CEP 901B Proseminar in Technology & Education

Matt KoehlerPunya MishraFebruary 11, 2003

Today…

• General Housekeeping

desigN

• Discussion of readings• Break• MIAmE take over• A personal journey into design…• Brief updates on your work so far

Reminders

• Three Monkeys need to – Sum up the online activity for the

yahoogroup AND– Create a web page for today’s activity. Send

it to Matt– MiAmE please remember to do that…

Reminders II

• Readings are up for next week, DKSC is in charge. – Visit by Raven Wallace (Email Raven by tommorrow

and send instructions by Thursday please)• Please post to the Yahoogroup by the deadline (as

decided by the group of the week)

• Continue thinking of research project – Continue to meet with your parole officers this week with some

ideas of what you would like to conduct research on.

• Third summary in your annotated bibliography due next week– Continue to re-design your research page as per our discussions

Design discussion of readings

What is design?

• what it is not…• It is not a product, (though it is often mistaken for it)

• It is not scientific problem solving or the mere application of scientific principles and techniques (the myth of technical rationality)

• - though professors of education would want to believe that is so

Design...

• ... is spontaneous, unpredictable, messy, creative & hard to define

• ... is an dialog between constraints & tradeoffs

• … does not offer easy solutions (what we can hope for is satisficing)

• ... an art as much as a science• (psychology is a science, teaching is an art - William James)

Design...

• … is ubiquitous, every object in this room has been designed (natural kinds versus artificial kinds)

… and every piece of knowledge (Perkins)… so are most plants and animals we see around us… and every species on the planet (Darwin)

• … is related to pragmatics, in that every theory is as good as what it gets is

– Every theory is under-determined, “the devil is in the doing” • Philo of Sci: Theory is under-determined by data• Gets worse when we look at practice

– Example: To make a system that implements cognitive flexibility theory or constructivism requires a lot of design decisions

– Example: A case-based video system to help teachers requires a lot of design decisions (like Koehler’s system we saw last week)

– Example: A teacher has to create a lesson that teaches students about the waster cycle using a constructivist perspective.

Big names in the field…

Herbert Simon

Human decision-making and problem-solving processes and the implications of these processes for social institutions.

Founded departments of Industrial Administration, Computer Science and the Humanities and Social Sciences’ Psychology Department

Economics, bounded rationality, scientific discovery, computer simulations of human cognition, qualitative research,

Donald Schon

• exploration of professional’s ability to ‘think on their feet’• ‘an analysis of the distinctive structure of reflection-in-action’

(1983: ix). He argued that it was ‘susceptible to a kind of rigor that is both like and unlike the rigor of scholarly work and controlled experimentation

• Distinguish between Espoused theories versus theories-in-use

Edward Tufte

• The poetry of visual information design– Clarity, precision and efficiency– Every representation is a lie

• The map is not the territory

Norman, Nelisen & Tognazzini

• www.jnd.org / www.useit.com / www.asktog.com • Students in academia are taught analysis: industry needs

synthesis -- design. • The scientific community seeks truth and perfection. Industry

needs doers, not analyzers. It needs quick, approximate answers that are "good enough" for the purpose: Engineering approximations rule the day, not precision.

Norman… is a changed man!

• The criticism: If we were to follow Norman's prescription, our designs would all be usable, but they would also be ugly.

• The response

Quotes:The surprise is that we now have

evidence that pleasing things work better, are easier to learn, and produce a more harmonious result.

Good design means that beauty and usability are in balance.

… Let us not be usability bigots. But all the many factors of design must be in harmony …The products must be affordable, functional, and pleasurable. And above all a pleasure to own, a pleasure to use. After all, attractive things work better.

David Gelernter

• Looking for beauty in machines

Design for learning

• Seymour Papert– Constructionism

• David Perkins– Knowledge as Design

• Yasmin Kafai

• Allison Druin

The importance of aesthetics

• The nature and quality of experience• Aesthetics

– Simplicity– Elegance– Coherence– Closure– Quality

Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder but is is inseparable from the flower - Robert Stake

Big questions…

• Where do ideas come from?• How do these ideas evolve?• How do these ideas spread?• What is the nature of design knowledge?• How can it be learned/taught?• How can we develop better tools for learning• Can we create learner centered design?

A personal journey

• If we have time…

Standing on the shoulder of giants: Or Punya and his precursors

I did not direct my life. I didn’t design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That’s what life is

- B. F. Skinner

Kafka & his precursors

• Jorge Luis Borges and his games with reflections and infinity

Hindsight is always 20/20

• Engineering, design, communication, Education, Educational technology

Robert M. Pirsig

Technology presumes there is just one right way to do things and there never is. And when you presume there is just one right way to do things, of course the instructions begin and end exclusively with [one predetermined product]…. But if you have to choose among an infinite number of ways to put it together then the relation of the machine to you, and the relation of the machine and you to the rest of the world, has to be considered, because the selection from among many choices, the art of the work is just as dependent upon your own mind and spirit as it is upon the material of the machine. -- Pirsig, 1974, p. 160

Douglas R. Hofstadter

• Cognitive psychology• AI• Self Reference• Playing with ideas

Henry Petroski

• The glass is always twice as big as it needs to be: Understanding the engineering aesthetic

William (Bill) Brewer

Brewer contd.

• http://www.psych.uiuc.edu/~wbrewer/tree.html

This view of life

• … and that!

And all the good guys…

… we talked of before

My approach

• Understand design• Apply it in teaching

– Learning Technology through design• Master’s Level• Faculty development• Doctoral Seminar (CEP 917) not offered yet

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon – E. M. Forster

Why design?

• Based on our ideas about Technology Proficiency

• Based on our ideas about how technology should be learned

• Based on our work on the relationship between teaching & design

Mishra, P., Yong, Z., & Tan, S. (1999). Unpacking the black box of design: From concept to software. Journal of Computing in Educational Research. 32 (3). P. 220-238.

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (in print). Not “what” but “how”: Becoming design-wise about educational technology. In Y. Zhao. (Ed.). What should teacher’s know about technology.

Vyas, S., & Mishra, P. (in print). The re-design of a after-school reading club. To appear in Garner, R., Gillingham , M., & Zhao, Y. (Eds.). Hanging out: After -school community based programs for children. Greenwood Publishing Group.

The Design Team Idea: Why?

• Technology Proficiency: Three levels• Mechanical• Meaningful• Generative

• Our beliefs about Technology Learning• Fluency through uses• Authentic context• Authentic problems

Shameless self promotion alert

• CEP 917: Knowledge Media Design

• Maybe next semester, maybe in Spring of next year – In parallel with CEP 817: Learning

Technology through Design

How to get into this field

• Read widely• Observe keenly• Play freely

Create your own precursors!!!

We are all designers — we just may not know it