Lyn Henderson

Instructional design of interactive multimedia : a cultural critique

Instructional design is socially and culturally constructed. The article explores the proposition that the selective traditions of instructional design consist of values, ideologies and images which act in the interests of particular cultural (class and gendered) groups. It examines this premise and argues for multiple cultural, rather than multicultural, contextualization of instructional design. It situates the multiple cultural model in an eclectic paradigm that appropriately combines elements from (a) behaviorist, constructivist, and critical theory paradigms and (b) weak and strong culturally contextualized design strategies. Cultural context is the very stuff, the scaffolding, of instructional design if users are to be positioned as active participants who are given and take responsibility in the learning-teaching paradigm.

The Remote Area Teacher Program (RATEP): Cultural contextualisation of distance education through interactive

The Remote Area Teacher Education Program (RATEP) is a successful and innovative distance education programme. Curriculum design demands the meaningful integration of traditional distance education materials and strategies with other electronic technology and interactive multimedi a computer courseware. RATEP is more than ‘two‐way schooling’ for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander distance education students studying in their home communities. Centred within Vygotskys theory of cognitive development, the interactive multimedia computer courseware is informed by the intersecting set of the various cultural contexts: academic culture embedded in Western culture; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures; and that of the computer. Illustrative examples from generalist and mathematics content and curriculum subjects demonstrate the effectiveness of culturally contextualising instructional computer‐student interface design in order to promote learning through interactive.

Making it possible : the evolution of RATEP - a community-based teacher education program for Indigenous peoples

Since 1990, the School of Education at James Cook University has produced and delivered a successful off-campus Bachelor of Education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in their home communities through the Remote Area Teacher Education Program (RATEP): A community-based teacher education program for Indigenous peoples. This paper examines five key areas. One is the intersystemic management structure that has majority represenation from Indigenous communities and peak education bodies as well as representaion from the other three stakeholders: Education Queensland, the School of Education at James Cook University and the Tropical North Queensland Institute of Technical and Further Education (TAFE). A second area is RATEPs innovative use of information and communication technologies in teaching and learning. A third theme is its dynamic evolution from (a) two dedicated RATEP sites in the Torres Strait to 12 sites throughout Queensland; (b) geographically remote sites to a combination of remote, rural, and urban sites; (c) a principle where sutdents gather at a dedicated site with its own teacher-coordinator to clusters where a number of students are living in different locations and the coordinator travels between these; (d) movement of sites from location to location depending on need and demand; and (e) a fixed program to a highly flexible one that allows multiple entry and exit points, including honours. A fourth area is the critical insights generated from research into the program by Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers. The final theme is the retention of graduates from RATEP within the classroom and their promotion into the administrative and advisory teaching sectors.

Comparison of students’ thinking processes when studying with WWW, IMM, and text based materials

This paper reports data obtained on the thinking of Bachelor of Education students as they interacted with World Wide Web (WWW) subject lecture material. The data were obtained from eight participating preservice teachers via stimulated recall interviews. The thinking (or mediating) processes engaged in during study sessions that related to the academic content of the WWW subject are detailed and discussed. The data are also compared with that obtained from an earlier comparative study of the thinking processes of two cohorts of inseryice and preservice teachers: one group interacted with a professional development interactive multimedia (IMM) courseware package and the other with text based materials.

Cognitive Engagement in Virtual Worlds Language Learning

This chapter adds to our understanding of learner engagement in terms of learner cognition while experiencing lessons in Second Life. The context of this research is in Higher Education second language acquisition. The methodology and implications are useful for others wanting to identify thinking processes students utilise during virtual world lessons. The stimulated recall methodology, centred within Information Processing Theory and a Mediating Process Paradigm, is described along with the screen capture technology utilised for the stimulated recall interviews. The data revealed that all students reported a variety of cognition, five particular forms were commonly reported as most frequent: affect, strategy planning, evaluating, metacognising, and justifying. This chapter explains this pattern, thereby beginning to unravel the complex relationship between learner cognition, instructional design and other triggers. A series of conclusions are made relating to instructional design to support learners’ cognitive engagement.