Edited by Anna Greathead, Saturday, 15 Jun 2019, 14:47
An academic setting, with its fake contexts and imagined personas, can ask that a learning program be designed, or a learning tool be developed, in a specific order and way. In real life the the learning program must be fitted to an actual context with real people and programs are developed according to the capabilities of the available technology rather than developing technology to fit the ideal scenario.
I have experienced some frustration in this TMA03 process due to the very deliberate and linear way the activities have been set. Finding and describing the theoretical underpinnings of anything at all is something which hardly ever happens and when it does it is usually done retrospectively rather than at the start. While I understand that fitting the theory to the activity may seem backward it is the way most people operate most of the time.
I don't think this is usually a bad thing. Theory describes why and how things work but often our experiences and intuition enable us to make valid choices - which fit with theory - without us having to refer to theory beforehand.
I appreciate that the OU have tried to make the experience as realistic as possible by asking us to develop a context before developing a tool but the fact that we all know the end point makes this moot!
Chickens and Eggs
An academic setting, with its fake contexts and imagined personas, can ask that a learning program be designed, or a learning tool be developed, in a specific order and way. In real life the the learning program must be fitted to an actual context with real people and programs are developed according to the capabilities of the available technology rather than developing technology to fit the ideal scenario.
I have experienced some frustration in this TMA03 process due to the very deliberate and linear way the activities have been set. Finding and describing the theoretical underpinnings of anything at all is something which hardly ever happens and when it does it is usually done retrospectively rather than at the start. While I understand that fitting the theory to the activity may seem backward it is the way most people operate most of the time.
I don't think this is usually a bad thing. Theory describes why and how things work but often our experiences and intuition enable us to make valid choices - which fit with theory - without us having to refer to theory beforehand.