Comenius: Learner-Centered Design

A seventeenth-century anticipation of programmed learning has also been found in the work of Comenius, who advocated teaching in small steps, no step being too great for the student who was about to take it. Programming is sometimes described simply as breaking material into a large number of small pieces, arranged in a plausible order.

—B. F. Skinner, 1964

Johannes Comenius (1592–1670) was a Renaissance man in every sense of the word. Born in what is present-day Czechoslovakia at the time of Shakespeare and Elizabethan England, he was one of the greatest visionaries and scientists of learning systems that the field of instruction has ever seen. Like so many scholars of the Renaissance, Comenius was by profession a Protestant churchman, yet on his own he represented a one-man revolution in the world of Renaissance learning.

Influenced by Bacon's scientific method and the major Renaissance theories of learning, Comenius exercised a lasting influence on such modern theorists as Dewey, Skinner, and Jean Piaget (the French developmental psychologist and founder of cognitive constructivist learning). Many of his ideas still wait to be utilized by twenty-first century systems-based designers.

The seven key points of Comenius's vision in summary form are:

1. Doing (actio): We learn by doing: This same cry will echo down the centuries through the voices of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Dewey, and others.

2. Learner-Centered (autopraxis or self-paced exercises): We learn through self-paced exercises, reconstructing the truth individually and by ourselves. As in modern constructivist learning, learning should be learner-centric, not instructor-centric.

3. Context-Situated (contextus): We learn through context. In language learning, for instance, we should learn through conversational methods rather than through mindless rote learning.

4. Systems Learning (didactica magna or great learning system): We learn best when we learn through a systems approach. This is Comenius's key learning principle.

5. Experience (experientia): Education should relate to everyday experience, and learning should be through the senses rather than through abstractions.

6. Multi-Media (media pictus or visual media): We learn best when we learn through multiple media. Comenius was creator and advocate of the world's first multimedia textbook for teaching (featuring woodcut illustrations for learners). The textbook remained a force in education throughout Europe for 150 years.

7. Global Knowledge (pansophia or all-knowledge): Underlying all learning and learning systems, Comenius states, is the vision of a global knowledgebase, or "universal library." Comenius's prophecy would begin to be realized in the 1700s during the Enlightenment, with its production of learned encyclopedias.

Of Comenius's many works, the most important for our purposes are:

• The Gate of Languages Unlocked (on learning foreign language).

• The Visible World (an illustrated textbook for children).

• The Great Didactic (a comprehensive theory of global education). Now regarded as a classic work on learning theory. As Piaget has pointed out, Comenius was the first learning theorist to conceive of a genuine "science" of education and learning.

The maxims that follow are taken from Comenius's The Great Didactic.

Maxims from Comenius

• We Learn by Doing. "It is by working that we learn how to work, just as we learn how to act by acting."

• Constructivism: We Learn by Reconstructing the Lesson Ourselves. "Students shall themselves seek, discover, discuss, do, and repeat by their own efforts, examine everything themselves without abdicating to the teacher's authority. The teacher should be left with the task of seeing that the task is completed."

• From Instructivist (Instructor-Centered) to Constructivist (Learner-Centered) Learning. "To seek and to find a method of instruction by which teachers may teach less, and learners may learn more."

• Use Multiple Media. "Teach everything through the medium of the senses. Show learners pictures of the things that they must learn. The illustrations should be derived from the events of everyday life. For all knowledge begins with sensuous perception. By appealing to the ear, the eye, and the hands (real world applications) what is learned is thoroughly impressed on the eyes, the ears, the understanding, and the memory."

• Root Cause Analysis. "It is impossible to find a remedy until we have discovered the real cause of the disease."

• Concrete Performance Goals and Objectives Are Necessary. "State 'In so many years I will bring this student to such and such a point, and we are going to educate him in such and such a way.' This is necessary if the method of instruction is to be successful."

• Sequence the Content from Simple to Complex (Elaboration Theory). "Proceed from what is easy to what is more difficult. The subject matter should be so arranged that the learners first get to know that which lies nearest their mental vision, then that which lies moderately near, then that which is more remote, and lastly, that which is farthest off."

• Learner-Centered Design (Not Instructor-Centered). "The more the teacher 'teaches,' the less the student learns."

• On Sense and Memory, Comprehension and Decisions. "Learners should first exercise their senses; then the memory; then the comprehension; and finally their judgment."

• Learner Attitude and Motivation Are Key. "The desire to know should be excited in learners in every possible manner."

• Don't Forget Humor. "The method of instruction should lighten the drudgery of learning: relieve explanations through a humorous or less serious tone."

• Case-Based Learning: Situated Cognition. "Languages should not be learned from grammar, but from real-life authors."

• Three Rules of Systems Design. "Unless goals are set, means provided to reach them, and a proper system devised for application of those means, it is easy for something to be omitted and for failure to step in."

• Avoid Jargon. "All explanations should be given in a language that pupils understand."

• Toward a Science of Learning. "To set forth a universal method of learning with such certainty that the desired result must of necessity follow. This is my goal."

Fastpaths

1650	John Comenius: The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (translated by M. W. Keating, 1896).
1945	Robert Ulich: History of Educational Thought.
1957	Jean Piaget (ed.): John Amos Comenius "Selections," selections from the writings of Comenius, the first great learning theorist of the western world, still relevant today.