Filling the bucket or lighting a fire?

While I may use a behaviouralist approach to teaching physical procedures, I’m more likely to use a cognitivist approach to teaching processes.    The processes may incorporate the procedures which were taught behaviourally, but greater emphasis is placed on the information processing that occurs mentally, the stimulus evaluation and decision making that leads to a response.  An example would be learning how to structure a balance assessment for a client.  This would make use of skill in applying electrodes, which has been taught previously using a behaviourist approach.

On reading the citation from Harasim¹ “The learning sequence is led by the teacher as a didactic approach to individualized learning” I was reminded of another quote, credited to Edwin Slosson²,  “College is a place where a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the students’ lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either.”

This resonates with me, as one of my first year lecturers in speech pathology spent every lecture dictating his notes to us.   Consultation with fellow speech pathology students in the second year of the course quickly established that this had been his practice for many years, with course material varying little from year to year.  Had the class size not been so small that regular absences would have been obvious and acted on, our learning would have been just as effective if we had all copied the lecture notes from a previous year and designated one student each lecture to attend and scribe any variation in the material.    Fortunately for current learners, this lecturer has long since retired and didactic lectures have been supplemented with problem based learning, often in groups.

While I have always sought not to emulate this example, in truth there have been multiple times when expediency has led me to adopt a didactic cognitivist approach, when a constructivist approach would have provided a richer learning experience.  This has usually related to time pressure, the time available to develop the learning materials or the amount of learner time allocated.  This will be an ongoing consideration for me, working in a professional services business, where the value placed on staff development must be weighed against the lost opportunity cost of time not spent in client contact.  This is where I currently see great potential in eLearning as part of a blended learning approach,  providing tools that will enable me to systematically, over time, design learning activities that are truly learner centred.  Materials that can be accessed asynchronously and opportunistically, supporting the learner in venturing (or leaping) away from the learning system and then returning to reflect and share.    Doing this requires more frequently moving away from the cognitivist approach, with the limitation this places on the learner’s ability to work independently and self-determine the focus of study.

This will also require me to broaden the focus from being predominantly on content to including learning skills and technology literacy.  In doing so I must remember the range of learners I work with, from Mitch who blithely reminds me that he is a digital native – expecting that you should be able to swipe, touch, or press and have everything work as expected – to Denise who feels apprehensive each time she is faced with a new software program and needs to be reminded that shutting down and rebooting the computer is a key step in any troubleshooting process.   Enrolling in this course is part of my personal journey to develop technology literacy.

Digital, asynchronous learning also provides a means to support staff in the development of other skills which are not directly related to their position descriptions.  For example, a benefit of working in the private sector is that changes can be implemented quickly in response to alterations in the business environment.  A corollary of that is that constant change can be stressful to some employees. Digital learning has the potential to provide access to resources that will help them understand and manage their reaction to change.

I experienced this on a small scale when I introduced the use of a cloud based learning system (Edubrite) as a way of delivering a limited number of electronic modules.  The modules followed many of Gagne’s design aspects – but differed from a strictly cognitive design in that learners weren’t constrained in the order they could take modules.  Enhanced transfer opportunities were limited in the module, referring mostly to practical in-clinic sessions.

I was very interested to read on Suzy Romanelli’s blog about Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping process, which she describes as “reflective of Gagne’s approach sequenced differently by giving the learner the opportunity to attempt activities and/or assessment first and provide information secondly.”

This model seems more flexible to meet the variation in preferred individual learning styles, and I hadn’t heard of it previously.

This segues to a second important factor about my historical teaching style.   I haven’t, until very

(very) recently used a specific andragogy as the basis for learning design.  That isn’t to say that there hasn’t been delivery of quality learning experiences, but it has been as much by instinct and experience as by conscious design.  There has been a strong element of apprenticeship or experiential learning, which is relatively aligned to Miller’s Pyramid or Dreyfus’s model of skill acquisition ⁴.  In Dreyfus’s approach the learner progresses through the stages of novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient to expert.  As they progress along  the continuum there is a decreasing reliance on rules and greater reliance on intuition, increased ability to identify and focus on relevant information and enhanced metacognitive ability.  In my workplace, historically  staff have tended to be compliance and rule focused.  A current aim of our training program is to facilitate the transition from operating at a technician or competent level, to becoming clinicians who develop proficiency and expertise.

However the absence of an adragogical base means that, looking back I can identify many activities that were teacher focused rather than learner focused, and tasks that either failed to achieve the intended learning outcome or were inefficient in delivering the outcome. 

A perpetual problem has been scheduling clinical caseloads so a ‘more knowledgeable other’ is available  to model and mentor desired clinical skills.  Invariably clients would reschedule or cancel, either the mentor or learner would be away on sick leave, or the mentor would be called on to fit in an urgent case compromising the time allocated for the mentoring experience.  This resulted in a gap between the theoretical and practical sessions which markedly reduced the efficacy of the theory sessions.

An advantage of electronic materials is that they can be revisited, web case conferences can be recorded and recordings of modelled interactions could be used to supplement hands on experience.   High fidelity simulations are not readily available in the field of audiology and the cost is prohibitive to a company of our size, with little probability the investment could be shared with other audiology providers.

1  Harasim, L. (2011) Learning theory and online technology:  How new technologies are transforming learning opportunities.  New York: Routledge Press.  Cited in CQUniveristy e-courses EDEL20001: Learning theory in the digital age,  http://moodle.cqu.edu.au.

2.  Retrieved from http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/17/lecture-minds/ on March 12, 2014.

3.  Romanelli, S.  (2014, March 15). Knowledge and Learning: Objectivists Approaches [Web log post]. Retrieved March 16, 2014, from http://suzy-e-learning.blogspot.com.au

4.  Dent, JA and Harden, RM. (Ed)  (2013)  A Practical Guide for Medical Teachers 3rd edition.  Churchill Livingstone. Elsevier.