Instructional Design and Semiotics

Abstract

Semiotics, a transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary approach to formal learning environments captures the transnational, multicultural, virtual and physical worlds in which education transpires. Global, fast, reliable, accurate communications and demographic diaspora have stimulated cross-cultural interactions. People moving about through electronic space and geographic space have propagated cross-cultural interactions. Higher education has been well-suited to leverage these two factors – mobility across electronic space and geographic space- to attract learners from across borders and cultures, but the space is fraught with cultural assumptions inhibiting learning outcomes. Addressing semiotic design features directs learning environment design toward visual and socio-cultural appeal and using multiple modes for more than just instruction, they may enhance appeal and interest. Semiotics describes meaning-making as a tripartite process, semiosis. The semiosis process relates the learner’s filtering culture and experiences to the learning environment including the instructional content and context and the learner’s interpretation. A learner or observer derives knowledge and meaning from the learning environment as interpreted through their lived experiences and cultural values. For decades marketing researchers and practitioners have successfully used semiotic features such as message design, encoded content, metaphors, stories, and images to attract and enlist customer loyalty. Semiotics offers insights into leveraging a learner’s culture to design appealing instruction and into framing a transdisciplinary research framework.