Like several of you Contingency plan anyone? I am puzzling around the design of a training program with a two-fold purpose - both to complete a uni assignment and also as a program to be used in-house. I found I have to be very wary of slipping into old habits as I worked on developing the course. When I went back to review the first chunk I had worked on, all of a suddent I realised a really crucial part was missing - the interaction!!! So reading through your combined thoughts about contingency plans and structured beginnings has helped me get back on the right path.
While I was researching my assignment I came across a quote from Fischer who states: ‘It is impossible for design processes to account for every aspect that might affect the designed artifact. Therefore design must be treated as an evolutionary process in which designers continue to learn new things as the process unfolds. . My reading of this is that whilst we can plan, we'll never really get it all right, so those contingency plans might be best devised as the need arises, rather than trying to foresee all the disasters (maybe just the really obvious ones?)
Any thoughts?
Kirsty
Yes, agree with Kirsty based on the quotation that "design must be treated as an evolutionary process in which designers continue to learn new things as the process unfolds".... & each case is unique by itself even it can be of the same course, but with different sets of group dynamics with different group member compositions.
However, based on my own learning experience with the e-moderating course, if one observes some basic conference design principles, then the chances of people participating in Stages 1 & 2 could be higher.
Posted by: Grace at November 3, 2003 01:28 PMThanks for your confirmation Grace.
In undertaking this particular Instructional Design project for uni I have queried how I can design for a project-based, self-directed learning experience. Jonassen suggests that if the end point is different for each learner, how can we design instruction for that? But I find this a bit of a fuzzy approach. Within the e-moderating course I could really see the value of having structure and the benefits that all that effort in carefully planning stages 1,2 brought. Personally, I like/need quite a bit of structure in my own learning and also the training program I am working on is driven by organisational goals, so it really demands the structured approach, with a contingency plan tucked up my sleeve as well.
Kirsty
Kirsty and Grace,
Sometimes I think we regard a framework (for discussion), etc, as a structure. The word "structure" infers some degree of confinement for most of us. However, if, instead, we think of a course framework, a good framework can actually provide us with all the freedom we want, along with the tools we need to achieve our desired outcomes.
Think about the difference between when your mother used to say "What did you do at school today", to which you, like me, probably responded trucculently "Nothing much", compared with the question, "Did you learn any new words in French today?". We now have a launching point for discusssion, from which we may well lead to a discussion about the rest of the day, far more successfully than the "blank page" approach (I've just taken up French with Adult Ed this semester - that must be why this example sprang to mind).
Cheers
Kathi