Week 4 Blog Post on Chp. 3 & 4

 by Renee Dobrzelewski

EDT 5410 Week 4 Reflection

My first thought when reading Wilson’s essay on guerrilla design was that not all change is appropriate simply for the sake of change. Instructional design, like so many systems, follows a systematic approach to educating learners through principles, theories, models, and practice. The “sacred cows” Wilson speaks against were developed over time to provide some consistency among designers and instructors, so I do not think they should automatically be discarded simply because they are traditional.


That is not to say there is no merit in what Wilson proposes—designing with the intention of disrupting the status quo. He says one goal of guerrilla design is to contribute knowledge and understanding to the profession, and I can appreciate his argument that we should not do research only in areas considered “journal-worthy” while ignoring challenges educators encounter every day. Advocating for a wider variety of pedagogies to address the changing needs of today’s students in diverse learning environments may be viewed as resistance to traditional principles, but it can also bring needed attention to problems that established approaches may not adequately address.


I also understand Wilson’s concern that the way the field views design can sometimes become too linear or restrictive. I had never really considered that some instructional designers might feel like outsiders because their ideas are considered too unconventional or even “radical.” A field centered on design should leave room for different perspectives and experimentation, while still asking whether those approaches actually improve learning. To me, that is where guerrilla design has the most value—not disruption for its own sake, but a willingness to challenge assumptions when those assumptions are no longer serving learners well.


When I read Hokanson’s article, I was surprised by the emphasis on moving beyond content because so much of instructional design seems to revolve around content: what information learners need, how it should be presented, and how we will know whether they have learned it. His argument made me think about the difference between knowing information and actually being able to use it. Simply memorizing facts sits fairly low on Bloom’s taxonomy, while applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating require learners to do something more with what they know.


I agree with Hokanson that good design should focus not only on whether learners acquire content, but on whether they can use that content to solve problems, make decisions, or form new ideas. When learning becomes transferable to another situation, it has much more value than information that is remembered only long enough to complete an assessment.


What I found interesting about both chapters is that, in different ways, they challenge instructional designers to move beyond what is easiest or most familiar. Wilson asks us to question accepted practices, while Hokanson asks us to question whether delivering and measuring content should be the primary focus of educational technology. Both made me think about how easy it can be to design around what we already know how to build and measure rather than around what learners actually need to be able to do.