Reflection of Learning Design and Technology

As a new student with no teaching background before, the concept of Instructional Design is always be misunderstood by me. One of the most common misunderstanding of Instructional Design is the one who design the content of course, the learning process or the learning materials must be the expert of the field or some senior teachers or instructor so that they are fully qualified to design such things. After finishing this module, I knew that Instructional Design is a profound knowledge and it is totally different from a Subject Matter Expert (SME), teachers or instructor of the course. Instructional Designer need not to have solid knowledge background of the fields of the course. Instructional Design is more like a psychology module than an education module. The major elements of Instructional Design are all about the reason that we need the course (analysis and problem identification), the ways or the process of a course (learning design model), the psychology elements to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of delivering the content to the learners (learning theories). When I searching information in the internet about learning theories for my assignments, I found that most of the learning theories are related with psychology fields. I am quite interested in psychology aspect and therefore learning theories is one of the part that inspiring and impressing me. Especially for the three most famous learning theories that have been mentioned in the course - Behaviorism, Cognitivism and Constructivism.

In Hong Kong, the education systems of primary schools and secondary schools raised different kinds of issues. Students are usually teach by so called “spoon-fed” approach. Parents and teachers only concern about the public exam result of the students. In order to complete the curriculum and start preparing for the public exam as soon as possible, they start focusing on the short-cut for the public exam. As a consequence, the real understanding of the knowledge and the future application of the knowledge have been put aside. On the other hand, children under this kind of education system become more suffer and miserable than the previous generation.

As the most traditional education system adopted in asia, it can be hardly changed in the near future. Fortunately, the technology is developing rapidly nowadays. The ways of learning have been changed and it can be very different from the past. Students need not to obtain knowledge in a particular venue, such as schools, and there are more digital resources can be used. With the assistance of the latest technologies like Smartphones, Wearable device, Big data, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Cloud services, social networks and digital games, learning theories can be easier and more effectively applied into learning than the past. Digital games provided a good environment and platform for Behaviorism to be applied. With giving some virtual rewards and punishment, students can obtain knowledge imperceptibly by keep on trial and error in the game. Most importantly, during the learning process of the students, very few or even no human resource are needed. Using smartphones and wearable device with Augmented Reality applications and cloud services, the application and effectiveness of Constructivism is also enhanced. Students can obtain knowledge by exploring new things by themselves. They can also easily communicate, discuss and share opinion with others through the online community. During the discussion in the community, some new ideas and concept may be generated. On the other hand, mobile devices with Push technology become important assistant tools in applying Cognitivism. As mentioned in the course about the concept of short-term memory and long-term memory, students need a “2+2+2” approach to overcome the and forgetting curve of human beings. In the past, this approach is quite hard to apply since the teacher need to plan very detailed and clear when to recall the knowledge and the long school holiday is a challenge because most of the students will not recall the knowledge at home by themselves. Fortunately, Push technology plays a very important role in processing this approach nowadays. Most of the students are now having a smartphone and the server can schedule the when to recall the students memory by simple setup. Related contents and materials will be “push” to the students smartphone in a particular time accurately. Also, “when” and “where” is no longer a problem for the “2+2+2” approach.

The Instructional Design knowledge that I have learn in this course really impressing me especially when combining with the IT background that I possess. Further study in the application of the Instructional Design knowledge in e-learning or mobile learning become a future goal that I would like to achieve and I believe that the use of technologies and psychology can come up with a better way or approach to balance the importance of score, the real understanding of students and a relaxing learning environment in order to solve the issue of the traditional education system.