Ed Psych BSU

Organizational instructional strategies are those decisions the instructional designer makes when designing learning activities. The most important of these decisions is how the designer will assist learners to process new information and to process at a deeper level, producing meaningful learning, whether or not a teacher is presen

The choice of strategy is based on the designer's belief in the independent existence of knowledge: does it exist without the learner? Which epistemological approach to learning a designer espouses will have great impact on the organizational instructional strategy selected for use.

In simple terms, objectivism holds that learners are the passive receivers of knowledge.

"Students today can't prepare bark to calculate their problems. They depend on slates, which are more expensive. What will they do when the slate is dropped and it breaks? They will be unable to write." From a Teachers Conference, 1703. "Students today depend on paper too much. They don't know how to write on a slate without getting chalk dust all over themselves. They can't clean a slate properly. What will they do when they run out of paper?" From a principal's publication, 1815. "Students today depend too much on ink. They don't know how to use a pen knife to sharpen a pencil. Pen and ink will never replace the pencil." From the National Association of Teachers Journal, 1907. "Students today depend on store-bought ink. They don't know how to make their own. When they run out of ink they will be unable to write words or cipher until their next trip to the settlement. This is a sad commentary on modern education." From The Rural American Teacher, 1928. "Students depend on these expensive fountain pens. They can no longer write with a straight pen and nib. We parents must not allow them to wallow in such luxury to the detriment of how to cope in the business world, which is not so extravagant." From the Parent Teachers Association Gazette, 1941. "Ballpoint pens will be the ruin of education in our country. Students use these devices and then throw them away. The American values of thrift and frugality are being discarded. Business and banks will never allow such expensive luxuries." From Federal Teachers, 1950.

Transfer of inert knowledge from one context to another unfamiliar context (i.e. the real world) is difficult and unlikely.

nchored instruction is simply the idea that learning should be centered on problems.

Cognitive-flexibility theory is centered on "the ability to spontaneously restructure one's knowledge, in many ways, in adaptive response to radically changing situational demands . . .

The idea is to allow students to criss-cross the landscape of a content area so that they might have a rich mental model of the domain. The trick is to determine how much complexity a given group of learners is capable of handling without becoming lost or discouraged. A series of scenarios escalating in complexity can usually accommodate most learners.

Kurzweil (1999) says there is exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth; examining the speed and density of computation beginning with the first mechanical computers and not just the transistors that Moore used, he concluded that this doubling now occurs every year. He notes that "if the automobile industry had made as much progress [as the computing industry] in the past fifty years, a car today would cost a hundredth of a cent and go faster than the speed of light" (Kurzweil 1999, 25).

Already today it is becoming archaic and superfluous to teach facts. Instead, education needs to focus on ways of thinking. In particular, students will need to be able to recognize a problem, determine what information might be needed to solve a problem, find the information required, evaluate the information found, synthesize that information into a solution for the problem, apply the solution to the problem, and evaluate the results of that application

By the year 2099 there will no longer be any clear distinction between humans and computers.