Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 4 seconds

Messing About with Instructional Design, ADDIE & Bloom

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 4 seconds

Gosh I can’t believe the day has finally come to bash critically and creatively unpack the assumptions behind instructional design and reimagine how we would do it according to my/our anti-positivist values and beliefs as critical pedagogues. It’s #moocmooc Instructional Design or MMID and week 1 is about subversion and I annotated it via Hypothes.is here if you wanna join in.

So much of what Sean has been writing about this topic is reaching me deeply because the ideas are ones I have been grappling with for years. Since I started my PhD in 2006 and discovered critical pedagogy…then discovered critical research… Then actually started teaching and learned that pre-planned anything does NOT work. For me and my students, at least.

Where Sean mentions why he isn’t scaffolding this MOOC, he says:

any effort on my part to scaffold (and effort to scaffold learning at all) would be colonial, patriarchal, and disempowering.

Yes yes yes. And so are attempts to pre-define learning content and outcomes for learners of any kind. Gosh, I wake up one day thinking my 4 year old and I will paint then go to the park then…and no. She wants to do something else and as long as it’s not life-threatening, there is really no reason not to do it.

My teaching is similar. I will have some idea what I could do next class or the one after, but I adapt as much as I possibly can to what students want or need. Because I am not in the business of teaching obedience. Or conformity.

I like how Sean’s latest post questions neoliberal postindustrial approaches to education. He asks:

Are we willing or unwilling to believe that teaching and learning can be that intimate and immediate?

I want to give a resounding yes because that’s how I see it. But I also know it’s more complicated than that.

He asks more questions than he answers and I want to consider writing in that manner, too. Rather than making bold statements and rhetorical questions… Can our writing raise real and important questions for others to grapple with us?

One of the activities for week 1 is about subverting ADDIE and Bloom’s Taxonomy. I look forward to working on that. It also gave me an idea to try with my own students come April. That they create their own hack of Bloom’s… Based on learning they value and visualized in ways that make sense to them.

I  will be back

2 thoughts on “Messing About with Instructional Design, ADDIE & Bloom

  1. Not to be difficult, but your approach makes more sense in some disciplines & some courses than others. I do this in my upper level seminars but not in my intro courses. I can’t imagine Calculus being taught this way. Just saying.

    Still I’m looking forward to hearing about MOOCMOOC.

    1. I agree no approach works for all disciplines at all levels in all disciplines. I do this with freshmen and grad students but i never had go teach calculus. Outcomes remain problematic in all instances but how to negotiate them would differ. Problematic still because not all students start from the same place, do the course for same reason, or have same needs/interests in order to learn in any one way to all reach same outcomes. I do know science profs who teach in relatively non-traditional ways though.

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