Shifting from Content-centred to Activity-centred ID (Online Forum – eLearning Guild)

So I’m going to try this live blogging thing again as I am listening/participating in the second day of this month’s Online Forum hosted by the eLearning Guild. I’m going to capture my notes this time using my Google Notebook. I found yesterday that during the first session (and the second and third…interupted..don’t ask) as I was writing using my blog tool often extra line spaces are put in where I didn’t want them and other mysterious editings were happening. This distracted me more then anything and I wanted to fix them right away instead of waiting until the end….So today I use Google Notebook. So far…so good.

For today’s first session I picked:
Shifting from Content-centered to Activity-centered Instructional Design by Cynthia Russell, University of Tennessee Health Science Center & Allan Carrington, University of Adelaide & Tim Neumann, Institute of Education – University of London.

First: Kudos to Allan for staying up to 1AM to present to us from Adelaide, South Austraila.

Initial poll of group participants: The discussion will centre around LAMS and 95% of participants had never heard of it. 69% of participants were from the corporate world, 16% were from higher education. 80% of the group considered themselves instructional designers, 71% have taken online courses, and 48% have facilitated online courses.

Alvin Toffler: The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Activity Centred is focused on the learning
-active engagement
-many ways of knowing the material

Content Centred is focused on the teaching
-learner memorizes
-one way of knowing the material
-information equals knowledge

Activity Centred Instructor
-activities are there to support the learning
-helps students to develop their own ideas
-frames material to support the learners

Content Centred Instructor
-transmits information
-teacher gives the knowledge to students
-very theoretical

Activity Centred Learner
-learn through doing
-participatory
-problem solving

Content Centred Learner
-learn by reading
-individual focus
-learn now use later

Activity Centred Material Flow
-experiential
-cyclic
-negotiated

Content Centred Material Flow
-linear
-sequential
-directed

Activity Centred Assessment
-deep learning
-many perspectives on solution
-peer or self-evaluation, portfolios, projects

Content Centred Assessment
-surface learning
-solutions right or wrong
-multiple choice examinations

The need for the shift comes from having to accommodate a variety of delivery modes and addressing learner’s needs (styles, literacy, etc).

LAMS – Learning Activity Management System – Video helps/forces you to shift to an activity base.
What can students do? How can they work together? Etc.
Teachers can put tasks together that students can do.
Collaborating with teachers and peers.
Capturing lesson plans to store and resuse and share with other teachers.

Teachers usually start with the content and then wonder how do we get the students into the content and comprehend it.
LAMS instead starts with the activities. It’s a tool to help build curriculum.
The Gates feature lets you monitor the progress of students and help those that are behind, move activities around, etc.
The Branching feature will help teachers created scenarios.

Thanks to Brent Schlenker who found out during the session (thanks for chatting) that for 6 months hosting the cost is $595 for 200 users, 12 months is $995. It is open source software thought.
http://del.icio.us/AllanADL/elearningguild170807