The document discusses the importance of instructional design principles grounded in cognitive science and learning theory. It emphasizes applying the backward design model to define learning objectives and assessments. Instructional designers can help faculty ensure substantive interactions and appropriate use of educational technologies in course design. The organizational structure housing instructional designers impacts access to resources and decision-makers.

1. Cognition, Learning Theory, Backward Design:
The Importance of Instructional Design
Jim Monaghan, Ed.D.
Assistant Vice President, Associate Professor
California State University, San Bernardino

2. Takeaways
• Overview of cognitive science that applies to
the instructional design process
• Importance of instructional designers to the
development of high quality courses that use
educational technology
• Importance of organizational structure in
facilitating instructional design for learning

3. Topics
• Fundamental principles in cognitive science,
learning theories and backward design.
• Implications for the design of courses which
range from technology-enhanced to technology-
centric (e.g. fully online courses and MOOC’s)
• Applications of instructional design in strategic
planning for learning environments as well as
practical considerations for implementation of
strategies
• Advantages and disadvantages of a variety of
organizational reporting structures

4. “We have a lousy product”
–Sebastian Thrun, Founder of Udacity, as
quoted in Fast Company magazine

5. MOOC’s
• data point that was rarely mentioned in the breathless
accounts about the power of new forms of free online
education:
– shockingly low number of students who actually finish the
classes…fewer than 10%.
– for every 100 pupils who enrolled in a free course,
something like five actually learned the topic.
• "We were on the front pages of newspapers and
magazines, and at the same time, I was realizing, we
don't educate people as others wished, or as I wished.
We have a lousy product…It was a painful moment."
– From http://www.fastcompany.com/3021473/udacity-
sebastian-thrun-uphill-climb accessed 12/2/13

6. It’s about design, not technology

7. Design considerations
• Why would a video of a lecture, viewed on the
Internet, be efficacious?
• What do we lose when we record a lecture?
• How do we allow for substantive student-
student, faculty-student and student-faculty
interactions?

8. What can technology allow us to do
that we couldn’t do otherwise?

9. Backward design
• “Start with the end in mind. ” Quote from:
– Stephen R. Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective
People
– Could also be a quote from Jay McTighe & Grant
Wiggins, authors of Understanding by Design

10. Key Elements of Instructional Design
• What do you really want your students to
know and be able to do?
• Learning objectives
• How will you know that students have met the
objectives?
• Assessment
• “Substantive interactions”
• Learning activities
– What technologies are appropriate?
– How are learners supported?
• Other considerations?

11. Learning Theories: How “substantive
interactions” are understood
• Behaviorism, Programmed instruction
– B.F. Skinner
– Drill and practice
• Constructivism, Constructionism
– Jean Piaget, Bärbel Inhelder, Seymour Papert
– Discovery
– See The Growth of Logical Thinking by Inhelder and Piaget
• http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-
8295.1960.tb00727.x/abstract
– See Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas
(1980) by Papert

12. Learning Theories (continued)
• Social constructivism
– Lev Vygotsky
– Zone of proximal development
• What can the student do with the influence of a coach, mentor,
more experienced peers?
• Situated cognition
– Jean Lave & Etienne Wenger
– Cognitive apprenticeship
– Legitimate peripheral participation
• See http://infed.org/mobi/jean-lave-etienne-wenger-and-
communities-of-practice/
• See also Brown, Collins and Duguid (1989) Situated Cognition and
the Culture of Learning, Educational Researcher, 18, 32-42.

13. Cognitive science applied to design of
learning spaces

14. Designing Learning: Cognitive Science
Principles for the Innovative Organization
(Penuel & Roschelle, 1999)
• Learning takes place within communities of practice
• Novices learn to become experts through practice in
solving a variety of problems in a domain
• Becoming an expert means applying learning to new
contexts.
• Prior knowledge mediates learning
• Learning is enhanced when thinking is made visible by
collaboration and reflection among learners
– From Designing Learning: Cognitive Science Principles For The Innovative
Organization by Bill Penuel & Jeremy Roschelle
– http://cilt.concord.org/resources/DesigningLearning.PDF (accessed 12/2/13)

15. What is the role of
instructional designers?

16. Instructional designers will ask faculty the
following questions:
• What do you really want your students to know
and be able to do?
• Learning objectives
• How will you know that students have met the
objectives?
• Assessment
• How will you ensure “Substantive interactions”
• Learning activities
– What technologies are appropriate?
– How are learners supported?
• Are there other considerations?

17. CSUSB online learning modules
template
1. Reading (student -> content)
2. Short lecture / multimedia (professor ->
student)
3. Discussion (student <-> student <->
professor)
4. Student research (student <-> content)
5. Assessment (professor -> student)

18. Where are
instructional designers housed?

19. Organizational answers to the question:
“Where are instructional designers housed?”
• Academic Affairs
– Pros/cons
• Information Technology
– Pros/cons
• Extended Education
– Pros/cons
• Outsourced
– Pros/cons

20. Organizational structure
considerations
• Access to infrastructure
– E.g Learning Management System, support software
• Access to decision makers
– Deans, Chairs, Faculty
• Responsiveness
• Agility
• Strategic or operational focus
– supplementing traditional instruction or
– Implementing new paradigms (e.g. online programs,
transformative courses)

21. Topics
• Fundamental principles in cognitive science,
learning theories and backward design.
• Implications for the design of courses which
range from technology-enhanced to technology-
centric (e.g. fully online courses and MOOC’s)
• Applications of instructional design in strategic
planning for learning environments as well as
practical considerations for implementation of
strategies
• Advantages and disadvantages of a variety of
organizational reporting structures

22. Takeaways
• Overview of cognitive science that applies to
the instructional design process
• Importance of instructional designers to the
development of high quality courses that use
educational technology
• Importance of organizational structure in
facilitating instructional design for learning

23. Let’s keep the discussion going…
• Contact information for Jim Monaghan:
– For the rest of 2013
• AVP, Academic Technologies and Distributed Learning
• California State University, San Bernardino
– Beginning in 2014
• Provost
• John Paul the Great Catholic University
– Email: jimmonaghan@yahoo.com
– Twitter: jimm62 #detche13