All, I am forwarding this thoughtful message from Susan Phares regarding
the proposed "instructionalMethod" element to the list.
Stuart
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Stuart A. Sutton, Associate Professor
[University of Washington, Box 354985]
The Information School
iSchool Research Commons
University of Washington
4311 11th Ave NE, Suite 400
Seattle, WA 98105
http://www.ischool.washington.edu <http://www.ischool.washington.edu/>
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________________________________
From: Phares, Susan [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004 2:24 PM
To: Stuart Sutton
Subject: FW: Dublin Core Element proposal
Hi Steve,
Louise Ratcliff forwarded your proposal on to our learning
object workgroup here at UCLA and this was my response to our group,
which she asked me to submit to you directly as well. Hope this feedback
is helpful, and if there's any other info or feedback I could help with,
please feel free to contact me.
Thanks,
Sue
Susan M. Phares
Instructional Designer
UCLA Office of Instructional Development
[log in to unmask] 310.794.9372
-----Original Message-----
From: Phares, Susan
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004 1:41 PM
To: 'Louise Ratliff'; Joan Kaplowitz; [log in to unmask];
Williamson, Jim; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; Phares,
Susan
Subject: RE: Dublin Core Element proposal
Hi all,
I wouldn't mind spending a few minutes talking about it at the
meeting since I haven't had time to draft my thoughts - maybe we could
gather collective thoughts and send one email to the author.
In short, my thoughts are: if the type of instructional method
is a clearly-defined (or at least could reasonably be assumed to have
specific and significant features shared by other resources using the
same methodology), then it may be useful. I can see, for example,
identifiers such as "case study", "role-playing" or "problem-based
learning" being useful.
The big problem I see (and this concern seems to be shared by
one of the people whose feedback you forwarded to us) is that
instructional methodology does not lend itself to clear definition and
boundaries. There is also an overlap in what people consider
'instructional methods' or 'instructional strategies' and what is
theory...for example, if someone refers to something as using
constructivist methodology, we can make assumptions about the learner
doing something active and generating knowledge, but what does this
really tell us in specifics about the type of content, activities,
assessment, and so forth that the learning object would contain? Not
much, in my opinion. Hope this doesn't sound too cynical - I just think
it's hard to define something so ambiguous - what's the expression -
'like nailing Jello to a wall'? Jim, did I get that expression from you?
Finally, I'm assuming most learning objects could be so flexible
that they could be used in a variety of contexts - so would the author
of a learning object then need to tag it for all its possible uses
(which would probably make narrowing down searches impossible) or would
they tag it for the specific use they intended, possibly causing
searchers to overlook it for uses in other contexts?
If this element does get implemented, I would suggest I clearly
defined vocabulary using only instructional methods which allow the
searchers to make specific assumptions about the content display,
activities, and assessment.
- Sue
310.794.9372
