上海高校教育技术学专业研究生学术交流会

『e-learning大讲堂』第8期文字整理稿

『e-learning大讲堂』第8期文字整理稿

　　整理：上海外国语大学教育技术系　张　翅　　硕士研究生
　　审校：北京师范大学教育技术系　　刘美凤　　博士

刘美凤：各位同学各位老师大家早上好，我是北京师范大学的刘美凤，我受e-learning 大讲堂的委托，作为我们这期学术研讨的主持人，希望你们都能听到我。我们今天非常荣幸邀请到了我们教育技术界非常有影响的一个人物——Dr. Merrill，待会儿他会自己简单介绍一下自己，我现在简单地介绍一下他。Dr. Merrill他有很丰富的工作经验，他曾经在公司工作，也曾经在大学工作，现在仍然在大学工作。他曾经创建过课件公司，微型教学公司和教育技术公司，他都是创始人，也是负责人，后来这些公司有的仍然在做相应业务。那么同时他也在杨百翰大学创建了教学科学系，曾经任主任，创建了教学研究开发与评价部，他也做负责人，在Utah州立大学的时候，我们大家都非常清楚，他是教学设计第二代研究小组的一个领导人。那么现在他在夏威夷的杨百翰大学教学技术拓展中心任教授。Dr. Merrill是非常多产的教育心理学家，他也是教育技术专家。他有十多本著作，六十多篇文章，并且引用率也非常的高。他还有十八个计算机的产品，还有五个专家系统的原型。这都是他很丰厚的的贡献。他在理论方面的贡献，我想大家也比较清楚：像成分显示理论，像精细加工理论，还有教学处理理论，都是他独特的贡献。现在我就把时间转给Dr. Merrill。

Dr. Merrill: Thank you very much. I appreciate that nice introduction. I didn’t understand a word of it but it must be wonderful. Thank you very much. I am happy to greet all of you, I hope that you can understand and hear what I am about to say. I’m at present working at the Brigham Young University, Hawaii, in Hawaii

刘美凤：OK， Dr. Merrill非常高兴在这里跟大家聊天、谈话。他现在的工作单位是在夏威夷的杨百翰大学，他是在做一个教育技术和拓展中心的教授。

Dr. Merrill: Thank you. My assignment here is in the center for the instructional technology Outreach. The purpose of the center is to develop distance education or members of US, Asia and Pacific Islands.

刘美凤：那么他现在工作的这个中心呢，是叫教育技术与拓展中心，他主要的一个工作就是负责远程教育，这个远程教育的对象可能是亚洲和亚太地区的人群。

Dr. Merrill：and it’s a very exciting assignment for me to have the opportunity to be here to work not only in China, Pacific island but also Japan, Korea, and Mongolia. We have projects in most of these places. The purpose of our projects is for three different audiences: one, we are trying to find to help prepare students to come to be in BYU, Hawaii especially in English and also in other skills; second, we are trying to provide a technology of assistance to students who graduate form BYU, Hawaii and third we eventually want to provide education from BYU to students who may not be able to come here.

刘美凤：他这个整个项目不但涉及到中国，还有朝鲜，我估计他说的是南朝鲜。还有蒙古。它有三个方面的内容。第一个方面，要把学生招到夏威夷的杨百翰大学，一个方面是学习英语，可能也有其它方面技巧的学习。第二个方面就是为它的大学里出来的毕业生提供一些技术支持。第三个方面，是为不能来杨百翰大学读书的人提供远程教育。

Dr. Merrill: Thank you. During the past several years, I have been very interested in trying to determine what principles are common among many different theories of instructional design. So I spent reading and studying many different theories and researches that involve in to see if we could find the common set of principles that everybody would agree to.

刘美凤：在几年之前他非常感兴趣的就是，在很多教学设计理论和模型里面它们共同的基本的一些原则和原理，所以他就开始作了很多的研究和阅读，然后试图发现这些理论背后的，大家都比较同意的一些基本原理。

Dr. Merrill：On the first light, I hope all of you can see if you pull down the whiteboard. I indicated five words that I think summarize these principles. Back in 1950s, a man named George Miller, who study memory said most of us can remember 7 pieces of information maximal at one time, since most people only remember 5, so I thought maybe 5 principles were plenty.

刘美凤：经过他的研究，在幻灯片上你可以看到有五个很重要的关键词。上个世纪五十年代，Miller 所作的一些关于记忆的研究，说，我们最多一次能够记忆7个组块，大多数人只能记忆5个左右，所以他想5个原理就足够了。

Dr. Merrill：This first chart summarizes what we found and they’re characterized by the words ”Problem”, and with problem in the center, activation, demonstration, application and integration, these four words around the outside diagram represent a circle of instruction that is every course has activation event, some demonstration, some application and integration, read this by instruction is more effective, I will read them in English because I know you’ll translate can make sense.

刘美凤：我们看到的第一个幻灯片里面有五个词，第一个是“基于问题的”，第二个是“激活”，激活以前的知识，第三个是“演示”，第四个是“应用”，第五个是“整合”，应用到现实生活中去。这五个关键词中外围的四个词“激活”“演示”“应用”和“整合”代表整个教学的循环。也就是说在整个教学活动中，这些活动都是要不断循环进行的。下面这个方面的五个小点启示就是他所说的教学的基本原理。第一个就是你要以现实世界中的问题或任务为中心来进行教学，第二个就是要激活学习者相应的知识和技能，第三个是演示将要学习的任务或技能，第四个是你有机会应用获得的这些技能，第五个是能够把学会的技能整合到你的实际生活中去。

Dr. Merrill：I put up on the whiteboard my website, you can find more information about these principles on the website as well as some papers that describe them, I also sent earlier copies of papers I think may be distributed to some of you, I don’t know if everyone has got them but in any way you can find more information on my website.

刘美凤：他把他的网址提供给大家了，然后他说他以前一些文章也都给大家了，我们在E-learning大讲堂也看到他那些文章了，在那些文章里头你可能会发现更多基本教学原理的一些描述，你可以得到更多的信息。OK, Dr. Merrill, I think they have got all of the materials.

Dr. Merrill：Great! That’s wonderful. I have in the next slide the flow chart I’d like to walk through it .That is about how do we recognize a program or a piece of instruction to be affective when we see it. This is on the principles we are talking about.

刘美凤：他下一个ppt是关于一个图表。他就要用这个图表来说明我们怎么鉴别出来一个教学是有效的，如何鉴别是建立他对教学基本原理的认识之上。

Dr. Merrill: We will talk about in a minute is effective instruction. They try to put a whole problem first and then in that whole problem teach the component or the pieces of information that the students need. So on the left hand of this chart it is the whole passage somebody is trying to learn and on the right hand of this chart we are talking about components, skills or the pieces of information.

刘美凤：他说有效的教学应该是基于问题的或是以问题为中心的。那你怎么基于问题的呢？你要从开始的时候把问题整个地呈现给学习者，然后我们再去讨论，选择问题的组成部分，所以在这个图表的左边就是要显示整个的问题和任务，右面就是怎样学习构成整个问题和任务组成部分的技巧。

Dr. Merrill：Let me first talk about the left side for a minute. Even if there is a piece of instruction in a whole task, that is many, at least in our country, maybe different from China and from things I am looking at. Much instruction really teaches the components that is we teaches as series of commands or we teach series of sub ideas, that is not the main idea. we should be able to figure out what is the whole task and what is the whole problem, what the students should be able to do at the end of the instruction. So the first box says” let me try to describe what the whole task is” so we can then determine if we turn on the instruction in the context where the whole task is. That’s the very first box.

刘美凤：他说在美国，也许中国不是这样，大多数的教学开始我们教学生不是整个的任务，我们是教一系列指令或小的思想等等，而不是主要的思想，无论你是教什么，我们应该搞清楚整个的任务或整个的问题是什么。学生在教学结束时能够做什么。呈现给学生这些指令和思想在大任务里是什么状况。所以Dr. Merrill讲我们在教一些很细节的东西的时候要把它放到整个任务里面。所以在左边一开始的地方就要描述整个任务。

Dr. Merrill：The next box here talks about showing the task. I know in our country and also in China we often show the students the least objectives, in fact I think they become some of instruction that is called students objectives. However, a lot of people find that these objectives are not easy to understand before you’ve learned the material, so sometimes presenting students objectives really don’t help them. It is much better probably to show the students the whole problem or whole task will be solved or what they will be able to do, so we recommend that we show the students what should do or in what way problem is going to be solved.

刘美凤：他说其实在美国在中国喜欢刚开始的时候就给学生呈现学习目标，这个教学目标对大家来讲并不是特别有帮助，应为这些教学目标一开始可能会比较难理解。他建议我们先让学生看看到底是解决什么问题的，什么样的问题你要完成，什么样的问题你要解决，这样的话对学生理解我将来要干什么，学习要做什么会很有帮助。

Dr. Merrill：The next box is about the “activation” principles we talk about. Too often, when we teach students we don’t help them remember what they have already learned and we fail to remind what they’re already known. Elementary teachers, primary teachers are very good at this, but when students get older, we forget that it has to be taught what we have already known. So the very first step is to try to help students remember what they have already learned or called reminding those things they already learn, so they can connect new learning to what they have already learned. One of the problems we have in this area is calling to mind things. There is a program. The whole theme of the program was medieval times so it shows castles which activates the wrong mental model and then it ‘s hard for the students to see how the material related to the old material and the relationship. So sometimes it is in a tempt to make things motivational. A program called learning the map under the sea, in which has little mermaids, unfortunately when students watched all the films, they don’t remember what they learned about the map, so be careful to active the right things and the things are relevant to what the students are going to learn

刘美凤：第三个方块是关于激活。经常的情况是，可能我们在许多教学当中并没有帮助学生记忆他们学习的东西，我们也没有提醒他们已经学过的东西。小学教师可能比较擅长这个。但是当学生长大了，学生就会忘记学过的东西。所以第一步就是帮助学生记忆他们已经学会的东西，或提醒他们已经知道的东西。激活就是我们呈现出任务之后要激活学生原有的跟这个任务有关的知识，这样的话，就可以将新知识存放到他原有的结构中去，有助于帮助他的记忆。这里面有一个问题，就是我们会激活不对的东西，比如说我们激活认知模式的时候激活的是错的，他举了一个例子，他说有一个电影，学习海底地图，学生看完整个电影，但是这个地图是什么他没有记住。这个激活就是错误的了。（没有听懂他的例子）

Dr. Merrill：finally, in the introduction part, the next step is to show the students how to do the task, in this case, we will show them how to do the whole task and then we will come back later and teach the part. Now in some courses, where there isn’t a whole problem, after we describe the problem, we can see they haven’t talked about the whole task. But in an example I am going to show you in a minute, we actually try to teach the whole task in a program. Now what I want to do is a program we created to teach English for Chinese middle-school students. This project was cooperated with Chinese ministration of education and US outreach education, it was designed to be an online course to teach Chinese students English. The course is dealing with the development and has already been used in China. But I don’t want to illustrate because we tried to use somebody’s principles when we were doing the course. This flow chart shows the very pieces of this course. Basically, the theme of this course is trying to put the students in a real emergent environment where with they hearing a lot of English, and try to learn English in a context of real environment. We tried to do that online so it needs a virtual environment.

刘美凤：第四个方块是演示任务，这里他希望把整个的任务，而不是任务的一部分，来向学生演示。大家在演示任务的时候往往就转到了右边的图里面，就是演示任务的一部分了，这个是不对的。下面他会谈例子。这个例子是针对中国的中学生，这个例子中国的教育部与美国教育拓展部门合作的一个项目，通过在线课程，中学生学习英语，让他们进入一个真实的环境中去，这个环境都是英语的环境，然后通过这个环境来听英语并试图通过这个真实的环境学习英语。我们试图通过在线实现它，需要一个虚拟的环境。待会儿他会讲这个例子，这个例子可能在下面的成果部分，这是下面的一个图。

Dr. Merrill：so these four charts actually show all steps of the courses. The very first thing we did was to try to show the students a story, a real situation, in this case, the student is a visitor to the United States, and staying with an American family. And in staying with that family, we are trying to show them something what might happen to them in that family. So the first slide I am showing you here is a student you will see people in the story actually talked to the student how sad it was. In this case, Loy, the little boy in the family is sad because they have lost their dog, we have no streaming audio here to play this for you, but in this case, what happen is they really just carry on the conversation, they give the student the English name Chris, He says, “You are sad” “Yes, I lost my dog” .Dad says,”Have you looked everywhere?” Loy says,”Yes, I have looked at the yard, the bathroom, under the rug, in the doghouse. And I can’t find it anywhere.” So this conversation goes on for maybe 4 or 5 minutes in English. Now the students may not understand many of the English words, but the idea is the English conversation in a real world setting.

刘美凤：大家看这个教中国中学生英语的表，刚才说了这是一个在线课程，他就要给学生看一个故事，就是我们的一个学生去访问一个美国的家庭，在那里发生了一些事情，然后跟这个学生去对话，就和发生在真实情景中一样。就是这个家庭中有一个小男孩，他们一起吃早饭，这个小男孩丢了一个小狗，看上去很难受，中国学生问他为什么难过，小男孩就说，“是啊，我的狗丢了。”然后爸爸会问他，“你到处都找过了吗？”“是啊，我找过我的房间，院子里面，狗的房子里边都找了，但是没有找到。”然后的对话花了大约四五分钟，学生就好像在真实的情景中经历这种事一样，通过谈话他可能不是很理解许多的英文词。但是这个对话发生在一个真实的问题情形当中的故事。

Dr. Merrill：Now in this situation, the students, especially on the very first stage or in the middle of the course, but even then it is likely they will not get the meaning of all the English words. The opportunity is if they speak too fast. You can play the story with the speech slow down so the people speak very slowly, so the students can listen to many times and listen to a slow version.

刘美凤：学生，特别是刚开始或者可能都是中间的课程了，即使这样，我们的好多学生可能还是不能掌握所有的单词，所以他这个项目里就可以不断地重放，可以放慢速度，每个词都说得很慢。这样，让学生有更多的机会去练习、学习。

Dr. Merrill：If we go back to our chats here about the affective instruction, we can see here we try to show the whole task, in this case, it is in the conversation. We try to use the activation because this is about something we are familiar with because Chinese students have a different background from American students, but at least, they are familiar with breakfast, familiar with family, pet dog may be not so common in China, but nevertheless, we try to make it familiar to them, and they may not involve in the conversation in this part and merely listening to it. We hope they can understand what we expect them is to speak English at the end of this course.

刘美凤：OK, Dr. Merrill, I have a question. In the first conversation, the student didn’t involve in the conversation with the little boy?

Dr. Merrill：In the first conversation, they are merely observers; they are listening to the conversation. It’s going among the family. Later we will ask them to respond to this point.

刘美凤：刚才那个对话我没有翻译对。刚才我们说的中国学生其实就是在听他们的对话，他并没有参与到对话中去。回到刚才讲的如何来鉴别一个好的教学中，他说这个故事就是我们整个的教学任务，看的时候可以激活他的一些原有经验，比如说学生都很熟悉家庭，都很熟悉大家吃早饭，可能对宠物也是比较习惯的。这样这些都是他很熟悉的环境，在这里面，虽然他对一些单词不是很熟悉，但对这些场景都是非常熟悉的，这样就激活了他原有的和要学习的对话有关的一些知识，促进学习。他可以刚开始并不介入对话，只是去观察去听，后面我们可能就会让他参与到对话里面去。

Dr. Merrill：So this is only one story the students getting involved in and 36 such episodes are in this course and this is only one, so there are a lot of other story episodes of the same kind of model. The next thing happens is the student now has the opportunity to learn some reading, so now they can read the whole story by clicking on the picture of one of the member of the family, “I can’t find it anywhere” they can click on it and light the words as they are red. They can actually go through the whole story in this way and have the story read to them.
So we give them the opportunity to listen and also to read the words.

刘美凤：他说还有类似的36个故事，都是按照这种模式去开发的。刚才说的是听。现在就要他读了。读的时候，他可以不断点击屏幕上说话的家庭成员，就会把要重复读的话加重，他就开始整个对话一句一句慢慢地去读。

Dr. Merrill：This is the beginning of teaching the components, obviously one of the component skills here in this particular episode is reading as well as the things involve in the talk and other things. The vocabularies concentrated on this particular story are color words, size words and location words. You will talk about the color of the dog, the color of the rug, the color of the doghouse, also the location, in the yard, out of the house, etc. And also you will describe its size, large, small. So one of the component skills is vocabulary, another skill is the grammar and another component skill is of course reading.

刘美凤：接下来就要对整个任务的组成部分进行教学了。首先组成任务的技巧就是词汇，这里面有关于狗的颜色的词汇和地点位置的词汇，比如说在房子外面，院子里边。还有大小的词汇等等。第二个组成任务的技巧是关于涉及到英语中语法的部分，第三个就是阅读。这样就从一个大的任务进入到这个任务的组成部分的教学里面去了。

Dr. Merrill：other things we try to help the students are to understand the story better. One of the other things happened here is the explore script when the students move their mouse over the various objects in the picture, the objects are highlighted and the words pop up in English, so in this case, students can learn the words ”milk” “egg” ”window” and so forth. Actually they can look at the different scenes in the story and explore the scenes to learn the vocabulary involved.

刘美凤：下一个步骤就是让学生自己去探索。在屏幕上，它可以去点各种的物品，比如说，好多物品点了之后可能是“牛奶”“鸡蛋”“窗户”，每个物品出来可能都有场景，学生根据这些场景，可以学到许多不同的词汇，然后会重复阅读。这样就是另外一个学习的方式。

Dr. Merrill：Let me now go back and let’s look at the charts. What we need to teach the component skills. For each the skill we want to teach in this lesson now, we want to go through the same circle of activation, demonstration, application and integration.

刘美凤：下面他仍然看前面的这个图，我们有五个关键的词，“激活”“演示”“应用”……我们要看这个图片。

Dr. Merrill：Now let’s go to some practice sides. We demonstrate this story to some detail, now at the end of this little episode, mother says to the student “Maybe you can help us find the dog. Dear, let’s make a poster, let’s send some e-mails, let’s make some phone calls to the dog town and then let’s go to look for the dog.” So the next exercises get the students involved in the activity is making a poster. Once they connect to a computer, she says” Ok, find a picture of the dog.” So now she has the student click through some pictures. We already know from the story that the lost dog is a large, brown dog. and so she says” Is this a large dog?” then the student has to respond to each of the pictures.

刘美凤：下面是关于实践的环节。这个妈妈就说了，我们可不可以想想办法来找这个狗，有几种途径，我们可以做张贴画来找这个狗，第二个是利用e-mail, 第三个我们可以打一些电话给有关部门来帮助寻找这狗。然后就邀请学生加入，说你能不能来帮助我们做这件事情？第一个事情就是要做一个张贴画，那我们做张贴画的时候肯定要找狗的照片，这个狗是大的吗？是小的吗？不是特别清楚。既然这个真狗丢了，我们是不是有真狗照片啊？Ok, I will ask him. Dr. Merrill, the first thing we should do is to make a poster, right? So if we have the real dog, we have the picture of that dog, so right now you want to look for that picture?

Dr. Merrill：No, they are looking for pictures that they may have in their computer files. It is a picture like the dog they lost. And the practice here is for the students to recognize the size words, large, small, and color words, brown, white and red，etc.

刘美凤：这个实践就是他要在计算机里找到一个跟他丢的狗相像的图片。这样，在找的过程中学习词汇，比如说是大的狗，小的狗，褐色的狗，还是什么样的狗。这样就学习了颜色的词

Dr. Merrill：After they have found the picture of the dog, the mother says”Oh, I delete the file so we will have to start again.” And now they have the student to go through and find the picture of the dog, and she says” find a picture of a large, brown dog.” and then the student goes through and help her find the picture of the dog. and they color the poster, so the mother says” OK, let’s color the grass green” and they have on the right side pen colors and she says” let’s pain the sky blue” and she says” I need you to help me paint the picture now.” And the student has to do it, to color the grass green he clicks on the green pen, to color the sky blue, he click on the blue pen. So we try to teach them the vocabulary of size and color.

刘美凤：这个妈妈在找图片的过程中，他们跟着一起找。妈妈可能会说“我把文件弄丢了。”要重新再找，找的过程中走了这样一个过程，比如说要找大的狗，褐色的狗，做了一些这样的工作。然后她说，“我们这个张贴画要给它涂上颜色。草地就涂上绿色，天空就涂上蓝色。等等。”在这个过程中，学生涂绿色就会点绿色这种颜色，这样就会学到一些词汇。

Dr. Merrill：You probably notice that we try to do this course with little translation possible. So we try to give the students the language necessary but not just translating from Chinese. In this exercise the students mostly listen and recognize objects of what they have heard. So the mother says “Find a large dog” then the student finds the large dog. Or” Pain the grass green,” the student then recognize the color green.

刘美凤：在整个过程当中，他们一开始主要是听，后来就要鉴别一些和做张贴画有关的词汇，比如说找到大的狗的图片，他就可以去找，比如说让他把草地涂绿，他就去找这个绿色。这样就通过从听来转换成能做和能鉴别，然后不断地去学习。我们尽可能给学生提供必要的语言而不是从中文翻译成英文。

Dr. Merrill：The other exercises are somewhat similar to this. In this exercise we are trying to simulate writing. It is very hard on the computer or on the internet to simulate writing. But in this exercise, the sister says” Let’s send the e-mail. Let’s say our large, brown dog is lost.” So she will say that sentence and the words she says highlighted down here below in yellow, and then she drag the words up to form the sentence to form an e-mail, and then after she has formed the e-mail in a sentence or two, she says “OK, let’s send another e-mail and you form the sentence”, so now she will say something about the dog or it’s been lost, and then the students will have to drag the right words in the right in order to form the sentences. In this case, we are trying to give the students to listen and to recognize not only the different words and also word order and writing.

刘美凤：刚才是说鉴别，下面是说写作。刚开始是写一个e-mail, 就是说一个狗丢了，就是“large， brown dog”就是要点击这些词，拖到合适的位置，形成一句话。然后这个e-mail发出去了，要再发一个e-mail, 这时候就要学生写了。他也要找对相应的词，而且有相应的顺序，这样我们就不单单训练了他们的读啊，还有鉴别啊，等等，写作也可以练习。

刘曾：Excuse me, sorry to interrupt you. For this program, is there any maximum number of the students for the instruction?

Dr. Merrill: This program was designed to be an online course on the Internet so there is no limit of the students. They can use this program at any moment of the time. It is hoped to provide some practice for the students independent of live teacher and help them to gain some of the English skills they need on the Internet.

刘曾：But there are some teachers needed to give the instruction？

Dr. Merrill: Not necessarily. Although we suspect that, you know, before a student is really professional in English, they would need to not only have a teacher but also opportunities to communicate, anyway this is meant to be kind of something that the students do alone on the computer. They gain the skills they may need in English. They are meant to stand alone.

刘曾：刚才有个同学在问，这个项目一次最多可以面对多少个学生，每次做这个项目需要多少教师。Dr. Merrill的回答就是说，这个项目主要是远程教育，它是应用在因特网上的，所以它从设计原理上来说没有人数限制，而且做的时候不一定非要有教师指导的，学生可以在自己的电脑上根据电脑上的指导一步步自己来做这个课程。但是说如果有老师的指导，对学生帮助也会很大。

Dr. Merrill：one of the other skills we want the students to learn is speaking. Actually we give some practice in speaking. This particular course has speech recognition software, so the students could actually speak and the computer could recognize when they speak the right thing. So in this particular exercise, father says” let’s call the dog town.” he explains the town is a place where a lost animal is taken to when it is found, and then he suggests they dial the number and then on the green part of the phone here, it prints out the words he is hoped to say so he has the student to make the phone call. So he says”our dog is lost” and the father says “you say that.” And the student will say “Our dog is lost.” And the speech recognition system will recognize if the student has said that correctly. If not, they will have to repeat it or it will play it back so the student can hear what is said. Then later in the conversation, the students have to read the sentence.

刘美凤：Dr. Merrill, pardon, what is the dog town please?

Dr. Merrill：The dog town is the place where they take the lost animals, In the United States, every city has a place for animals wandering in the streets and animal control officer will take it to the dog town and hopefully people would come and find their dogs there or they don’t ever come, they will sell the dogs to other people.

刘美凤：刚才我们说了让学生写，下面就是训练学生说的技能了。这个课有一个语言鉴别软件，学生可以确实地说，计算机会鉴别他是否说得正确。在这个特定的练习里，爸爸就说，“让我们给狗的招领处打电话”。在美国，每个城市都有一个收留流浪的动物的地方，人们可以到这里找到他们丢失的宠物，如果他们不来找，负责的人就可以把宠物卖给别的人。第三个找到狗的途径就是打电话给狗的招领处。爸爸建议打电话，在计算机上就去绿色的电话机那里，那里印出爸爸需要学生打电话时说的话。学生可以说“我们的狗丢了！”学生说的时候，它有一个语音鉴别的系统看学生说的是不是对，如果说的不对的话，它就要学生重复，它可以回放，学生可以听到他说的。这样学生就可以不断去练习自己说。

Dr. Merrill：finally there is another exercise where the family says” OK, we’ve made a poster, we’ve made a phone call, we ‘ve sent an e-mail” and the students had a chance to practice listening, practice speaking, practice sort of writing, and the family says” OK, now we are going to see if we can find the dog, but we want you to practice some of the sentences you might have to say and be able to listen and respond. ” And now the practice is in complete conversation before we put the students in an open conversation mold. the father will say” What color is your dog?” then the student has to quickly say “My dog is brown.”, and that is the right answer. So in this case we are trying to give them to practice one sentence a time of the conversation they will carry on in the real world. Actually each of the family members ask the question and the answers change, and it’s probably change to different scripts so there will be a lot of conversational practice here for the students.

刘美凤：最后，还有另外一个练习，家长就说了，好吧，我们也发了e-mail,我们也打了电话，。我们也做了张贴画，学生有机会练习听、说、读和写。那让我们看看我们能不能找到这条狗。但是，我们想让你练习一下你需要说的话或者你可能听到的或需要回答的话。现在就是把学生放到开放性对话中的一个全面的练习。比如爸爸会说，这个狗的颜色是什么？学生很快说，我的狗是褐色的。这样在整个问题的情景当中练习所有对话，每一个家庭成员都问问题，答案不断变化，可以改变为不同的脚本，这样就有很多对话练习给学生。

Dr. Merrill：We now show each of the skills we try to demonstrate and apply it. But now we want to go back and have the students to do the whole task. We have heard the conversation in the family; we’ve gone through all the conversation that related to the lost dog now we want the students to practice in the real world. To go to the real world, then the students go to the community and try to find the dog. They can click on the house, they can click on people and the people will talk to them “Is that your dog?” the student will say” Yes, it’s our dog.” or “Yes, that’s our dog.” or “our dog is lost.” And talk about something significant to recognize the dog, and it’s flexible about what the students can say. Then they will say “I saw the dog in that lady in the blue house in her flowers.” Then the students have to go to the next, they go to the blue house and talk to the lady there. And the lady would say” Yes, but now it has gone away. I think it’s in the park.” So by talking to people, students are given clues to where be the dog. Eventually, the student ends up in the park, by talking to people, he eventually find the dog in the bushes in the park. But to do so, they have to carry on 13 different conversations with people altogether.

刘美凤：刚才我们把整个所有的技巧都教给学生了，下面就要让学生真正地去应用这些技能。应用这些技能它实际上也是虚拟实现的。他就走到真实世界去找他这条狗，到一个社区里面去敲别人的房门告诉人家“我的狗丢了。”然后人家问：“这是你的狗吗？”他就要相应地去对话，对话可以很灵活。他举个例子就是他找到一个人描述狗的特征，这个人就说，“我看见你的狗到蓝房子里的女士家里去了。”然后学生到蓝房子哪里和女士去谈话，女士就会告诉他，“狗确实来过，它在我们的花园里边，我把它赶走了，现在它在公园里边。”学生又找到了一条线索，就到公园里去，又遇见好多不同的人去谈话，最后他在公园里找到了这条狗。但是，为了寻找狗，他进行了13个不同的对话。

Dr. Merrill：I hope you can see we try to use the principles we talk about, we try to put the whole task in the real world problem, the real conversation in the real setting, we try to activate former knowledge by using familiar situation and the experiences they’ve probably already know in their own language. In each case, we try to demonstrate, first of all, the whole task and then we will try to demonstrate the skills and we give the students opportunities to practice each skill, and then practice the whole task. Integration means the students may carry on the conversation in the real world in their own life. Let me just conclude by showing you this diagram upon the development. It seems to me I’m sure some of you study in Instructional Design so you are familiar with the ADDIE model of analysis, design, develop, implement and evaluate

刘美凤：他说他希望我们已经看到他试图使用他讲的原理了，他们试图在真实的问题环境中呈现整个任务，在真实的环境中的真实对话。他们试图通过利用熟悉的情景和学生在他们自己的语言中有的经验激活学生先前的知识。在每种情况下，我们都试图演示或示范整个任务，之后是单个的技能，给学生机会练习每一个技能 ，最后是整个任务。整合是指学生可以在自己生活的真实世界中进行对话。他会给我们看这个开发的图表，之后结束。你们当中有学习教学设计的，所以你们一定熟悉ADDIE模式，即分析、设计、开发、实施和评价。
下面他要讲讲这个蓝色幻灯片上的内容。

Dr. Merrill: Let’s try to go down and conclude here with this diagram. When you’re designing and developing a lesson based on theses principles, we think you’d rather use the analysis, design, develop, implement and evaluate model. It perhaps you should try first to find the problem. So we suggest first you find a real world problem and describe it in detail, then you try to find a sequence of problems. In our case, the real world problem was trying to put the students in an environment he might encounter during a visit in the United States and trying to put them in real world setting with the real world conversation. Then we want the whole series, the whole progression of such problems. And so in this case, we have 36 such problems.

刘美凤：让我们继续，并以这个图来结束。当我们根据这些原理设计并开发我们的课程的时候，我们认为我们要使用分析、设计、开发、实施和评价模式，我们首要的任务就是要找到问题。我们建议，首先要找到真实世界当中的问题并且详细地描述它。然后我们要找到问题的顺序。在他讲到的例子里，真实世界中的问题就是把学生放到他在美国可能遇到的环境当中，把学生放到真实的环境中，进行真实的对话。之后，我们找到整个的系列，这个问题的不断进展。在他的项目里面有36个这样的问题。

Dr. Merrill: The next thing was after you had the problem identified; it’s to analyze the problem to see what skills are involved in each of the problems, so we can identify and teach each of those skills. In this case, of course, the skill of listening, the skill of speaking and the skill of reading, as well as the content of vocabulary and grammar they needed to learn. So then we need to teach each of those skills, outside the context of the whole problem. The strategies then in previous flowchart by this very task by are activating, demonstrating applying and integrating the skills. And finally we figure out how to put it online and that was the designing it was all about. In our case, we designed it in E-learning situation and there was finally a introduction of that to the developer for online. So this is a kind of a Pebble-in-the-Pond Model and a kind of our content first approach.

刘美凤：我们第一个是鉴别问题，第二个是鉴别问题的顺序，就是问题是怎么发展的。第三个就是鉴别好问题之后，你要分析完成这个任务，解决这个问题到底需要哪些各个部分的技能技巧。鉴别出来你才能决定我要教学生哪些技能技巧来完成这样的任务。在他的例子里，就是听、说、读、写的技能以及词汇和语法需要学习。第四个是要制定一个策略，这个策略也就是我们先前讲的要激活学习者跟这个任务有关的先前的知识技能。然后就是演示这个任务，然后让学生去应用这些技巧，然后让他们整合到实际生活中去解决这个问题。在这个策略制定完了之后我们要设计。因为他那个项目是在线的，就要开始在线的设计，这是交给开发人员的我们整个在线产品设计的介绍。是一种“池塘中的鹅卵石”模式。

Dr. Merrill: That concludes pretty much what I want to say, but let me now drag it here so you can see it. At BYU Hawaii next June, there will be 9th annual global Chinese conference on computers in education, this is previously held in Chinese locations. We would love to invite any of you who will be able to join us to this conference to come. You can see our website there or you might want to look and give information on the conference. So we’d like to invite you to BYU Hawaii next summer and have a visit to us.

刘美凤：这就是我今天想说的东西。下面他就说在明年的夏天在夏威夷他那个大学主办召开全球华人的计算机教育会议，他欢迎大家到夏威夷参加这个会议。
Dr. Merrill: If you look at the website, it’s also in Chinese by the way, so you can give information if your English is not perfect. The second thing I would like to do is at BYU Hawaii, we have a development group who develops courses for Asia and for the Pacific islands, if any of you as students would like to have an opportunity to come and work with us for a period of time, we would be very interested in that. And I’d like you to send me an e-mail message and indicate that. I will just put my e-mail address and you can see that.

刘美凤：他说在这个全球华人会的网址上还有中文，大家想看详细的信息可以到那个网址上去看。第二件事情就是他在夏威夷杨百翰大学里面有一个课程开发小组，是为亚太地区的人开发一些课程，那么就给大家一个机会了，如果在座的听的学生如果愿意到夏威夷和他们工作一段时间，你可以给他发e-mail,我觉得这是个好机会，你们可以去试一试。Dr. Merrill会把他的e-mail放到这里。Dr. Merrill, so you want to put your e-mail address on the whiteboard, but I think we’ve had your e-mail address already.

Dr. Merrill: I will welcome e-mails from any of you and at this point of time, I will be happy to answer questions.

刘美凤：大家可以写邮件给他。大家现在可以问Dr. Merrill 问题了。

刘曾：The first question is that for the session of activating the task. There are 2 situations that are about activating task. The first is that the learners are familiar with the task sometimes to some extent but the other one is that the new knowledge is totally foreign to the learners. So in this situation, what should I do?

Dr. Merrill: In the situation where the information is completely new, then you need to provide the experience that would help students. For example, when I taught a class on E-learning, I ask the students”How many of you have learned the course online?” Only two of the hands up of the 30 students, so my first assignment was to get on the Internet, find a class or two online and go through it because I want them to have some experience we can refer to during the class. So if the students have not the experience you can activate, then you have to provide experience for them.

刘曾：刚才我问他的问题是说在激活原有知识环节，如果说学习者对这个新知识是完全不了解的应该怎么办？他的意见是如果他们完全不了解的话，我们的任务就是向他们提供一些相关的经验。比如说他做过一个E-learning的课程，在30个学生中他问大家有没有E-learning的经验。其中只有两个人举手说知道这样的经验。在这种情况下，他第一步就是让学生去上网，在网上找到一个相关的课程，然后去报名，去学习体验一下。这样，如果大家都对新的知识完全不了解的话，我们应该来提供相关经验，而不是置之不问，这是我们自己的任务让它来提供相关的经验。刘老师，很多人都很关心这个2004年AECT的会议，我是不是可以问一下它中心的议题和最新的动向？Dr. Merrill，we are very curious that did you attend the AECD meeting this year

Dr. Merrill: Yes, I did.

刘曾：So we want to know the topic of the meeting seminar and what’s new about it.

Dr. Merrill: Well, it’s kind of hard to answer because it’s about 200 sessions and I only went to one or two. One of the sessions I was in we talked about the role of learning sciences in relationship with instructional design so I suspected the emphasis on the learning sciences is probably one of the new things so this is one of the new emphases we tried to stress we talked to each other more across this. I am sure there are many other new things but I am not sure it’s easy to pinpoint.

刘曾：我刚才问的是大家比较关心的2004年AECT会议的议题和方向，那么他说这次会议上有200多个议题，他只参加了其中的一到两个，其中那一个是学习科学和教育技术之间的关系以及这种关系中学习科学所扮演的一个角色和作用。这个是和印第安纳大学的一个研究中心的课题是有关的。接下来刘老师会和他进行一下对话。

刘美凤：So， Dr. Merrill，Dr. Bonk in Indian University came to visit us several days ago, so I saw the program of learning science but I’ve heard before something like the department related to learning maybe combining to a new department something like learning science. I heard about it maybe an instructional system technology department and also instruction and curriculum department move together into learning science department. But right now I am thinking there is a new department of learning science, right?

Dr. Merrill: Yes, at the end of this, yes.

刘美凤：So I’m wondering what’s the main task of the learning science program?

Dr. Merrill: The latest issue of educational technology has a whole series of articles comparing instructional design with learning sciences. So I will refer to that. Let me just answer it in a sentence or two. I think learning sciences are primarily concerning how learning occurs in real world settings; they are more interested in theories of learning rather than in how to design instruction, where I think instructional design is more concern with producing instructional works, quality, and materials for students to learn from, so I think there is a little difference in emphases. The learning science group primarily is out of the instructional approach, so it is limited in that way, but I think it has great potential for integrating a lot of things.

刘美凤：我最早听说“learning science”是说好几个系要合到一起成立这么一个系，我想像我们的教学与课程系，教育技术系，我们所研究的工作都是为了如何促进学生的学习。他们可能要这样去结合，我最早听说的是印第安纳这个教学系统系可能就会和这个系合并起来成为一个“learning science”。现在的结果不是这样的。教学和课程系和教学技术系仍然是存在的，然后又独立出学习科学的这么一个系。现在它在网上招收学生，我们中国学生如果想读博士，也可以到那个系去做。Dr. Merrill的意思就是说它和教学设计的关系。教学设计仍然是要设计有效的教学。学习科学更关心学习在我们真实的场景是怎么发生的。如果这样讲的话，那就和学习心理学区别不是那么大了。那么他说现在他们关心的可能更多的是建构主义的学习观。学习心理学在整个教育中的应用可能更多是描述性的。So, right now you are thinking learning science is more descriptive than prescriptive, right?

Dr. Merrill: Yes, exactly.

刘美凤：刚才我问他,按照他的理解，learning science可能更多是一种描述性的，而不是规定性的。所谓描述性的，还是要找到一些描述规律的那种，就是学习到底是怎么发生的。但是我从网上看到他们的program里边，上次来北师大的Dr. Bonk 还有另外一些专家，他们在做的是教育技术的研究，所以可能还有一些不是特别描述性的东西，可能是和我们教育技术有一定重合的东西。但是我觉得这个趋势并没有问题。因为学科分化之后、学科间融合也是将来的一个趋势。

Dr. Merrill: There is one question I’d like to respond to, a confuciust whoever he is, said “Isn’t first principles just the same things we’ve already seen?” And someone may say there are no special new ideas for the first principles in instruction. So Let me suggest that this is true, there are no new ideas there but I what I tried to do is to summarize what I found in most of the theories that everybody would agree to. And in fact, one point I found in Johann Herbart，who is often indicated the father scientific theology， had a similar set of principles that’s about 150 years ago. So I’m sure there’s nothing new here but it’s amazing to me how many pieces of instruction do not follow these principles even though there’s nothing new

刘美凤：刚才有个学生说他的基本教学原理不是什么新的东西。那么他说，是的，这不是什么新的东西。那么在150年前，我们的教育学之父赫尔巴特，就已经提到有关教学的一些基本原理。然而让他感到惊讶的是，虽然这个教学原理不是什么新的东西，我们的许多教学并没有按照这个原理去做。我看到Dr. Merrill的基本原理，我觉得他是一个比较有心的人，他试图找到在我们整个各个教学模式当中大家都共同遵循的是什么。如果我们照着这个做，可能提高教学效果的机会就比较大。

刘曾：Here is another question. Just now you were talking about the demonstration of the tasks, the examples you showed is about language learning, so is this kind of problem-based or task-based learning instruction mold suitable for other learning, , this kind of things which have more theories?

Dr. Merrill: The answer to this question is absolutely yes. I did especially in the area where there are more theories because there is where we need application even more. We apply this in a number of courses, we have developed courses in computer application, we develop this in counseling areas, for example, we develop course in job counseling for work service in Utah., these courses are based around these principles, so I think these principles is to almost all areas because when we learn something, we take a course, so we study something, we almost always try to solve some problems or performing some task otherwise why are we learning it? You know, that’s what we want to pursue. So I think every learning course, every lesson is aim to teaching some skill, some task, or to solving some problem.

刘曾：我问的问题是：刚才他举的例子是关于语言学习的，那么许多同学就很关心如果学科变了，不是关于语言学习的，由一些更深层的，比如说关于理论方面内容的话，是不是适合使用基于任务的教学这种方式。他回答说，他觉得答案是肯定是适合的。而且他们现在也在拓展这个方面的应用。并且已经应用到一些其他的领域，比如说在Utah州大学的一个工作委员会，就是类似于我们的就业办公室这样一个组织里，他们用计算机辅助教育的方式开发了一个领导力的课程。他认为这个对各个学科都是适合的，为什么呢？他认为当我们学习一个新的课程的时候，我们肯定是要解决一些问题，如果没有问题存在的话，我们为什么要学呢？既然有问题存在，我们解决这些问题肯定是需要一些非常关键的核心的能力和一些要解决的核心的任务。那这样，既然说要解决任务，解决问题的话，我们就可以用这种基于任务或是基于问题的教学方式。

Dr. Merrill: Another question was how to evaluating students learning. So let me respond to that. It seems to me that if you have a theory of progression of problems, and in the early problems, you are demonstrating the problem, you are teaching the students, helping them solving the problem and eventually allow the students to solve similar problems on their own, the real of the evaluation is the ability to solve those problems. I don’t think we have to add a formal multiple choice, true or false test in order to test someone if we have them actually to do the task. So in answer the question how do we evaluate, it seems to me that we have the students to resolve a real world problem or complete a real world task on their own. That’s become the evaluation following the learning, so in our demonstration, if a student can carry on a conversation on his own, and we try to simulate to looking for the dog, that would be evaluation. So obviously in our online course, there is only one little exercise in the 36 conversation. If we have 36 such conversations the students are able to perform them well, we would hope that they would learn the skills we try to teach.

刘曾：刚才他对这样一个问题做出回应：就是在刚才他举的例子当中有没有一个特别的评估学生表现的系统？他的回答是，如果我们要解决一个问题，那么肯定需要一系列问题序列或是说解决这个问题需要一系列动作技能，那我们现在的策略是在教学的时候就给他提供一个模拟真实环境的问题。检验学生的真正的标准是，他是否具有在真实世界环境中独立解决真正问题的能力。他认为没有必要再去设计一些多项选择题和对错题来检验这样的技能。检验的方式就是给他提供一个类似的真实环境中的问题，看学生是否有独立的能力去解决这个问题。如果能独立完成的话，就说明已经达到了教学的目标。刚才他举的那个例子中寻找一只丢失的小狗，和这个也差不多，他希望在教学结束之后，大家能够在真实的环境中，能够完成这样一系列的工作。

Dr. Merrill: There is another question asking what’s the meaning of the relevant media in our paper on first principles. Let me refer you to a book by Roof Clark and Richard Mayer called”E-learning and the science of instructional technology ”. That book maybe you can find in Amazon or somewhere. In that book they discuss the description of relevant media and the authors of this book are Roof Clark and Richard Mayer. In that book, Mayer did a whole lot of studies on media and there are some very interesting things there. One of the interesting things he learned is that if you have pictures that are just for decoration and don’t really carry instructional load, they actually distract from learning rather than helping learning. He also found if you have background sounds, music in the background that isn’t relevant to the learning itself, it actually distract from learning. He has 10 such principles, there is probably more than we can go into here, but I highly recommend you read that book,”E-learning and the science of instructional technology”, Roof Clark and Richard Mayer. Richard Mayer also has a little book called “Multiple Media Learning” which covers the same principles. All of the books are available on Amazon or other online book stores.

刘曾：刚才他回答了一个同学的问题，在首要教学原理中提到了相关的媒体，那他就想问一下什么是相关的媒体。这里，他向我们推荐了一本书，叫”E-learning and the science of instructional technology ”,是Roof Clark和Richard Mayer合写的。在“亚马逊”网站上可以找到这本书，也可以去购买。Richard Mayer在这本书里提到媒体一定是要和教学相关的，如果是不相关的媒体，反而会分散学习者的注意力。比如说你提供一些和教学不相关的背景音乐的话，一般来说对学习者的学习是有害的，因为会分散学习者的注意力，所以大家一定要注意选择和教学相关的媒体。

Dr. Merrill: There is one another question someone typed in, says they has a model for college course. I am not familiar with that. But they say will you please say something about your principles for college courses. I think the first principles we talk about apply very well for college courses as well as in other courses, again I think that if you want the students to be motivated we need to learn in a context of real world tasks or real world problems. I illustrate today of course for teaching English and primarily in those young students. The course we develop for counselors was designed for the adults and the course on Excel was currently developed for adults Well, this is the college course and it’s currently been taught at the university and we‘re developing using this model. So I think this model applies very much to all instruction. Many of us, I don’t know in China, but I suspect so, many of us heard that “you won’t understand this now, but later it will be really meaningful to you”. Rather than helping in understand the kind of problems which will be able to solve in the end of the course. I think if we want the students to be motivated, we need to teach them in the context of real world problems. There is another note that saying that it’s very difficult to put everything in the real world problem, this is true. It’s difficult. But if we do, the motivation of our students will dramatically increase.

刘曾：刚才有同学问，像刚才那种教学模式，它是否适合用于大学课程的设计。他的回答是肯定的，当然是可以使用的。刚才我们举的例子是关于英语学习的，它适用于年纪比较小的学生。但是对于刚才提到的他们设计的Utah 州的领导力的课程就是一个大学课程。他认为运用这个课程设计的关键是要把课程设计与真实世界的环境和任务联系起来。他承认真实世界的确是非常复杂的，如何把它联系起来也是非常困难的，但是如果我们努力做到的话，学生的学习动机就会大大地增强。

Dr. Merrill: There is one more question. If a student cannot use the knowledge of what they have learned in Situation A, in Situation B, can we say Situation A is invalid? I think the answer to this is not necessarily even for similar situations but we can surely say the Situation A is not adequate to teach all the skills they need in Situation B. Therefore the instruction probably needs to be improved. We have a lot of questions I hope you can find some experiences to certain extent here from me. The Hawaii word for “Thank you” is “Mehallo”, so I will say “Mehallo” to all of you. Thank you very much for your invitation and it was a pleasure being with you.

刘曾：刚才有个同学提问：如果说在环境A当中学到的知识拿到环境B当中就不能应用了，那是不是说在环境A 当中学习到的知识就是无效的？他的回答是不一定，但我们可以肯定地说环境A中学到的知识不足以用来解决环境B中的问题，我们只能这么说。然后他就用夏威夷话来谢谢大家，非常感谢能和大家一起度过一段这么愉快的时光。谢谢大家。

朱广艳：你好，我想提一个问题，刘曾你能帮我翻译一下吗？我想知道Merrill教授刚才举的那个找小狗的例子，学生学习的周期有多长？是学习这一个小故事呢？还是36个故事一起学完？他整个课程是如何实施的？

刘曾：就说整个program，整个项目的周期，是吧？

朱广艳：比如说一个孩子到他那去学习，是学习一段时间，比如说学习一周呢就可以把这个问题解决，还是要通过36个小故事系统地学习？我就是觉得好像有一个情境的东西不太了解，知道这一件事，但不知道在他们那里是怎么做的不太清楚，Dr. Merrill可不可以介绍得多一点？

刘曾：我还是不太了解，因为他刚才介绍的是举了一个例子，不像我们学课程一样，36个故事可能是整个一个系统，他举的只是其中的一个例子。那你学习完成了这其中一个例子的话，肯定不是完成整个的课程，只是完成其中的像一节课一样。我觉得是这种意思。

朱广艳：我想问一下那边孩子学习的周期是怎么样的？比如说学这个找狗的小的课程他用了多少时间？

刘曾：Hello，Dr. Merrill？Somebody is asking that for the example you’ve just shown to us, “looking for the missing dog”. How long does it take for a person to study just this story?

Dr. Merrill: I don’t know the exact time for that. It depends on how much English the student may already have. Because the student can repeat the story as many time as they want, the actual story itself one time through is probably about maybe 10 minutes long, but in the whole lesson, if the students go through that story several times, read the story or go through all the exercises, and also in this courses are games, glossary and other things I didn’t show you. The lesson I show you will probably take up to several hours for student to study and hopefully they would be interested in games and other things that they might be encouraged to rehearse and practice even more so they gain the language more efficiently.

刘曾：So for each independent story, a person would be encouraged to spend about several hours to just study one story, yes?

Dr. Merrill: Yes, yes.

刘曾：So for the whole project, there are 36 stories. So what is the estimated time for learners to finish all the programs?

Dr. Merrill: It will probably take about 2 hours minimum for each of those lessons, so probably 70 hours’ instruction but we expect most students will spend more time on that when they go through the story several times. If you hurry quickly, you can go through the program in an hour but you wouldn’t learn as much and of course, like all independent learning, it require students to be somewhat disciplined to stay up with the task, that’s one of the challenges of independent learning.

刘曾：刚才那个同学提出的问题，他回答说如果像刚才那个小故事只是学习一课的话，它这个故事，在线的教育大概只是10分钟，但是除了这个故事每一课它会有词汇表，相关的小游戏等等，尤其是这个故事你是可以不断地在线听的，如果是听一遍。大概就是10分钟，一般一个学生学一课的时间要花上好几个小时。如果完成整个项目的话，一共是由36个小故事，也就是36课，通常来说学一个课程要两个小时的话，估计一下时间就是70个小时左右会完成整个的课程。如果你是走马观花草草地过一下的话，一个小时就可以把整个项目看完。但是这样的话，肯定是学习的效果非常的不好。所以他们通常鼓励学生多花些时间在上面做些练习而不仅仅是看些故事。

刘美凤：Dr. Merrill, there’s another question about all of the courses that means, you mean only part of the course will be designed according to the problem-centered design model or the whole courses should be designed according to the problem-centered design model? If you design all the courses according to your model, there will be a lot of work to do, and some of the knowledge may be very difficult to design according to your model.

Dr. Merrill: Well, obviously in a perfect world we could do a lot of things, of course many many courses are not designed according to this model. My argument goes something like this we think these are principles that make courses effective. To an extent, it is the course that follows these principles whether it is designed according to our model or not. For instance, a course is probably problem-centered, task-centered, to extent that demonstration, application, activation and integration tend to be effective. So our argument is that we collect data, demonstrate this might be true, that all courses no matter how they were designed incorporate some aspects of these principles, many courses have demonstration, application and are more effective than the courses those do not. Fewer courses are problem-centered, but those courses that are problem-centered turned to be more effective than those do not. Even fewer courses have activation, integration activities, but those that do are more effective than those do not. So our argument is that to an extent, courses follow a model using these principles tend to be effective. Obviously when I can re design the whole world but we hope as the time goes on, these principles will become incorporated into people’s approach to designing instruction. Now our model for development, the pebbles-in-the-pond model is only one way to develop courses based on these principles. I think the principles are true and should be in all courses where it can be and how they get there can be another issue.

刘曾：There is another question. If you design the whole courses, if you want to set a real problem-based situation, that’s a very big workload sometime. What do you think about it?

Dr. Merrill: I think learning is a lot of work, it’s a big workload, yes, but what we want to do is to understand what makes learning more effective. There are all kinds of concerns in the real world, there are practical concerns. We know very bright students learn anyway, I know that in the Chinese systems, students are tested and only some students go on to college or other higher level things. Those students learn no matter what, they go to the best universities, the same way no matter what you do, they can learn, probably learn on their own. My big concern is for students at the other end of ability level. Those students can really benefit from the carefully designed instruction and when we leave them on their own with poor instruction, they often go , and consequently we handicapped them for the word of work and to perform the in the society

刘美凤：刚才这个问题是问：是不是一门课程全部都要设计成基于问题的案例？如果这样做的话工作量是不是很大?有的知识可能有点难。他回答说，这五个教学原理里面，他做过很多证明，也在继续做一些证明，如果你的教学确实符合了这五个原理，那就可能非常有效。如果你的教学符合其中一部分原理，也是有效的，做许多的研究，结果是这样的。我就问他，一门课程都设计成这样的话，工作量是不是会很大？他说工作量会是很大的，但是可能有两部分这样的学生。有的学生学习能力很强，不管你学习设计成什么样，他自己就能学好。他很关心的就是那些学习能力并不是很强的学生，如果你想让他学习好的话，就要有很好的教学设计，那些用心的费时的教学设计对他来讲就是非常重要的了。所以他说这种设计更多地要考虑很多的学生。那么可以激发他们学习的动机，他们学习得会更好。

刘曾：Dr. Merrill, there’s a question. Is there any uniqueness compared to the design theory of problem-solving, which is from David •H •Johansson. So compared with it, what is the uniqueness for your first principles of instructional diagram?

Dr. Merrill: Well, in the first place I didn’t try to be unique; Johansson’s problem-solving theory is one of the things we study and certainly his format is very similar, in fact the circle of learning from activation through demonstration to application and integration was directly taken from the format. If you haven’t read his book about learning, I would highly recommend it to everybody. If you have not read Johansson’s work on problem-solving, I would also recommend that. I was not trying to come up with unique theory but I was trying to come up with the approach that took the best of all the theories I could find and try to associate those principles people have in common. So David Johansson’s approach did not include all the things we include in the first principles, format did not include all the things but both of them include many of the things. My position is many of the theories are very similar; I stared out with the assumption that there were more similarities than differences in these theories and we probably would be better off if we could set principles we all agreed to. That’s what I ‘m trying to do, I’m not trying to perform another theory and even a unique theory. I really try to find what we agree and what we all see what good principles we all like to use.

刘曾：刚才有同学问，他的理论和David Johansson相比，最大的独特性在哪里。他回答他本来就没有想把这个作为一个独特的理论提出来。如果要评论的话，他认为他们的理论都比较全面的，但是都不能包括他教学原理的中所有的五个原理，只是非常接近。另外他的activation, application的模式也是直接借用他们的，所以大家看上去会比较相近。他推荐大家来阅读《about learning》和Johansson关于problem-solving方面的书籍。大家有空的时候可以阅读一下。他强调说他提出这个理论并不是想独树一帜提出一个新的理论，主要是为了研究这么多教学设计理论中到底有哪些共同点，然后我们找出这些共同点，找出一些真正适合教学设计的好的原理，让教学设计更好的为我们的专业服务。

Dr. Merrill: One of the questions is what is the difference between problem-based learning and problem-centered learning I just talked about. I think one of the big differences is some indicates problem-based learning have kind of students learning on their own, I characterize it by the() model. We often give students problem, often the students are in cooperative groups, give them resources and send them out to solve the problem and hope they will learn in the course of solving problem. That’s a little different than what we indicate here. Problem-centered is we present them with problems then we want to show them how to solve the problem. We want to teach them the components in solving the problem. Then we want them to take what they’ve learned to solve new problem. So rather than discovery learning or open-ended learning approach, most problem-based approach are problem-centered. It doesn’t teach student the context of the problem but teach them how to solve the problem not just allowing them to solve the problem.

刘曾：刚才有同学问，基于问题的教学和以问题为中心的教学有什么区别。他说基于问题的教学一般是让学生独立完成。给学生提出一个问题，让学生分成小组，给他们提供一些资源，让他们自己去学。在自己动手解决问题的过程中来学习。以问题为中心的教学是展示给他们一个问题，教他们怎么解决，然后在这个过程之后给他们一个新问题让他们去解决。不是是单单让他去动手解决问题，而是我们要把解决问题需要的重要教学元素展示给他们看，这样来教学。这就是两者的区别。

刘美凤：There is another question. You talked about the program of “the lost dog”, there is a machine to recognize the students’ speaking is good or not. Is that technology objectively evaluate the students’ ability?

Dr. Merrill: In the lesson I demonstrated it’s some early speech recognition technology. You know, when you are() you call a telephone, the technology can understand when you say numbers or certain things. This similar to that technology, what it did is to recognize key words that the students said and then responded back. It certainly not perfect, it certainly has a lot of limitations, but I think as time goes on, we will see more and more speech recognition technology. So we try to experiment with that in this program. We have some people in speech recognition technology who added it there. I can’t answer the question about what program they actually use, if you send me e-mail, I can certainly put you to contact the people who can answer the question.

刘美凤：刚才有学生问，在小狗丢了的故事中，有一个鉴别学生是否说对了的技术，那么这个技术是不是能客观鉴定这个学生说的是不是好。他回答是，这个和我们平常所看到的一样，就是说完了之后会给你打个分数。这个技术当然不是百分之百的好，他不负责这个技术，是另外的人负责的这个技术，你如果想了解具体情况，可以发e-mail给Dr. Merrill，他可以帮你和那个人联系。

刘曾：There is another question. For example, in the language learning you’ve just referred, do you have some specific system or approach to evaluate your students, I mean the criteria, how do you know that they already achieve the goal?

Dr. Merrill: In the course we talked about, that was still being discussed. One of the ways we try to do it is that they can give those conversations in the end as they tried to find the dog in the park, that means they were able to carry on the conversation at least to some level of the kind we want them to do, obviously this is not adequate for complete evaluation of students’ abilities to use English. So this is just an attempt to work on that. I am not an expert on English language evaluation but it is certainly a thing we are concerned about. And you know there is a number of tests out there, like Toefl and other things that attempt to do that but I really don’t know how to answer that question in more details.

刘曾：So you mean the criteria should be based on the English language testing theories?

Dr. Merrill: yeah, I would say so. You know, being an English speaker, I’ve never taken the Toefl, so I don’t know how good the test is, but I know it is widely used as a criterion for English language.

刘曾：刚才有同学问,他举的例子当中到学习结束之后，到底怎么评价学生的表现。他认为这个标准应该是和主题结合起来的。这个主题是英语学习，就应该按照语言学习的标准进行评价。像他现在设计的这个计算机教学，上机的话只能做到他进行一些语音的输入，然后看看学生是不是能找到丢失的那条狗，这只是模拟真实世界环境中的一个尝试，肯定是不足的。他说自己不是语言学习方面的专家，在这里就不深谈了，但如果大家要做其他一些方面的设计，要结合课程本身的一些方面来做评价的标准。

刘美凤：差不多就要到11点了，非常感谢同学们老师们来收听我们的这次大讲堂。我听到一些对话里说他没有什么新的东西，对于Merrill的教学基本原理，我觉得最重要的一点是他真的是一个有心人，到现在为止可能有上千种甚至上万种教学设计的模式，或者是有一些教学设计的理论，那么这些理论都遵循的最基本的原理是什么，我们都没有关注这些问题去研究，但是Dr. Merrill因为有心理学的一些背景，他很关注这些东西，他来做一些总结。 可能现在并不是完备的，他现在还在做进一步研究，可能会发现新的更多的东西。他自己也讲，他自己所谓的教学基本原理，并不是描述性的，并不像我们教学论一样是描述规律的，它实际是要揭示一个规定性的，就是说什么样的情形下我们的教学是最有效的，可以得到促进的，所以说，他的研究还是为我们提供了一个很好的研究思路。今天我也非常高兴和大家来分享这些知识。谢谢大家。待会儿我会和Dr. Merrill道谢，今天的大讲堂我们就到这。有同学还要讨论的，可以再留下，我现在就让Dr. Merrill下线了。以后你们再有什么问题，可以直接给他e-mail. So, Dr. Merrill, it’s time for us to end our talk today but I have to say thank you very much because I know you’re very busy and also you just came back from the trip, you must be very tired, thank you very much for sharing the time with us also your expertise. Thank you!

Dr. Merrill: Thank you all very much. I appreciate it to have the opportunity to talk to you all. If you have further questions, I invite you to visit my website or send me an e-mail and I will try to respond. It has been a pleasure to talk to all of you, I hope you found it valuable and I’d like to meet you in the future. And I hope some of you can come to our conference in June. Mehallo!

刘美凤：Ok, thank you, Dr. Merrill. This is the first try for us to invite an expert abroad to talk with us, so I hope we will have more opportunities to talk further in the future and cooperate together.

Dr. Merrill: I think the technology worked very well, we can see the slide, this is a wonderful technology. It seemed to me to work very well. I hope you found it so on your side.

刘美凤：Here it is good. Ok, thank you so much. I will stand for all the audiences to say thank you and bye-bye.

Dr. Merrill: Bye-bye for now.

刘美凤：Bye-bye. Thank you.

由 窦荣军 发表于 November 12, 2004 11:52 PM