Reinventing the Pedagogical Framework for Technology Enabled Education
by
Nishikant Sonwalkar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Overview:

The pedagogy for technology enabled education over the last few decades has been
influenced by behaviorist, cognitive and constructivist theories. These theories are debated
vigorously by the educational scientists. While the debate is extremely important for the
paradigm shift, the need for a framework for instructional designers seeking meaningful
incorporation of technology is necessary. With the infusion of new technological methods to
deliver education on-line there is an acute need for reinvention of the pedagogical framework;
a new design framework to provide a flexible approach for incorporating technology within
the context of pedagogy.

The interface of education is changing rapidly from the classroom to the blend of in-class
and on-line activities to -- almost completely technology enabled educational environments.
The technological shift is taking place now from classroom teaching and learning to
asynchronous Web-based and Web-supported learning environments. The dissemination of
educational content is certainly moving from a teacher-to-student model to a technology-
enabled interface.

The shift of educational interfaces from, synchronous to asynchronous, passive to interactive,
television to desktop computers, keyboard to handwriting recognition systems, mouse to data
glove, touch screen to voice recognition systems, real experiments to virtual experiments, real
educational space to virtual reality learning environments (VRLE), experiments in labs to
teleoperated experiments from remote locations, are all indicative of the technology trends
which the educational designers have to face now to provide pedagogically effective
educational technology components for learners.

Paradigm Shift: "The Learning Cube"

Among numerous learning theories that have been proposed in learning and cognition, the
theories that have major impact in the area of technology enabled education are behaviorist,
situated, constructivist, cognitive flexibility, component display and multiple intelligences.
These theories are well documented and discussed in the literature elsewhere (see list of
selected bibliography). These theories point to several learning models and strategies such
as: stimulus/response, cognitive apprenticeship, incidental, collaborative, discovery, inductive,
deductive reasoning and multiple intelligences. To create a three dimensional learning space
we choose to follow learning models as described below:

Figure 1

Apprenticeship
A "building block" approach for presenting concepts in a step-by-step procedural learning
style similar to mentor-student interaction.

Incidental
Based on "events" in a story or an educational trail that triggers the learning experience,
learners begin with an event that introduces a concept and provokes questions.

Inductive
Learners are first introduced to numerous examples that point to a central generalizable
principle.

Deductive
The learners are introduced to a principle, learn by applying the principle in several
situations and use principles to generate logical extensions.

Discovery
An inquiry method of learning in which students learn by doing, testing the boundaries of
their own knowledge.

These models represent selected learning processes chosen from the numerous learning
theories. These models and strategies are organized from simplest linear learning model
to complex simulated environments.

The proposed learning cube depicted in Figure 1, is composed of three dimensions:
learning media, learning models/strategies and interactivities. The media elements are the
modes of collecting information through -- text, graphics, audio, video, animations and
simulations; the learning models refer to the process preferred by a learner to understand
the information and turn it into useful knowledge, such as -- apprenticeship, incidental,
inductive, deductive and discovery -- and the interactivity is used to provide feedback for
confirmation, reinforcement and discussion. The learning cube is useful to map the
individual learning preferences based on media, learning models and interaction.

Pedagogical Effectiveness

The proposed framework provides flexibility to choose learning media in the context of a
learning model to process the collected information. The interactivity is used to apply the
acquired knowledge into practice by technological interfaces (audio, video, animations and
simulations). The pedagogical effectiveness of on-line courses then is defined in terms of
the summation of media richness, content sequencing, based on the pedagogical learning
models and interactivity provided by the on-line interface in terms of feedback and
adaptive revisions. It is important to note that on-line information itself does not lead to
learning. It is the multidimensional pedagogical process that is essential for the success
of technology-enabled learning.

Selected Bibliography:

1. Kolb, D. A. (1976). The Learning Style Inventory: Technical Manual. Boston: McBer
2. Witkin, Herman A. (1976). "Cognitive Style in Academic Performance and in Teacher-
Student Relations." In Individuality in Learning, edited by Samual Messick & Associates.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
3. Dunn, R., & Dunn, K. (1978). Teaching Students Through Their Individual Learning
Styles: A Practical Approach. Reston, VA: Reston Publishing.
4. Vygotsky, L., & Vygotsky, S. (1980). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher
Psychological Processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
5. Gardner, Howard. (1983). Frames of Mind. The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New
York: Basic Books.
6. Gregorc, A.F. (1984). Gregorc Style Delineator: Development, Technical and
Administrative Manual. Maynard, Mass.: Gabrial Systems, Inc.
7. Merrill, M.D., Li, Z. & Jones, M. (1991). Instructional Transaction Theory: An
Introduction. Educational Technology, 31(6), 7-12.
8. Dewey, J. (1997). How We Think. New York: Dover Publications.
9. Spiro, R.J. & Jehng, J. (1990). Cognitive Flexibility a Hypertext: D. Nix & R. Spiro
(eds.), Cognition, Education, and Multimedia. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
10. Jonassen, D., Ambruso, D . & Olesen, J. (1992). Designing Hypertext on Transfusion
Medicine Using Cognitive Flexibility Theory. Journal of Educational Multimedia and
Hypermedia, 1(3), 309-322.
11. Kearsley, Greg. (1996). Andragogy (M. Knowles). Washington DC: George
Washington University. http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~kearsley/knowles.html
12. ---. (1996). Cognitive/Learning Styles. Washington DC: George Washington
University. http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~kearsley/styles.html
13. B. McHenry and N. Sonwalkar "RIPE: Rapid Instruction Production Environment, ALN
Magazine, Vol2, October 1998.
14. Burrell, B., Wiggins, R.J.N., Sonwalkar, N., Kutney, M.C., Dalzell, W. and Colton, C.K.,
"A Comparison of Web-based and Laboratory Learning Environments," Proceedings of the
American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference, 2000
15. Sonwalkar, N., "Assessing Virtual Environments for Learning: A Data Mining Approach"
submitted to the Proceedings of Naval Postgraduate School's conference on Assessing
Quality of On-line Education, 23-25, October, Monterey CA, 2001.
http://www.aln.org/alnweb/magazine/vol2_issue2/tools_techno.htm
16. ---. "Changing the Interface of Education with Revolutionary Learning Technologies"
published as the Cover Story of Syllabus, pp. 10-13, Nov. 2001.
17. ---. "The Sharp Edge of the Cube: Pedagogically Driven Instructional Design for Online
Education" Syllabus, pp. 12-16, Dec. 2001
18. ---. "A New Methodology for Evaluation: The Pedagogical Rating of Online Courses"
Syllabus, pp. 18-21 Jan., 2002
19. Sonwalkar, N.,"Demystifying Learning Technology Standards-I", Syllabus, pp. 26-29,
March 2002

Nishikant Sonwalkar is the principal educational architect at the Educational Media Creation
Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and serves as the pedagogical advisor
to Web-based educational experiments and projects. nish@mit.edu