Complex Learning IDM, whole tasks, and task ladders

30 August 2013

While I truly admire Merrienboer's Complex Learning instructional design model (IDM), every time a fixed set of guidelines is defined, it almost automatically sets itself for exceptions. Complex Learning follows the rule, and here I will try to present a problem that I believe is an exception to one of the central tenets behind Complex Learning: The need to use Whole Tasks.

Merrienboer sees whole tasks as being authentic and representative of what students are going to find in their daily personal or professional practice. In his words:

These approaches all focus on authentic learning tasks as the driving force for teaching and learning because such tasks are instrumental in helping learners to integrate knowledge, skills, and atti- tudes (often referred to as competences), stimulate the coordination of skills constituent to solving problems or carrying out tasks, and facilitate the transfer of what has been learned to new and often unique tasks and problem situations (Merrill, 2002b; van Merriënboer, 2007; van Merriënboer & Kirschner, 2001).

In situations where a whole task cannot be brought in as a component of the educational plan, then Merrienboer recommends that it be substituted by segments that retain the whole task spirit, which completely makes sense.

But then, the idea of relying on whole tasks as a rule violates what happens with most experts as they climb up the learning ladder. For example, if you have a lab director or store manager with a number of assistants, at one point this person will no longer need or even want to execute tasks from start to finish in order to move up in their expertise. Instead, they will rely on their assistants to execute the tasks that they are already familiar with, waiting for them to filter the more complex problems that are then brought to their attention. In this ladder mechanism individuals rely on others to do the tasks they already know by heart, waiting for them to bring more sophisticated problems to their attention, ultimately sharpening their skills without unnecessary repetition.

Now, I have not approached Merrienboer himself regarding this problem, and maybe his response would be that the definition of what constitutes a whole tasks would get narrower and narrower as expertise is built. In any case, this is perhaps more of an addition to his impressive IDM rather than a flaw.

by Ricardo Pietrobon

About Me

My name is Ricardo Pietrobon and I am interested in big data and situated cognition applied to immersive distance education.