Switching gears suddenly. I decided/it was suggested to me to enter an article in an award competition. It would help if the article were complete, but what are deadlines for if not to push one to finally pulling everything together?

For anyone who has been glancing at this blog, this might seem like an abrupt departure from previous topics. However, I have been working on a small qualitative study examining the design practices of small, community museums. Instructional design models are formulaic and linear, however, real world design situations often do not lend themselves to such clean, rounded edges. Unfortunately this is resulting in a rather thorough reading on various instructional design models, all theoretical, and I don’t know why I am not as excited about it as other theoretical discussions such as communicative action theory. However, I do like the possibilities presented by suggesting that existing design models, with their focus on behavioral and cognitive objectives are not adequate to all design situations. For example, the objectives of many museum exhibits are attitudinal, in other words, the purpose of the exhibit is to change attitudes more than anything else. For example, a science museum might have an exhibit on the environment and the objective could be for people who view the exhibit to feel that saving the environment is important.

B. Wilson at Colorado has written one of the most thorough discussions of implementing constructivist thought into instructional design: http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~bwilson/construct.html .