Start from enhancing sign-system

My proposed solution package

Critical pedagogy, and learners' perception of the affordances in LD tasks

When facing an phenomena,

• Experts activate a much bigger and complicated internal sign-machine net then JPFs and novices. 
• Pedagogy and practice can help one on the road of becoming an expert

What about facing an LD phenomena, can we help learners on the road of becoming experts with giving them the well-designed pedagogy and practice.

 

A robot that can help you design your own intelligence

Understanding HI will inform understanding of AI

Analogy: learn about medical-practice through a robot; learn about learning-design through a robot – a special robot that thinks and learns like a real person, if successfully help the robot learns, one can transfer the skills in help a real person learn

This learning-robot can be a character in a game-setting, or be a AR-mix-smart-museum-object

AI & HI

As I watch a reality show that presents some competition between (HI) humane intelligence and (AI) artificial intelligence

• I always try to make sense of the performance-task-analysis by the humane-person and by the robot 
• I care more that, even for same/similar tasks, how a human-person can better learn and practice it. 

It is becoming popular for kids to learn some programming skills of operating robots.

• How about the“programming skills”on their building the“codes in their own minds? “ (sign-machine-in-their-own-minds)? 
• Aren't these“programming-skills”equal to learning-design skills? 

Robots are machines, in the future, some persons might work as engineers in AI-related fields; maybe more persons are only the users of AI-products.

• But, every person will be a lifelong“engineer”to design and build sign-systems in their own minds. 
• So, should NOT learning about learning-design be more important and widespread than learning about coding-a-robot?

Tool for synthesizing theories of learning

I have tried to synthesize theories of learning for 10 years, since my master-thesis project.

• as I improve my understanding of current theories by re-reading books, and by re-interpreting theories in practice 
• as I borrow more analogies from other fields or to be informed by philosophy 
• as I can create some analogy-based physical features for concepts in these theories 
• I can see that it is becoming more feasible to synthesize these theories. 

I have tried many approaches and created some synthesized pieces along different dimensions.

I hope to design synthesize-tools to facilitate the effort of synthesizing, by individual, organization, and community.

Analogy tool

In my l0-years effort of trying to solve learning-design problems, I explicitly using many analogies.

Overtime, I have built an enriched database of analogies. I have figured out some data-structures of doing analogy-reasoning.

I have the intention of building an analogy-tool that can facilitate people’s use of analogies in solving problems.

All the above conditions ensure that I create some prototype-ideas for an analogy tool.

I hope that these functions can be integrated with some knowledge building tools and SNS community.

To design sign-machine: synthesized theories, analogies, physical model, info-map, dashboard

To design the sign-machine concept, I have made efforts in the following directions:

Direction 1: Various theories of learning are synthesized.

Direction 2: Analogies are borrowed from fields like engineer, architecture, horticulture, medical science, & movie industry etc.

Direction 3: Physical models of sign-machine and information-map of sign-machine-activity are designed : 

• To be used to illustrate concepts-of-learning in picture books, simulation, game, craft-project, museum objects etc.  
• To help learners build full-modes of concepts-of-learning, so that the concepts/theories are truly imaginable and understandable to learners.

Direction 4: Dashboard that embed rules/patterns of sign-machines are designed: 

• To be used to design LDPSS. 
• To be used to document data for adaptive learning, individualized learning, smart-teaching, smart-designing, and design-based research.

Using analogy-based concept 'sign-machine' to improve LD sign system

To design learning-design curriculum and LDPSS, one biggest obstacle is:

sign-system for LD fail to communicate theories effectively.  

A sign should have full m-mode (enactive-mode, iconic-mode, symbolic-mode)
But, some signs of learning-activity often miss iconic-mode root.

Educational psychology (or theories of learning) is the fundamental course for instructional design. It is difficult to illustrate concepts/rules about learning-activity in images.

Why?

Because we don't have the image of our internal thinking-&-memory activity
Current technology cannot help us locate and see how a sign-in-mind be formed and used. 

The production team of the movie Inside Out consulted from psychologists about the looks of memory, they got the answer: "we really don't know".

I propose to use sign-machine as a starting-point to build some analogy-based physical models for internal-thinking-activity.

Sign-machine is an analogy-based concept.

• A sign-machine is in a person's mind, can do tasks such as recognizing patterns, doing decisions, doing action etc. 
• According to educational semiotics theory, learning is a dynamic process of creating and interpreting sign/sign-system. 
• Sign-machine is a way to visualize how a sign-in-mind is formed, developed, used, modified and connected to other signs-in-mind.

Learn and use LD knowledge with the aid of LDPSS

Learners should be provided opportunities to apply the knowledge in their daily practice.

Analogy 1: learner as learning designer  = instructional designer

Ideally, instructional designers can conduct their ID practice with the aid of an IDPSS (instructional design performance system)

Analogy 2: learners conduct learning design with LDPSS = instructional designers conduct instructional design with the aid of IDPSS

A LDPSS (learning design performance support system) can be designed, With this tool,

• Learners can conduct systematic learning-design activity 
• Learners can plan, do, and review their learning-design activity, 
• If the curriculum of learning-design is embedded into the tool, learners can build learning-design sign-system through explicit teaching-&-tutoring

Learning-design should be an independent subject, embedded into other subjects

• For some knowledge that we learned in school, we might not use later; 
• However, one-type of knowledge that we use daily and life-long is knowledge-of-learning-design (or call it knowledge of how to learn) 

So the earlier, more explicitly, more systematically that we can learn about it, it is better

This subject should be taught in school, both as an independent subject, and embedded into other subjects

Spiral curriculum of learning-design should be developed, so that learners can develop their knowledge-of-learning-design as they grow up, and as they learn more and more about other subjects.

Building Learning-design expertise in lived practice

As lifelong learning-designers in a broad sense, how, when and where do we develop expertise of learning-design in the life-long practice?

Ideally, we systematically develop the sign-system of learning-design, and use the sign-system to interpret and guide our practice.

We have so many opportunities of practice (of learning, teaching, designing), we don't want to waste these opportunities of building-&-using our sign-systems.

We want to situate our knowledge of learning-design in these lived practice. We want to use and refine our knowledge in lived practice.

From lifelong learner to lifelong learning-designer

We are lifelong learners

• If learning is an occupation, there is expertise about learning 
• Learning how to learn is the process of acquiring the expertise of learning 

We play multiple roles

• In different communities/situations, we might play the role of teaching or designing 
• During one's learning, one might learn by teaching, learn by designing. 
• So, we are not only life-long learners, but also lifelong teachers and life-long designers 

learning-design is the shared part of these roles

• Learners, teachers, designers all solve problems in a similar fashion of learning-design, to solve problems by using rules-of-learning. 
• We are lifelong learning-designers