I have to admit that I was a little excited by this week's work with Guided Design (hereafter referred to as GD). Hear me correctly - there are fabulous qualities and appropriate venues for PSI and AT, but GD feels a little more... I don't know, racy? :)
At first glance, I love this theory. I love the group work, I love the stating of the problem and laying out the goals and strategies and the whole process of it. I also (in the middle of my love-fest) had one of those -- "Wow, it took research to prove something we kinda already 'knew'..." -- moments. Of course (in general) people work better together than separately or apart. Of course the GD process is an effective process. I appreciated in the Wilson article the first table showing the different interpretations/iterations of the process (analysis or decision making). I say of course it's an effective process - because if you look at the first step of all of the models in the Wilson piece - the first step is some variation on "define the problem." Seems that, most of the time, folks can spin and spin and spin and not get anywhere because they haven't done an effective job defining the problem. Once the problem has truly been adequately defined... most of the hard work is done.
Instruction wise - from my own experience as a student - wow! How many group projects have I been in that have used GD! I mean really, at least once or twice in each one of my undergraduate courses. And (from the Wilson article again) I've done that survivor-ish group problem before in a psychology course I believe. My group did not survive. ;)
I think that this is a fairly useful method of instruction - for some types of learning and learners. There's a note in the Trivette piece... the 5th point about GD creating the space to "individualize to the learner's style" - and I think here's where it broke down for me in practice (me as a student, here). The professors that used this method (knowingly or not) did not take into consideration how I learn best! Interestingly enough... the next sentence after the individualized instruction is "The goal of guided design is not to get the correct answer, but to know the process by which on gathers information, processes information, and arrives at an acceptable solution." Doesn't this then counter Wilson's experiment... with the survivors and the "one right way" to ensure survival?? (I love, by the way, that the survival game is the basis on this research - tongue in cheek.) Just a pondering...
I'm intrigued and puzzled a bit as I consider whether or not GD would work well in today's 2.0 environment. Feeling myself out... if I was in a group and given a problem (literally a problem, not just a normal old group assignment) - I'd want to roll up my sleeves and get face to face in a room with my group and have at it! Don't know if I could get that same feeling or feel as effective in a chat room. Hm.
But all the same, I could see being in a small group and using some form of video-conferencing (like iChat on the Mac where I can video chat with up to 3 other people) and being able to meet "virtually" in that way. There's always Elluminate that could be used... you could also use some form of document creation software (online) like GoogleDocs where every member of the group could work on defining the problem, making a plan, solutions, evaluating - synchronously. You could also do it on a wiki I guess - I'd just want to be careful that group members didn't accidently overwrite each others' work. (By the way, does anyone know if PBWiki and Wikispaces have figured out a fix for that? Other than warning you... I've been away from wikis for a few months now...)
The only article I've not mentioned is the Casada & DeShazer article. Hm. I think there methods show that GD works quite nicely in the classroom - when done well and explained enough, as they note. Am going to have to turn to my peers now to see what they've got to say on this theory...
Until next week!
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Hey Matthew! I loved reading this blog from you because you seem so passionate about the GD studies. When I was reading the articles, I was more or less "eh" towards them. Thinking about the work we have done in groups for our class so far, I have liked working together at first because it helps me gain an understanding of assignments, but after that I really do prefer to work alone. I think that is because I want to be in control all the time! :) I suppose that is the point behind the GD learning system...to help people like me learn to work with others and be dependent and open to other's ideas and experiences.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about working in today's 2.0 environment. Our group has been meeting on Elluminate, which has been great, but there are days when I would like to meet face to face and "have at it" as you say. When in the chat room...there are those silences where I wonder what the other people are thinking or doing.
Glad to see you were so interested in this piece. Once again, a benefit of working together.
Elizabeth C
I liked the concept posed in the Cassada article and agree I think it works well face to face (for the most part). On the web thoughts, I was pondering as I read the article, of a way to incorporate a hybrid sort of use. A resource with more visiting lecturers, etc. Now I do believe there would be a law of diminishing returns with use of more and more guest lecturers however perhaps these speakers could elaborate or extend what was done in the classroom in some way...
ReplyDeleteInteresting to think about...
Mike Swinson
Matthew, I agree that the first step of the guided design process is often overlooked. For example, politicians (and educators and the general public, too) are concerned about the "problem" of low test scores. But low scores are actually a symptom of problems. If politicians don't understand the actual problems, then how can they create effective educational policies? Maybe politicians should be required to take a class in guided design.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see you thinking in terms of tools that might allow Guided Design to function over the Web. Does Google Wave offer anything more than Elluminate? File shares?
ReplyDelete