| Lea oc Se aA Rt TE 2 SR rc I TE SE

tends to develop a unique strategy. This reality is
currently bedeviling to those who think they can build
a thinking, or fifth generation, computer.

Thus, if you are able to predict—with a high degree
of confidence—everything that workers will confront
on the job and you are able to put this down on paper,
CBL may work. However, if there are many “other
tasks” or if you expect the program to go beyond
training at the novice level, you may get a program
meltdown.

The Utility of Wastefulness

Consequently, the biggest problem with CBL is that
it assumes the world is very tidy and measurable. On
the other hand, the major strength of traditional
instruction is that it recognizes that the world is
imprecise, contradictory, and full of surprises. There
surely can be no doubt that a 50-minute class in role
model instruction is really about 10 minutes of burger
and 40 minutes of lettuce, tomato, cheese, and bun. But
it is these other ingredients which transform a piece of
broiled ground beef into a hamburger. The extras,
therefore, only seem like extras because without them
the flavor, the texture, the glory of “hamburgerness” is
lost.

It is this apparent wastefulness which is the strength
of role model instruction. The anecdotes, the personal
experiences, the excursions into what might seem at
the time to be irrelevant territory—all of this supposed
wastefulness, expunged from engineered education, is
actually the richness of human experience.

The Fox Starts Out

Study after study, literally for decades, has con-
cluded that there is no one best method of instruction.
i lowever, at the same time, some methods work better
for certain students than for others; some work better
in some subjects than in others; and some work better
in some circumstances than in others. But no one
method is best for all students, in all subjects, in all
circumstances.

CBL should be seen as one of the many options in
the instructor’s toolbox—for example, lecturing, shop
projects, seminars and workshops, field training,
essays, Oral presentations, product development, role-
playing, computer-assisted instruction, simulation, and
audio-tutorial. And a varicty of tools equips the work-
man to appreciate the diversity and complexity and
subtlety of the human experience. As Abraham
Maslow once observed: To him who has only a ham-
mer, the whole world looks like a nail.

Like other systems, CBL is effective in certain

circumstances, but it is no panacea. It will work better
with more mature and experienced students, for
example, than it will with those just out of high school.
It will work better with students who have good
reading skills than it will with those who are barely
literate. It will work better with topics where there is
one right answer than it will in those areas where
solutions depend on context. And it will work better
when enough time (at least 10 hours of development to
one of instruction, according to authorities) and money
are available than if only lip service support is pro-
vided.

CBL is highly effective with some students learning
some circumstances. CBLis a useful instructional tool
for training a hedgehog. The fox will need more.

John S. Scharf, Educational Consultant
For further information, contact the author at 125 5th

Avenue, #1108, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7K 6A5,
CANADA.

 

Suanne D. Roveche, Editor

November 18, 1988, Vol. X, No. 28

» The University of Texas at Austin, 1988
Further duplication is permitted by MEMBER
institutions for their own personnel.

 

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