EDID6503 Instructional Design Theories, Models & Strategies

Wikipedia Post of on a Theorist

Rand J. Spiro, Ph.D.
Professor of Educational Psychology and Educational Technology

by
Garth W. Williams
ID#92073695

A Paper Presented in Partial Fulfillment

Of the Requirements of
EDID 6503 Instructional Design Theories, Models & Strategies
Trimester I, 2015

Email:
University:
Facilitator:
Course Coordinator:

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garth.williams 2@myopen.uwi.edu
University of the West Indies Open Campus
Dr. Laura Gray
Dr. Camille Dickson-Deane

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EDID6503 Instructional Design Theories, Models & Strategies

Rand J. Spiro
Cognitive Flexibility Theory
Personal life/biography

Dr. Rand . J. Spiro personal life seems to be wrapped up in his professional life. If
you visit his home page at
http://postgutenberg.typepad.com/newgutenbergrevolution/2008/06/the-wikipediaa.html, you will see that it is also his main site for a wide range of his publications
on Cognitive Flexibility Theory. He has several interesting articles in the series: THE
NEW GUTENBERG REVOLUTION: Radical New Learning, Thinking, Teaching, and
Training with TechnologyBringing the Future Near. One of those articles, is entitled,
What does it mean to be Post-Gutenbergian? and why doesnt Wikipedia
quality? An interesting read! From this home page, Dr. Spiro provides a link to his
biography and provides his twitter contact, highlighting that he is starting to Tweet.
But for now he will his Tweets are mainly going to be Brain Bursts. Kind of gnomic.
Quick little thoughts that try to fractally capture some aspect of Cognitive Flexibility
Theory.
Education and academic career
Rand J. Spiro, Ph.D., is a professor of Educational Psychology and Educational
Technology at Michigan State University. He earned his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania
State University and has worked in this field or been visiting professor at several
other universities, including the University of Illinois, Yale University and Harvard
University.
Research
Dr. Spiros research has focused on the question, How should learning proceed so
that tendencies toward conceptual oversimplification are counteracted and a wide
range of future applications of knowledge are supported?

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He developed the Cognitive Flexibility Theory (along with collaborators Paul

Feltovich & Richard Coulson), which has contributed to the constructivist theory of
learning and instruction but has emphasized the real-world complexities and illstructuredness of many knowledge domains. His work deals extensively with
innovative approaches to hypermedia design.
Dr. Spiro noted in his biography at http://postgutenberg.typepad.com/about.html
that: his research areas include knowledge acquisition in complex domains;
hypermedia learning environments; new forms of learning and reading
comprehension on the Web; multimedia case-based methods in professional
education; biomedical cognition; and constructive processes in comprehension and
recall. Much of his research is concerned with determining how learning should
proceed so that tendencies toward conceptual oversimplification are counteracted
and a wide range of future applications of knowledge are supported. A central focus
is the development and testing of theory-based hypermedia learning environments
designed to promote cognitive flexibility.

It was also noted by Kearsley, G. (n.d.) that the Major principles of CFT-informed
instruction include:

Avoid oversimplification of instruction, recognizing the interconnectedness

of ideas in advanced knowledge domains.
Provide multiple representations of learning content.
Offer multiple examples and cases to acknowledge that a variety of cases
can be used to illustrate the multiple perspectives of the content to be
learned.
Use practical, real-world context to allow transfer of basic concepts and
theories to be applied in dynamic situations.
Construct knowledge instead of transmitting knowledge; therefore,
encouraging transfer by allowing learners to develop their own knowledge
representations to adapt knowledge for future use in different types of
situations.
Support complexity for comparing and contrasting the similarities and
differences of cases in ill-structured learning domains by presenting
multiple representations of the same information and different thematic
perspectives on the information.

Publications
Dr. Spiro has published many books and articles. His publications include the books
Schooling and the Acquisition of Knowledge; Theoretical Issues in Reading
Comprehension; Cognition, Education, and Multimedia; and Hypertext & Cognition.

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References
Kearsley, G. (n.d.) Cognitive Flexibility Theory. Retrieved November 9, /2002 from
http://tip.psychology.org/spiro/html Spiro, R. et al (1991). Retrieved on 24/2/2015
from http://www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/constructivism/spiro.html
Spiro, Rand J., Biography, Retrieved on 24/2/2015 from
http://postgutenberg.typepad.com/about.html
Spiro, Rand J., Cognitive Flexibilty Theory and the Post-Gutenberg Mind: Rand
Spiro's Home Page, Retrieved on 24/2/2015 from
http://postgutenberg.typepad.com/newgutenbergrevolution/

Link to the Wikipedia post:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Garth.williams1000/sandbox

My Reflections on Creating this Wikipedia post

At first, I thought this assignment was a time-consuming exercise with the only useful learning
being how to post to Wikipedia. I also thought that Wikipedia already has a post for all known
theorists, so I dreaded the time that would be wasted in the search for a theorist. After completing
the assignment, the experience helped me to discover that I was wrong. I learned a few critical
things:

My skills in reading and writing critically need to be developed. I leaned this when I
found quite a bit of information on a theorist, but found it challenging to summarize what
I read quickly. I am considering how to address this weakness.

Wikipedia does not have everything! In fact, my chosen theorist, Rand J Spiro, has an
article criticizing Wikipedia

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