Wednesday, February 08, 2006
The Costs of This Article Seem to Outweigh the Benefits.
Design Issues for Learning Environments by Allan Collins
Gotta say that I found this paper to be the most laborious we've read. Not because it has the most difficult content, but because it could have been written more succintly if he utilized an outline or bullets.
I'm not sure if Collins intended to guide the reader into making decisions based on the costs an benefits. Sometimes he noted his preferences, other times he didn't. If he intended to simply present the costs and benefits and leave the decision making to the reader, he should have been consistant about this.
Another irritant of the article (for me) was that Collins frequently referred to other software, but explained so little about the software that I failed to grasp the connection. It seems the intended audience was already familiar with the software he referred to.
That said, I generally agreed with the costs/benefits that Collins articulated. I do wish, however, a more current article could have been assigned so that we'd have the opportunity to relate to his examples.
Gotta say that I found this paper to be the most laborious we've read. Not because it has the most difficult content, but because it could have been written more succintly if he utilized an outline or bullets.
I'm not sure if Collins intended to guide the reader into making decisions based on the costs an benefits. Sometimes he noted his preferences, other times he didn't. If he intended to simply present the costs and benefits and leave the decision making to the reader, he should have been consistant about this.
Another irritant of the article (for me) was that Collins frequently referred to other software, but explained so little about the software that I failed to grasp the connection. It seems the intended audience was already familiar with the software he referred to.
That said, I generally agreed with the costs/benefits that Collins articulated. I do wish, however, a more current article could have been assigned so that we'd have the opportunity to relate to his examples.
# posted by JLynn @ 2:23 PM 
