Michael K. Thomas

Bio: Michael K. Thomas is an academic researcher from University of Illinois at Chicago. The author has contributed to research in topics: Instructional design & Educational technology. The author has an hindex of 15, co-authored 31 publications receiving 1839 citations. Previous affiliations of Michael K. Thomas include University of Wisconsin-Madison & St. John's University.

Making Learning Fun: Quest Atlantis, A Game Without Guns.

Abstract: This article describes the Quest Atlantis (QA) project, a learning and teaching project that employs a multiuser, virtual environment to immerse children, ages 9–12, in educational tasks. QA combines strategies used in commercial gaming environments with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation. It allows users at participating elementary schools and after-school centers to travel through virtual spaces to perform educational activities, talk with other users and mentors, and build virtual personae. Our work has involved an agenda and process that may be called socially-responsive design, which involves building sociotechnical structures that engage with and potentially transform individuals and their contexts of participation. This work sits at the intersection of education, entertainment, and social commitment and suggests an expansive focus for instructional designers. The focus is on engaging classroom culture and relevant aspects of student life to inspire participation consistent with social commitments and educational goals interpreted locally.

Critical Design Ethnography: Designing for Change

Abstract: This article describes critical design ethnography, an ethnographic process involving participatory design work aimed at transforming a local context while producing an instructional design that can be used in multiple contexts. Here, we reflect on the opportunities and challenges that emerged as we built local critiques then reified them into a designed artifact that has been implemented in classrooms all over the world. [critical ethnography, participatory design, action research, instructional design]

Our Designs and the Social Agendas They Carry

Abstract: Although the work of learning scientists and instructional designers has brought about countless curricula, designs, and theoretical claims, the community has been less active in communicating the explicit and implicit critical social agendas that result (or could result) from their work. It is our belief that the community of learning scientists is well positioned to build transformative models of what could be, to develop learning and teaching interventions that have impact, and to advance theory that will prove valuable to others. This potential, we argue, would be significantly heightened if we as a community embrace the critical agendas that are central to so many discussions in anthropology, philosophy, or even curriculum development more generally. Instead of simply building an artifact to help individuals accomplish a particular task, or to meet a specific standard, the focus of critical design work is to develop sociotechnical structures that facilitate individuals in critiquing and improving the...

Online Learning: From Information Dissemination to Fostering Collaboration

Abstract: In this article the trajectory of an online course in which graduate students collaboratively investigated and shared their personal experiences with respect to adult development is described. For this study, naturalistic inquiry was used to gain a holistic view of this semester-long course and to identify the specific emergent issues that characterized course dynamics. Using open, axial, and, to a lesser degree, selective coding, the following three issues were selected for further discussion: (a) flexibility of course to accommodate participants ; (b) co-construction of meaning through the sharing of personal experiences; and (c) the expression of vulnerability and personal growth. This course provided evidence that on-line courses can support deep learning about content, open sharing about personal experiences, and the development of a sense of camaraderie among participants. Students readily shared their feelings, critically examined course issues, extended their support in helping peers, and embraced many of the challenges of taking an online course. Implications are that benefits of online courses extend beyond the time and 106 Barab, Thomas, and Merrill place independence they provide for participants, but also include the reflective and social environment they can foster. Additionally, in terms of developing environments to support interactivity, especially with respect to human-human interaction , it may be that less is more. Over the last decade we have witnessed an explosion of the use of the Internet for supporting distributed education World Wide Web (WWW or Web), creates exciting opportunities to make information available to large numbers of users residing at distributed locations and who work at different times. As such, there are numerous courses and even entire degrees being offered online—referring to those courses taking place by way of a computer network One frequently cited reason for the development of these online courses is the increased availability of educational opportunities to users who, if required to be at a particular location (e.g., university classroom) at a particular time, would not be able to take the course. Less frequently given as a rationale for these courses is that the learning climate that develops online is more supportive in terms of promoting reflection, intimacy, and community than are those climates that emerge in the traditional classroom learning environments (Sheingold, 1991; Spitzer, 1998). In fact, it has been argued that courses taken online are impersonal, superficial, misdirected, and potentially dehumanizing and depressing, with online courses actually disrupting the student-instructor interaction that creates a …

The Third Dimension of ADDIE: A Cultural Embrace

Abstract: INTRODUCTION If education is inherently a process that involves human interaction with the deliberate purpose of promoting the social values, norms, and mores, of a given society, then we can state that the knowledge a society chooses to convey says something about the culture of that society. In this way, we can conceive of education as being a process that is fundamentally sociocultural in nature. We argue that historically many professionals in the field of Instructional Technology have taken a culturally neutral position in the creation of instructional products. By not directly addressing culture in the design of instruction, many products have been designed that inadequately address the needs of the population for whom the instruction was designed. Unintended consequences of this shortcoming include the production of ineffective instructional products, the under use of potentially effective products, culturally insensitive products, and products that are deemed overtly culturally offensive by some members of certain populations. Theorists have recently begun to consider that culture may play an even greater role than being at the heart of any educative conveyance of knowledge. A number of researchers and theorists have begun to consider that our very perception of reality (and therefore reality itself) is a product of socio-cultural process (e.g. Lave & Wenger, 1991; Cole, 1985; 1986, Goodenow, 1992; Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1998). All knowledge, then, is socially mediated and all socialization is grounded in culture. Instead of earlier cognitivist ideas of activating representative schema existing in the human mind (Piaget, 1963), all representations are constructed in situ (Duffy & Jonassen, 1992). Education becomes not a process of conveying knowledge but of co-constructing knowledge in socio-cultural contexts. Interactivity and culture become education and instruction and the co-construction of reality. Although this is still controversial, we can state that whether or not reality itself is constructed, the role of culture is clearly relevant to the design of instruction. The obvious implication of this notion is that the effective design of instruction would have to be grounded in a rich understanding of culture and its essential role in the socially mediated construction of reality.

经验与教育 = Experience and education

Abstract: Experience and Educationis the best concise statement on education ever published by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the twentieth century. Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education(Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had received. Analysing both "traditional" and "progressive" education, Dr. Dewey here insists that neither the old nor the new education is adequate and that each is miseducative because neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience and its relation to education. He particularly urges that all teachers and educators looking for a new movement in education should think in terms of the deeped and larger issues of education rather than in terms of some divisive "ism" about education, even such an "ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of experience, on that offers a true learning situation that is both historical and social, both orderly and dynamic.

Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theories and methods

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Experience and Education.

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