Running Head: PLOTTING LEARNING

PLOTTING LEARNING 1

Running Head: PLOTTING LEARNING

Plotting a Learning Experience

Patrick Parrish

The COMET® Program/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

P.O. Box 3000, Boulder, Colorado, USA

Phone: 1-303-497-8366

Fax: 1-303-497-8491

Email:

(2008). L. Botturi & T. Stubbs (Eds.), Handbook of visual languages in instructional design . Hershey PA: IDEA Group.

Plotting a Learning Experience

Abstract

This chapter describes an informal visual notation system that can be used by instructional designers in conceptualizing a design for an aesthetic learning experience. It begins by making a case for the importance of aesthetics as a major consideration in designing instruction, distinguishing aesthetic experience from more narrow conceptions of art and aesthetics. Drawing parallels between learning experiences and other narratives, examples of several narrative diagrams used in planning and analyzing fictional narratives are examined. Borrowing strategies from these narrative diagrams, the chapter then proposes the use of engagement curves to help designers more fully consider the aesthetic experience of learners in the design phase of instruction. Several examples of the use of narrative diagrams to analyze existing instructional designs are provided, as well as a demonstration of how an instructional design educator might use a narrative diagram in planning a course on ID models.

Beyond Technical Instructional Design

Instructional design (ID) is always a complex task. Underlying any ID project are multiple goals and contributing factors that must be considered in making the myriad decisions that lead to a final design. Facing this complexity, instructional designers may feel pressed to conceive of their task in a way that narrows their concerns and allows more control and clear definition. For example, they may place their emphasis on modeling the performance of experts to help clarify instructional goals, on developing a sequence of instructional content designed to build toward better understanding, or on the effective implementation of instructional strategies meant to stimulate the cognitive conditions and processes in which learning can be expected to occur. Each of these focuses provides a framework to help ensure that learning outcomes are appropriate and achievable, and constrains the ID process to a series of problems with clear possibilities for solutions.

Yet, even though these technical qualities of an ID project are essential to care for, in narrowly conceiving instruction to possess only these qualities or assuming that all the other qualities are handled when these critical technical issues are well addressed, instructional designers may not adequately consider the complete nature of learning experiences. Learning experiences are always much more than the cognitive processing of well planned subject matter and structured learning activities. They also encompass how the learner feels about, values, and, ultimately, establishes a level of engagement with the instructional environment. They include the affective qualities that determine how engagement develops in a learning situation, which, while not ignored by ID, are frequently considered secondarily to or separately from the privileged cognitive qualities (for further exploration of the limitations of this dichotomy, see Parrish, 2006c). Beyond being a cognitive activity, learning experience (and therefore ID) is also political, ethical, emotional, and, perhaps most important in consideration of engagement, aesthetic in nature (O'Regan, 2003; Parrish, 2005; Schwier, Campbell & Kenny, 2004; Wilson, 2005). Beyond problem solving, instructional design is also the process of composing an experience that will stimulate the engagement that leads to learning.

In fact, learner engagement is likely the most critical factor in any learning experience. Whether learning is viewed as individual or system change, it will occur only when a learner desires the change or is shown the necessity of embracing it. Engagement describes a relationship to an instructional situation in which the learner willingly makes a contribution that is active and constitutive. Beyond task persistence, it involves investment of effort and emotion, willingness to risk, and concern about both outcomes and means. While IDs work to tame instruction into a manageable, replicable process that begins by predetermining outcomes to be measured through properly aligned assessments, engagement describes that wild aspect of the process in which the learner is as much or more in control of the activities and outcomes as the ID. Natural learning in everyday situations occurs as people willingly invest themselves in tasks, either alone or with others, with immediately meaningful goals. In formal learning situations like those offered in schools and much of professional training, that meaning, which is both a necessary precondition for and result of learner engagement, is often more difficult for learners to see. Yet the need for engagement remains high if deep and lasting learning is desired. Only when learners invest attention, effort, and emotional commitment is there a chance that they will learn deeply in the situations crafted by instructors and instructional designers.

Aesthetic Instructional Design

The aesthetic, or artistic, qualities of instructional design have received increasing discussion in recent years (Parrish, 2005; Visscher-Voerman & Gustafson, 2004; Wilson, 2005; see also Hokanson, Hooper, & Miller in Chapter 1.1). This broadening beyond the technical qualities of ID is likely to lead to many innovative approaches to the task of creating engaging instruction. However, aesthetics is a slippery construct, carrying with it many misleading, over-generalized ideas about art and artists, and some conceptions of it have less to offer IDs. This section first examines some of the less promising ideas surrounding art and aesthetics before introducing the concept of aesthetic experience, which not only has more to say about learning, but is also more successful in explaining the wide variety of artistic expression that exists.

One of these limited conceptions is that aesthetics describes those qualities of an object or event that are attractive, pleasurable, or aimed at creating feelings of delight—qualities to which artists are deemed especially attuned. While they are not without purpose, limiting our conception of aesthetics to these qualities makes it merely a motivator layered onto (or into) more substantive qualities. For instructional designers, these more substantive qualities are of course the instructional strategies that have a scientific basis, and perhaps qualities such as usability and functionality. If art is a model for the application of aesthetics, this conception seems to ignore the fact that many works of art are quite disturbing (consider King Lear, Picasso’s Guernica, or Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, for example) and do their work by challenging our expectations and desire for immediate pleasure. These works force us to grow rather than entertain or delight, as would artful works of instruction.

When art is seen as exalting the primacy of the individual, it also has little room in the work of IDs. Examples of this conception include justifying the emotional outpouring of artists, or assuming that artists are always self-referential and unconcerned with the impact of their work on others. It can also be seen in the assumption that artists tolerate no source of judgment other than their own. But of course, like all activity, art is a social phenomenon embedded in a complex activity system, and artists serve an important role or they would not be as valued as they indeed are. Artists, even popular artists, are often harbingers of social change who ask us to perceive the world in new ways, but they function within society, and have obligations to it just like the rest of us. Even though large parts of society may not immediately see the value of some works of art, or may at first be upset by the change in perception they are being asked to undertake, in the end society doesn’t tolerate insular artists that don’t attempt a connection, and their works fade away from notice. Nor would learners or clients tolerate an instructional designer that used only her own judgment as final arbiter of instructional decisions.

Finally, art is at times linked to an irrepressible urge to innovate with little concern for productive outcomes. While a quick review of twentieth century art, especially the visual arts, might lead one to this conclusion, I suspect this aspect of recent art is more a reflection of the cultural upheaval caused by rapid technological and social change that pervades the times, and isn’t the nature of art itself. Viewing art in the longer term, or keeping the popular arts in mind, one can see more emphasis on convention than on innovation. Every artist is concerned with productive outcomes—namely the aesthetic experience of those who appreciate her work. Innovation in technique, material, or subject matter, or choosing to investigate cultural changes not yet visible to most people, is one tool for achieving this. But extravagant innovation for its own sake is the strategy of minor artists who are missing the point, or perhaps brief flirtations with the muse for the better ones. Even great artists never quite live down their technical failures. Stories about Frank Lloyd Wright’s leaky roof (mentioned in Chapter 1.1), or Bernini’s sinking foundation are often told as parables to self-indulgent, young artists and designers (Schama, 2006: Hokanson, Hooper, & Miller, Chapter 1.1). IDs bent on innovation for its own sake may amuse learners for a time, but this approach has the potential to become a self-indulgent distraction to learning.

Certainly, creating pleasurable experiences, using one’s connoisseurship to judge instructional quality, and seeking creative solutions are all valuable attributes of a successful instructional design practice, and in balance with the other important qualities of good design, can lead to well rounded products (See Hokanson, Hooper, & Miller, Chapter 1.1). But limiting aesthetics to any or even all of the three senses described above places it in a distant position in the minds of IDs, who are primarily concerned with qualities of their work that can directly impact learning and serve their clients in appropriate and affordable ways. In other words, an instructional artist, if described as exhibiting the above predilections to the detriment of serving learning, would not last long in practice.

However, the concept of aesthetic experience has a more fundamental contribution to make to instructional design (Dewey, 1934/1989; Jackson, 1998; Parrish, 2005). Aesthetic experience describes a type of experience in which our awareness is heightened and a sense of meaning or unity becomes pervasive—clearly a condition that is ripe for learning. This type of experience can emerge during any meaningful activity, but it is particularly characteristic of and more frequently acknowledged to exist in our experiences with works of art, simply because art is expressly created to evoke it. For this reason, works of art can provide models for approaches to the design of aesthetic experiences in other life activities, including learning and instruction, and the lessons they can teach go far beyond the over-generalizations described above.

Whether the work of art takes the form of painting, sculpture, architecture, drama, dance, fiction, or film, our experience of it has narrative qualities. This narrative follows a pattern of inquiry, similar to the pattern of disciplined inquiry, in which we perceive the object or situation and over time, through engagement with it, come to sense its meaning or unity. This general pattern of experience, as described by Dewey (1934/1989), unfolds in the following way when applied to learning situations:

• A felt need, tension, or puzzlement that impels a learner to resolve an indeterminate situation.
• A sustained anticipation of outcomes that helps to maintain the initial engagement.
• Intent action or observation on the part of the learner, including a concern for immediate qualities and things (not merely a focus on goals or instruction as a means to an end).
• Consideration of how these observations bear on the anticipated end.
• A consummation that unifies the experience (not merely terminates it) and makes it significant.

In other words, an aesthetic experience is not just one that causes pleasure or shocks us with creative vision, except to the extent the finding meaning is always pleasurable and renewing. It is one that causes meaning to be realized in a deeply felt way. In such powerful experiences, learning may be deepened and learners made better prepared and enticed to learn further. Rather than serving only immediate needs, such experiences may create learning that continues to grow by making us more responsive to new learning opportunities (Osguthorpe, 2006).

Aesthetic experiences are those in which engagement is sustained by virtue of this recognizable pattern and the unity of experience it brings (Dewey, 1934/1989). This form of experience is played out in our engagement with any art form, either explicitly in the stories we read or see performed in plays or movies, or more subtly when we enter the world of a painting or listen to a musical composition (Berleant, 1991). But it is also indicative of all our inevitable struggles to learn about and interact with the world around us. In fact, as Dewey proposes, it is from these everyday struggles and their empowering effect that the urge for aesthetic experience arises. Aesthetic experiences are unified in intent and purpose, and include following through toward a conclusion that satisfies the initial felt need. This narrative unity is precisely the meaning missing from many formal learning situations, which may be more episodic than unified in treating learning objectives unconnected to a driving goal or question.

As a pattern of inquiry, the concept of aesthetic experience is not foreign to instructional designers at all (Parrish, 2006c). Many instructional design models stress meaning making as a central condition of learning. Inquiry-based (Collins & Stevens, 1983), goal-based (Schank, Berman, & Macpherson, 1999), case-based (Kolodner & Guzdial, 2000), problem-based (Savery & Duffy, 1996), and problem-centered (Jonassen, 2004) learning, as well as similar generative approaches to ID, each offer strategies for creating learning experiences with the potential to become aesthetic. However, when these ID models become rigid templates or merely new technical solutions, applications of them may nonetheless miss out on addressing the full range of qualities inherent in a learning experience and in doing so, slight the need to care for learning engagement. Seen in this way, aesthetic instructional design involves a particular stance toward the design task, the tools for accomplishing that task (including ID models), the instructional goals, and the learner. It suggests approaches compatible with many ID models, and is supportive of those models as a way to enhance their application. On the other hand, it is much more than simply a layer of pleasantness or excitement added to the otherwise technically competent models. It is as much about what is important for learners to experience as how they might experience it (Parrish, 2006a).

Designing for Aesthetic Experience

One way for instructional designers to better plan for aesthetic learning experiences is to pay particular attention to the narrative that unfolds as a learner engages in learning. Viewing learning as a narrative in no way trivializes it or reduces instruction it to a form of entertainment. As the pattern of experience described above demonstrates, narrative is a fundamental way of knowing about the world—perhaps our most fundamental way of deriving its meaning (Bruner, 1990, 2002; Polkinghorne, 1988). Narrative is the story-logic we find in, or impose upon, any experience we consider meaningful. Any narrative, and any meaningful experience, possesses five necessary components—an Agent, an Action, a Goal, a Setting, and a Means (Burke, 1945, as cited in Bruner, 2002). The fact that these fundamental components are also present in the pattern of inquiry, or any intentional act for that matter, reveals the powerful role narrative plays in our interpretation of the world.

Using narrative as a guiding force for instruction, as is done implicitly in each of the ID models mentioned above, can be a powerful way to stimulate learning engagement. Like a narrative, effective learning situations will have well established beginnings, middles, and endings that follow the pattern of aesthetic experience and contain the narrative components described above, revealing a necessary struggle to resolve a problematic situation that leads to learning. Whether the problematic situation is a true problem, a stimulating question or issue, or merely puzzlement or new experience that throws current knowledge into doubt, it is a call to seek out the information that allows one to test possible answers. Any of these situations initiate a sequence of events similar to the dramatic arc found in nearly all narratives, but which also comprise aesthetic experiences of whatever kind (Dewey, 1934/1989).

Caring for and assessing the potential for the aesthetic or narrative qualities of instruction can be accomplished by writing fictional design stories, or scenarios of learner experience, during the design phase of an ID project (Parrish, 2006b). Design stories are short first-person narratives written by designers from the imagined point-of-view of a user. They explore either an episode of use of a key or problematic design feature or a complete, coherent experience with the designed product, using the process of story writing to allow designers to exercise empathy toward users and make better design decisions. For instructional designers, they explore learning experiences, taking into account the expected qualities of instructional settings and of learners, including their motivations, ambitions, desires, and potential frustrations in learning.

The act of creating design stories can help designers build empathy with learners as they imagine learning experience to a degree of detail not possible through traditional analysis processes, and not possible in the often-constrained conditions of formative evaluation either. Writing design stories, which stimulates a thought process that exhibits a blend of analysis and synthesis, also makes the compositional nature of design more explicit, avoiding an artificial division of analysis and synthesis in design deliberations (Lawson, 1997; Nelson & Stolterman, 2003).

Written or imagined stories of learner experience can be of use particularly in the early stages of design in which one is trying out potential ideas or communicating those ideas to others, but they can also serve in the formative evaluation stage of projects already in development to help assess the potential success of design decisions. Imagined stories of user experience likely arise in the minds of all designers when they are considering possible designs or design features, but written design stories can help make learning experiences more tangible and detailed, allowing designers to catch qualities of potential user experience that might be missed in analysis or in those brief, imagined episodes of experience. In addition, written stories also have the advantage of becoming a document for creating shared vision within the design team, reminding subject matter experts about instructional goals, and communicating the rationale and value of a design to clients. However, verbal stories are not the only way to focus on narrative qualities in composing or evaluating an instructional design. Visual notation in the form of narrative diagrams can play an important role as well.