intuition
From solar flares to total eclipse:One person’s story of
new-technologies and the on-line learning environment

… attempted to teach a young man the standard issue of socialising education. The ‘school system’ was determined that I become a right-handed normal person as opposed to my natural leaning to being left-handed. Left-handedness, it seems would lead to my being an unacceptable social misfit. Early Australian schooling systems, (pre 1980’s) have left many people with a poor experience in education. At the age of 10 I realised that school would not equip me for my life needs and so I proceeded to watch, witness, and log the social conditioning and interactions of my peers, myself, and others for reflection at a later date. My passion became

..why do we learn and why are we left behind?

Having become an excellent educator because of those early difficulties I continue to explore new ideas, systems and technologies for better education delivery. The left-handed predilection was a symptom of a great imagination. My professional studies look at the psychology and physiology of learning and further research into the use of intuition as a learning tool and as a planing tool.

How does the experience of being an online learner influence you as a designer and/or facilitator of online learning?

Quite simply, the ability to reflect on previous experience, that of my early schooling, and the serious consequences those experiences have on my life make it clear for me how those learning situations did not work or could have been modified to become positive.

In my teaching practice each new subject is piloted and feedback is actioned upon in order to fine-tune the program before making a full commitment to it. Reflection-in-action is an organic method useful for growing new learning opportunities.

The same experiences apply to the online learning world. You must ask yourself, how can you design a learning experience (in a new platform) if you don’t have the experience of using that platform as a student? Whereas the consequences for the student having a bad time at school will impact on their life skills and opportunities, the consequences of a poor online learning experience affect the facilitator and the institution and not so much the student. How? The student logs off and seeks another learning environment, the institution loses the student, but the student no longer loses the opportunity.

The key to online learning opportunities and environments is to keep them relevant and engaging. Engaging, a small concept that will have a large impact. If the student finds the situation troublesome, irrelevant or pedestrian they will pack up and go elsewhere. It is acceptable for the learning to be challenging and even difficult as long as it is enriching.

Intuitions

My colleagues will reveal an immense knowledge base for the designing of online learning models using a variety of devices. My most passionate experience occurred using online roleplays and so I would like to share this with you. Hopefully I have outlined why I feel it is essential that you participate in an online learning experience before you implement one for your students.

The online roleplay experience is a half-story that the participants will unfold in real time as they interact with each other and their environment. ‘Fashion House’ is a simulated fashion industry scenario containing all the aspects of the fashion world that the students need in order to experience some of the set backs and victories that will occur for them in the real fashion world. This roleplay is designed to promote communications skills in a way that is completely relevant to the students’ world. The participants get to experiment with social behaviour in a safe environment without the lasting consequences of the real world.

For the designer the building of the scenario must take into account all the possible distortions and tangents that the participants are likely (and unlikely) to take during the course of the model. One can expect and anticipate, but the playing will always reveal things you could not have thought of. This is how the designer accumulates new skills and ideas to resolve better models next time around. The designer relies on his/her bank of intuitions to create scenarios with the highest diversity potential. That is, the designer must foresee where and how things will take place.

Let us then look at intuition for a moment. Consider that your intuition is a feeling of when a thing is right or not right. Think harder and you can recall your intuition as being broader that right or not right, it also reveals ways and processes to do things. Intuitions do a lot more than that but we don’t need to get too deep here. The key being that intuition reveals responses to stimuli from an informed memory.

Intuition is actually 3 types of intuitions, these being Pre-Operational, Operational, and Post-Operational intuitions. If you speculate your pathway of doing an activity before you begin the activity you are using your pre-operational intuition. Whilst you do the activity and you wish to change direction you will use your operational intuition. When you are considering a model of an existing activity with the view to determine if there is a better way for it to work (you are diagnosing its performance capabilities) you will recall your past-experience knowledge-bank and dissect the new activity with your post-operational intuition.

Without any doubt intuitions are linked to action programs in the brain. The reason they work so quickly and imply a feeling of correctness is that you have been growing these action programs since being a baby. Intuitions accumulate throughout your life. This is why intuitions are perhaps the best tools for designing and moderating online learning because they reflect real-life experience. Intuitions reflect relevance, not necessarily the academically/theoretically correct thing to do.

Having said that it should be understood that if a person designs hats for winter climates they are most intuitive about winter hats, this does not necessarily mean they are intuitive about designing learning experiences for online education. The content expert in a subject area will always be the most intuitive person on that subject. Ask your plumber.
To summarise it should be clear that the more you learn about education and learning design, the more expertise and experience you bring to creating new learning opportunities. If you participate as a learner in these new opportunities the more you bring a refined, reflective and effective mind to creating the next generation of learning environments.

Go for it, it’s fantastic.
Simon O'Mallon
April 2003.

Examples

The following are some links to roleplays that have already occurred. These logins are read only and will enable the viewer to surf the entire roleplay.

‘Flat Tyre on High Street’ is an example of a roleplay that failed to get of the ground because the participants did not invest in the timeframe required to respond. No participants, no interaction.

To view 'Flat Tyre on High Street' Fablusi simulation click on the following URL.
http://www.fablusi.com/step2.asp?SID=rpsim000002067QS

This example is “world 1” of the simulation, a number of participants did not engage the roleplay when required to so this example demonstrates the effects of insufficient players on the game and moral.

To view the interaction of the participants use the following.
login and password = look2

‘Fashion House is a communications module prototype for fashion students. It reflects the world and peers of that industry and as such some language will be deemed offensive. If you prefer not to expose yourself to such language you are advised not to follow this URL and login details.

The 2nd and most involved example is the completed roleplay, “Fashion House”. Participants were actively involved internationally and nationally in this simulation. The language used reflects the real world language of the Fashion World.

To view (read only), use login and password = view1
and the following URL.
http://www.fablusi.com/step2.asp?SID=rpsim00000131QSM