Learners and the Learning Environment Analysis

Objectives:

This unit assignment will serve as the foundational analysis for the major project of the course. Through the development of the Learners and Learning Environment Analysis paper, students will:

describe a specific imagined learning environment within an organization (school, business, college, etc.).
analyze the people that work within the imagined environment presented, including specific needs, learning styles, demographics, and dispositions that may impact how they learn and work.
analyze the nature of the organization, the role technology plays, and other environmental factors that may impact learning and working within this imagined space.
Provide convincing supporting evidence for rationales from the research literature in standard APA format.

Procedures

As you may know from watching the lectures, the goal of this course is to design a complete learning and working environment that takes into account the needs of all participating groups. You will construct this learning space design plan over the course of four units, beginning with this one, where you must first define what your learning environment does and who uses it - in other words, "set the stage" for the project. Too often in instructional design situations, the human aspect - the learners, their characteristics, and the things in their environment that affect them - is overlooked or downplayed, but it is crucially important to understand who your learners are and what contexts they will be learning within. It is important to never make too many assumptions about your learners when designing learning spaces and instructional solutions.

So, for this assignment you are asked to write an analysis of the learners and the learning environment that you will be planning and designing for this semester. You are provided with a paper template that you can use and build upon in each unit throughout the semester (see below); however, you may also feel free to revise this template and adapt it in whatever way you need in order to get your point across. Creativity is certainly encouraged! But, be sure to attempt to answer the following guiding questions in this first Unit 1 learning environment description section:

What kind of organization is this (business, school, etc.)? What is it called and where is it located?
What is/are the function(s) of this organization (i.e., teach K-6 grade children, sell or produce something, etc.)?
Who works in this environment (teachers, students, principals, professional salespeople, mechanics, draftsmen, designers, etc.)? What is the age range of the different groups of people in your organization? What is their socioeconomic, ethnic, and gender makeup? Almost every environment has more than one learning group within, so be sure to give each one equal attention.
What are the learners' preferred learning styles? For example, if you have many older learners, they may prefer to learn in a different manner than a college student or a young child. While it is impossible to just "guess" at what a learner's preferred style might be based on their characteristics, you can attempt to plan for a range of anticipated learning styles within a learning environment.
Based on their backgrounds, ages, national origin, culture, and other factors, what prior knowledge, skills, perspectives, and attitudes do the learners bring to the environment?
What are the learners' motivation and entry skill levels in regards to the work that they do and the organization in which they work and learn?
What are the values of the organization? In other words, some schools focus on making children into productive citizens while others focus on fostering intelligence and creative thinking in children - these are two different ways of approaching K-12 education. Likewise, a business may be wholly in it to make a profit and extend the influence of the company, while others may value individual employee efforts and believe that happy employees are productive ones.
What kinds of things do people need to learn here? Or, to put it another way, what kinds of training do the various groups of people receive in this place in order to accomplish the goals of the institution (i.e., children receive classroom education in order to move on high school and become more informed citizens; bank tellers receive professional development on learning how to use bank computer systems and stay up to date on their skills)?
How much physical access do the learners have to technology and/or other tools that are necessary for their functions?
How much time do learners have to devote to learning new skills, methods, techniques, etc.? In other words, a group of teachers may be required to attend many different workshops and trainings throughout the year; however, much of it is ineffectual and teachers tend to return to what they know best when they are not given time to practice the new skills they have acquired. The same is true of just about any type of learning group and organization.
What are the ways in which people would learn these essential skills/tasks? Would they learn primarily in classrooms? At home through distance learning? Some other way?
How does technology play a role in the learning that takes place here? What are the learners' attitudes and motivation toward the use of this technology?

From this description of the environment, the people there, and the learning activities that take place there, you will be able to determine what sorts of considerations you might have for people in your organization who are disabled (Module 2), write descriptions of what the learning space(s) in your organization look like and what's in them (Module 3), and what responsibilities the organization and the people within it have to each other to maintain ethical use of available technology (Module 4). By the time we reach the end of the semester you will have all the pieces you need to put together a final project that you will present before the class (see the Final Project assignment).

Click here to download to the EDCI 59100 Project Template (Word DOC)

Resources

Consult these resources for help and more information:

A series of interesting articles on the Digital Divide will be posted in BlackBoard; you can also read a few articles by a well-known digital divide scholar here: http://www.eszter.com/research/
A series of highly useful and interesting articles on learning styles, in particular the Felder-Silverman Index of Learning Styles model (try the index yourself and see how you score!): http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Learning_Styles.html
How People Learn, an online book by Bransford, Brown, & Cocking: http://www.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/
Purdue Calumet's Library with links to other journal and article databases: http://www.purduecal.edu/library
Marc Presnky's writings on digital immigrants and digital natives: http://www.marcpresnky.com/writing
The Digital Divide network: http://www.digitaldivide.net
A good summary of the Dick and Carey model for learner and context analysis: http://www.itma.vt.edu/modules/spring03/instrdes/lesson5.htm
The optional textbook, Van Dijk, J. A. G. M. (2005). The deepening divide: Inequality in the information society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Examples

BlackBoard Learn contains a sidebar folder with examples of final projects from previous semesters. All files are ZIP Archive downloads. Please note that projects and final presentations may have been conducted slightly differently in the past, and therefore details of how projects are put together or presentation slides are not always present.