students' behavior does not remain constant in a course of
study either. So, we are dealing with multi-dimensional dynamic
"agents;" such as instructors, and learners with changing motivation,
interest, and other similar traits, who interact with myriad treatment
variables in their mediated environment.

Some of my students and I are currently using an agent-based simulation
environment called StarLogo. We have programmed software agents with
certain traits to act as students, and run them in an interactive
environment with various mediated treatment possibilities.

What we are learning, (and this is tentative at best), is that learners
are not the only agents who are affected in a teaching and learning
situation. They also affect treatment variables. That means under
certain conditions, they exchange data (teach) peer agents, and their
mediated environment.

This result supports the general characteristic of self-organized
complex systems. It is also cause for hope that we are not excluding a
large group of learners right off the bat.

It also tells us that to be responsive to learner adaptability, we
should make web based, and other learning environments much more dynamic
and responsive than they are now. Application of new standards, such as
XML, SCORM, and other similar mark-up languages, for example, are a step
in the right direction.

Another tentative ramification of our series of studies is that
instructional design should go through a historic change with the advent
of learning objects. Learning objects, not only carry content, but like
our experimental agents, will also carry code which would make them
adaptable to learner traits. So, interactivity will not be a one-way
street.

Farhad Saba, Ph. D.
Professor of Educational Technology
San Diego State University
CEO, Distance-Educator.com

The above is from a DEOS list email posted dated 3/12/02.
Saba's work is reassuring to me in that I feel as if I do not need to design an environment specific to every possible learning style. Learners change, affect each other, and have the capacity to stretch. If online environments are designed with the idea of mutliple intelligences in mind, I think this may suffice?

NATIONAL POST ONLINE | Search Results | Story The college has embarked on a bold new learning prescription with plans to combine a doctor's quest to seek answers to questions arising from daily practice, and the need to earn mandated credits toward professional development. The result? An online professional development portal called Mainport.

Launched this past fall, the portal allows doctors to create their own personal learning projects using an electronic Web diary. The diary links to a resource-rich database containing medical textbooks, drug databases, full-text journals and more.

"What the Web diary does is help the physician to train his own thoughts. It helps the physician to formalize a question, but it does not provide the answers," says Dr. Parboosingh.

"The Web diary links the work you do in the personal learning project to your practice. After all, the idea of all this is to upgrade one's practice."

A doctor may log on to the Web diary and enter a question such as, "What therapies can I recommend for my breast cancer patient?" The online tool then provides the doctor with a framework for researching the question. The doctor formulates a personal learning project based on the original question, then accesses resources from the database. Research time is tracked and submitted by the doctor, and professional development credits are awarded accordingly.

How about this as a great example of individual projedct-based learning!!