Task-centered Learning Differs from Problem-Based Learning

A recent publication by Joel Gardner and myself talks about how task-centered learning (TCL) differs from problem-based learning (PBL). When this article was submitted to Educational Technology, the editor asked if the distinction between TCL and PBL was just one of those simple academic discussions that has little effect on practice. I wrote him back that the contrary was true and shared a few experiences where people have discussed PBL, but what they were really discussing was TCL. This was the reason for the article. Some ideas and theories in instructional and educational technology really are the same thing, discussed in different ways from different people, but in academic discussions, I believe that we benefit from defining clearly what we'
re talking about.

One experience I had occurred at the AECT International convention. I attended a presentation on PBL in which the presenter had implemented a PBL experience for one semester which had all of the hallmarks of PBL, most significantly, the PBL experience provided minimal guidance and coaching for students. The result was a failed class, student scores did not improve significantly. "But," said the presenter, "we implemented some changes the next semester, and saw markedly improved student scores." The second semester was a great success. The presenter still called the second semester approach PBL, but I think it was mislabeled.

As I sat in this session I noticed that the changes that were made to improve the second semester scores were the same types of practices advocated in a TCL approach, not a PBL one. These included the instructional guidance and coaching that are so much a part of the TCL and First Principles of Instruction models for learning. So I guess that is the reason for the article. I believe that this distinction should be important for anyone in instructional or educational technology.

Digital Games Based Learning?

A friend of mine once told me that we are not here to entertain students, we are here to teach them. In that situation I wholeheartedly agreed. I had just been trying to teach a Sunday school class to a group of digital natives with no attention span having limited success. But then I thought about the field of Instructional Technology and how many in the field try to entertain students, in fact a large part of formative evaluation involves asking students how they felt about the instruction in question and what they would do to improve it. Some of these answers (especially those coming from digital natives) may ask for more entertainment in teaching.

In my own opinion instructional designers should be required to make what they are teaching relevant and useful to their students now or in the future, but they should not have to entertain students beyond that. Maybe your opinion is different, but consider that in order for our instruction to compete with other things digital natives do, it would have to meet the highest quality standards of a video game production. This is doable, but only with a lot of time and money.

A common complaint among digital natives is that they are bored, but what this really means is that they are not stimulated as much as they could be when they are doing something more stimulating. Boredom is relative. Instructional Technology often tries to cater to digital natives' needs by creating instruction that is in video games, or other digital media that they are used to. While these efforts are commendable, I wonder if they are somewhat misguided because ultimately school must help get the next generation ready to work in meaningful jobs.

I am not saying that all jobs are boring, but I am saying that most jobs now require workers to stick to a task that digital natives would consider boring. Life is full of "boring" things that have to be done. While video games teach problem solving skills and critical thinking, the very problems that are being solved are more often than not very different than real life tasks that students will do in the future. Do these problem solving and critical thinking skills learned in a very exciting environment actually transfer to "boring" or real-life tasks that people do in their job? I don't know, but I think that this is what we should be asking in digital games based learning. Perhaps instructional design efforts should be made to help people become creative enough to take care of their own boredom problems. Or maybe "paying-attention" skills need to be the focus of some instruction to digital natives.

Brett Shelton discusses using a commercial game for education in his book, The Design and Use of Simulation Computer Games in Education. He mentions that something called unintentional learning happens in these types of games, which is not useful from a design standpoint (2007, p. 108). I have not read any studies that prove that general skills learned from video games (like problem-solving and critical thinking) transfer to any real-world situation (perhaps you have). But I think the best efforts of digital game based learning teach specific skills that are relevant to real-life.

In an excellent article entitled Game-Based Learning: A Different Perspective, Karl Royle explains that games and education have been and are still largely mutually exclusive (2008). But Royle proposes a model of instruction that comes from the field of instructional technology that will allow for the blending of these, problem-based learning. Royle explains that problem-based learning in a video game would require the learner to complete a complex, real-world and authentic task by applying rote information found in the game (2008). In other words, learners would be able to learn and apply useful information to a unique real-world and relevant task.

This is the type of approach that I see being useful from an instructional design standpoint. It instructs and makes use of only relevant media. It has been proven that media does not influence learning through thousands of no significant difference studies. Therefore any irrelevant media added to instruction will not make any difference in real learning and can often be distracting. Many video games do this. In contrast, there have been many great efforts to create instructional games using relevant, real-world tasks and I think these are the only useful ones for education. After all, we are not here to entertain students.

References:

Royle, K. (2008). Game-Based Learning: A Different Perspective. Innovate, 4(4).

Shelton (2007). Designing Educational Games for Activity-Goal Alignment. In Shelton, B. E., & Wiley, D. A. (2007). The Design and Use of Simulation Computer Games in Education (p. 316). Sense Publishers.

Instructional Technology Blames Teachers

Instructional Technologists always give teachers a hard time. It seems like all the talk that I have heard lately about teaching practices has been negative toward the teacher who does the bad teaching practice. But bad teachers are too often an easy target and I think that they are only a small part of the reason for less-effective instruction in college campuses today.

In the many discussions that I had while completing my Master's degree in Instructional Technology, all bad teaching practices were attributed to the teacher who was doing them. It is really easy to blame the teacher, after all, they are the person who does the act, and as Master's students just getting into Instructional Technology, my classmates and I would look upon our limited past experience with college including our undergraduate classes. The most visible instructional component of these classes was our teachers.

But what if there were deeper roots to bad instruction than just the teachers themselves? After having taught and worked to create courses for higher education, I can say there are. I have never met a single teacher that would not like his/her students to learn something. This is no longer a question in teacher's minds. The real question is how to do this when teachers are put under the constraints that higher education imposes upon them.















"congratulations graduates, this diploma signifies that you have sat in your classroom seat for a certain amount of hours and have received arbitrarily fabricated grades from overworked and underpaid instructors. You are now ready to do something totally different than you learned in college ;)" (photo provided by Josh Thompson)

Instructional Technology has come up with some great ways to help students learn better, quicker, and in more depth, but few of these methods even consider the constraints that teachers in higher education are put under, fewer still help alleviate them. Many theories claim that they do when they really don't. I think that some of the most valuable work being done in Instructional Technology involves systemic change in public education.

A professor that I work with currently teaches several freshman classes full of ninety students each semester, is required to do research that requires extensive travel and time to write and submit manuscripts, and must serve on several committees for the university. He wakes up at about 4am each morning to get to work and usually stays there until 6pm. He then goes home to have dinner and then does reading and research for the rest of the night each day. This is typical here. I know of at least 3 other people whose schedules are similar. They do this work because they are required to by the university. This is a regular university workload.

The field of Instructional Technology generally defines behaviorist practice such as lecture and multiple choice tests as bad teaching and assessment practices. But these are the very same practices that help teachers be more efficient in their teaching. For instance, lectures can be the same every time allowing teachers to create it only once and then deliver it many times. Multiple choice tests in testing centers allow assessment of student's knowledge without having to involve the teacher.

Some Instructional Technologists sit there an wonder why more teachers are not doing more good instructional practices like peer interaction, group projects, authentic tasks, task-centered instruction and so on. Some become angry at teachers for their bad practices, but the reason is that they don't have time! All of those practices will ultimately take more of a busy teacher's time, and taking more time on teaching and less on research could put a college teacher's job in jeopardy. Imagine approaching the professor that I work with and telling him that he does not teach well, and he needs to change his curriculum to be more task-centered. You explain that this will take more time to do, but in the end students will learn more and enjoy the class better. Most professors would respond that they just don't have the time, and this answer is perfectly honest and acceptable. The time in one day cannot be increased even by a minute.

There is a lot that needs to change in colleges today, but I think that it needs to start not with teaching practices, but with the structures that are in place that do not allow teachers to engage in good teaching practices.