperatures constantly remind you of your discomfort.
Front-End Analysis
-needs assessment
-analyze: instructional context, learners, tasks
Needs Assessment
-Lit Review (what domains we need to look at) (joint activities)(learned behaviors) (3 Domains)(Language, Elaborative Questions (how does that work))
-Subject Matter Experts (SME) (teachers)
-Interviews
-Focus Groups
-Nominal Group Techniques/Advisory Panel
-Observations/Usage Statistics (google analytics)
-Questionnaires/Surveys
What does Design Look Like (ie. instructional designer failed to inform teachers on smartboards)
-Learner Level of Structure
scaffolds
role of guidance and feedback
explicitness of the learning
-Environment Experience in the Real World
setting
expectation of instruction
who is a part of the social experience
-Organizational Generalizability
how far reaching
