Instructional Design – Page 3 – Cogitate and Percolate

Instructional Design Interview Nightmares

Photo of communal office space with desks and chairs with a windowed room further into the background.

I was walked to a windowed room that had a view out to the gently rolling green treed slopes of the campus. The ivy on the brick buildings was dying down in the November chill. Three panelists sat opposite me, with their backs to the view and the interview began.

I was interviewing for an educational technologist-type position at an Ivy League university. Even though I had a relative that worked there, our last names were different and I had done the application and interview prep entirely on my own. I didn’t want to get this position through any nepotism.

As per usual in the course of human events, you can prepare for one set of circumstances (standing on my own, separate from my relative in the hiring process) and then you experience another set of circumstances.

Sidebar: I remember when I took care of a cohort of student teachers-to-be and one of them was in Tennessee (READ BIBLE BELT) and was a youth pastor becoming a Biology teacher. He shared with our cohort group that he was frightened about teaching evolution to kids that he was simultaneously counseling as a youth pastor. Then the first day of student teaching arrived.

It went OK, according to the student teacher.

But it was what happened at the end of the day that threw him.

The football coach came to his classroom after all the kids had left. The coach put his arm around the student teacher and said to him that he ‘would pass every one of the football players in his classes’.

We all sat stunned for a moment and then started sputtering “That’s not right!” and “He can’t do that!” and “That’s intimidation!”

The student teacher immediately reported the conversation to HIS teacher lead and we were informed that the situation was “taken care of.”

Whew. We laughed. We prepared for an evolution-creation debate and instead received football intimidation. See the detail of Tennessee meant something.

It’s classic that a teacher prepares for a big lesson. And then something breaks.

Surviving events like this is what makes you a good teacher. Experience. Not lessons.

XR Accessibility & Instructional Design

The topic has come up again. I guess I should start being happy that it’s coming up again and…

The Salem Witches of ID OR Cancel culture has arrived in Instructional Design

Photograph of Salem-like harvest table with autumn colors

Photo by Erica Marsland Huynh on Unsplash

What do the Salem witch trials and woke cancel culture have in common?

Both established rogue thoughts as truth.

I’m sorry to report that over the past few months, cancel culture has arrived in Instructional Design.

Personally, I’ve seen “Andragogy” and “Brain-Based Learning” attacked and discarded on public LinkedIn posts, threads, and some blog posts. I’ll be collecting them here below as I find them. However, if there get to be too many (and already collecting these was depressing and exhausting. In one case there were 30 replies and that was not even to me!) I’ll stop collecting.

It is as if a newer ID hears of brain-based learning, says to
themselves “huh, where else is learning supposed to happen?” and then
calls brain-based learning stupid because of the name.

I’ve
tried to point out that what’s happening is that less educated
Instructional Designers are approaching these concepts as words only or
with very little in-depth research and are tossing out the concept
entirely.

In
the case of Andragogy, I tried defending it. It’s an established
section of education with a depth of history of more than 50 years (in
popular Education studies, longer in lexicon). Attacking it, to me, is
the equivalent of attacking Black History. Why would you do this? It
makes no sense. The arguments against andragogy always seem to equate little children with adults.

For example:

According to andragogy, adults want to know why.
My child asks why.
When doing so, my child behaves as an adult.
My child is not an adult.
Therefore, andragogy does not exist.

Rinse & repeat with a lot of cognitive elements (my child can do this, my child can do that…) Always exceptions. Piaget gets dragged into this (he does below). Perhaps then begin the “Well, if one part of false, then all parts are false” arguments…which themselves are logical fallacies. Duh.

It’s tough out there. Note in this first example, the author is the post is ALSO the author of the article hosting place called The Learning Scientists— which is a point that I make; that the OP is putting on a aura of authority that is, perhaps, inappropriately authoritative to the audience. Said another way, readers might not understand that the writing, all inclusive here, was opinion.