An interesting thing occurred over the course of the week, as often they do in online forums.  The class began to draw their own conclusions about the subject being taught.  Our instructor, Bruce Kennedy, offered up his own insights that I thought was worthy of presenting here on this blog.

Regarding Instructional Architectures

As illustrated in a previous post, there are four different instructional architectures to choose from when designing instruction.

• Receptive
• Directive
• Guided Discovery
• Exploratory

Looking at these architectures, from the top down, the Receptive architecture tends to take an objective approach.  Learners are passive while receiving instruction and this form of learning is easy to develop and deliver.

The Exploratory architecture takes a constructivist approach.  Learners aren’t necessarily guided to a conclusion.  They form their own conclusions from the content presented to them to form a mental model that is meaningful to them.  Learners take an active role in their learning and for developers this form of instruction tends to be more difficult to develop.

Regarding Reusable Learning Objects

There was much discussion about Learning Objects over the course of the week.  Learning Objects are really the equivalent to lessons, a collection of Information Objects (chunks of content) compiled in context to a learning objective.

The discussion shifted to what is the difference between E-learning and web-based training (WBT).  I agree with our instructor with his conclusion, which is the two are not the same.

E-learning is not the same as WBT. I would consider this class an E-learning class, but would not say that it is WBT. An E-learning course can mimic most, if not all, of the same interactions that a F2F course has based on the technology and strategies used.

In other words, think of WBT as stand-alone, perhaps a Learning Object in and of itself, and E-learning as a collection of Learning Objects.  E-learning is really an environment, or platform, learners enter to draw from the available Learning Objects to construct meaning, relevance and solutions to problems they encounter.

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The beauty about such conclusions (including my own) is that they are not necessarily right or wrong.  The only way to confirm or disprove such conclusions is to actually apply them and learn from the results.

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• Receptive - Learners are in the inactive role of observer. They may be exposed to instruction in the form of a lecture (with no questions) or a series of e-learning screens with little or no interactivity. The learner is passive and has little or no control over the speed or flow of the training.
• Directive - Places learners in a more active role. Training is presented in small sections or “chucks” of material followed by an opportunity to apply what was learned through practice or quizzes.  Even though learners are more active than in the Receptive architecture, they still may not be in charge of the pace of the learning.
• Guided Discovery – Based primarily on problem solving. Problems presented to learners model situations they may encounter in real life. Learners receive a variety of instructional support techniques to help solve the problems presented to them.
• Exploratory - Provides learners with a large and complex set of materials that can be used to acquire new knowledge. This architecture does not try to guide the learning, rather learners are free to choose from any number of experiences to master a new topic or task based on their learning preferences.

The discussion in class about these instructional architectures has centered around four examples of e-learning modules.  The assignment was to analyze each one and judge which of the four architectures the module can be categorized by and why.

It was fascinating to see the different points of view each student had on the modules.  For example, while I thought one particular e-learning module on effective communication was in the directive category, others thought it was receptive or guided discovery.  This then lead to a conclusion that when it comes to effective e-learning, perhaps a blended approach to the architectures, taking elements from each and integrating them into the module, is perhaps the way to go.

I can agree and disagree with that statement simultaneously.  First, a blended approach to the instructional architectures would be effective if you were creating something that needed to appeal to all different types of learning styles.  This way, the learner can choose the best method of learning that will transfer knowledge to them so they can apply it easily.  On the other hand, blended instructional architecture approaches in e-learning may not be effective if we have a specific target audience in mind that learns one specific way or the context of the content needing to be taught.  For example, if the content needing to be taught is procedural, would an exploratory approach work?

This is great topic and one I think can be easily understood if you take a moment to study up on it and see some examples in action.  For more information on this topic, here are two resources located on the Adobe Authorware Support Site:

• Authorware, multimedia, and instructional methods
• Which architecture is best? No yellow brick road

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