This is the moment when I wish I had a little more contact with “instructional design” so that I could bring some of the old-school approaches into the combination.
One thing is for sure, linear pedagogies fail every time. There are too many options for too many different scenarios, for instance, a “Software Development” major that teaches how to program in C# but covers nothing else (which is a direct example from the real world).
So how do we create non-linear content without confusing the learner about their path?
I know a map would help, but I do not want to create a system where a graphic is required to find your place in the learning progression. That leaves outlines as the primary method, but outlines get too deeply nested to easily, unless you break them up in to learning subroutines, and have the one call the others.
The more I ponder how the Boy Scouts managed to organize so much content in such a meaningful and traceable way, the more I realize that I need to group content into the equivalent of merit badges, then combine several merit badges (with options for one or another in some places) along with some general additional requirements, into an equivalent of “ranks” (but without that word, for sure).
I started down the badges path earlier and left it for the CYOA/MUDL idea, which I do still like. Perhaps I could combine the two: a MUDL “room” that matches the scope of a single merit badge, perhaps even with an actual digital badge once you get past it. This combines the “gamification” ideas and gives the sense of overcoming a challenge along with the mental badge reward, which I have to admit, I have come to crave every day while doing my physical workouts to stay healthy. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the charts I made while training for marathons and triathlons did the same thing.
This leaves me with the task of organizing content into “rooms” with linear requirements and often picking between a few options and designing the graphic badges for each room.
Determining the scope of the room has always been the hard part. The Scouts have list of requirements that are never longer than three outline indentation levels. Rather than increasing the scope and nesting they provide additional Badges as needed (ex: Citizenship in the Community, Nation, World). They do a good job of making sure each has a unique name rather than I, II, III.
I’ll also have to come up with the ranks as well, which I did once upon a time already for SKILSTAK.
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#pedagogy #edtech #writing