ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how to design instruction for complex learning. Complex learning involves integrating knowledge, skills, and attitudes; coordinating qualitatively different constituent skills; and often transferring what is learned in school or training settings to daily life and work settings. The current interest in complex learning is manifest in popular educational approaches that call themselves inquiry, guided discovery, case method, project based, problem based, design based, team based, and competency based, many of which have no solid basis in empirical research. Theoretical design models promoting complex learning are, for example, cognitive apprenticeship learning, first principles of instruction, constructivist learning environments, learning by doing, and the four-component instructional design model. Though these approaches differ in many ways, they share a focus on learning tasks based on real-life authentic tasks as the driving force for teaching, training, and learning. The chapter also discusses the holistic design approach along with why it is thought to help improve transfer of learning.
