Oct. 29

It is very difficult to separate media and method. They really are integral.

Pedagogy, Content, and Technology
The intersection is what we want. Sometimes a professor is high on content and low on pedagogy. In that case, most of the times you end up with lecture.

Affordances
Every technology has certain affordances. Doors vary in their affordances. One has a push bar, others have a lever. The bar has a particular affordance that allows a certain activity. Affordances facilitate or inhibit certain abilities. The features of the technological tools provide affordances that make things easier or more difficult.

Oct. 13, 2008

Human Performance Technology

• HR systems
• How to improve performance by staff
• Deals with the layout of the office space
• Organizational structure
• They encompass more systems
• Physical environment
• Give an employee an aid so they don't have to learn x
  

Instructional Technology

• How to improve instruction through technology
• Provide instruction
  
• Came out of how to help military
  

Learning Sciences

• Wouldn't change the physical layout structure, but may analyze the structure to see how it influences learning
• Corporations don't focus on this
• Includes learning environment, or deeper focus on context
• How can we help the learner learn better
• Technology is one of the components, but sometimes may not even use technology
• 
  

Gagne's Nine Events of Instruction

Gagne's book, The Conditions of Learning, first published in 1965, identified the mental conditions for learning. These were based on the information processing model of the mental events that occur when adults are presented with various stimuli. Gagne created a nine-step process called the events of instruction, which correlate to and address the conditions of learning. The figure below shows these instructional events in the left column and the associated mental processes in the right column.

Instructional Event	Internal Mental Process
1. Gain attention	Stimuli activates receptors
2. Inform learners of objectives	Creates level of expectation for learning
3. Stimulate recall of prior learning	Retrieval and activation of short-term memory
4. Present the content	Selective perception of content
5. Provide "learning guidance"	Semantic encoding for storage long-term memory
6. Elicit performance (practice)	Responds to questions to enhance encoding and verification
7. Provide feedback	Reinforcement and assessment of correct performance
8. Assess performance	Retrieval and reinforcement of content as final evaluation
9. Enhance retention and transfer to the job	Retrieval and generalization of learned skill to new situation

source: http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/art3_3.htm


Sawyer, R. Keith. Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences. West Nyack, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 2002. p 27.
Adaptive Expertise
Adaptive expertise requires efficiency and innovation, doing well at both dimensions. If people are better prepared for future learning, they will be able to transfer that learning better and faster.

Routine Expertise
People are very efficient at their routines, but not innovative.

To increase students' adaptive expertise, one should have reflection and metacognition in knowledge building, systematic inquiry, and "working smart" environments.

Deep learning has to do with why you are learning something. To pass the test is not deep learning.

Metacognitive overload--to much information or content to learn.

Assignment: Carr-Chellman, A., A., & Hoadley, C. M. (2004a). Introduction to special issue: Learning sciences and instructional systems: Begining the dialogue. Educational technology, 44(3), 5-6

Class - Oct 8

Educational technology and instructional technology are synonymous. Although definitions seem to in be disputed.

People move to quickly to a solution without finding what is going on. Diagnosing the problem based on the symptoms rather than the root cause.

Training is not always the answer.

People are resistant to change.

Next class will be learning about learning sciences.

Article - Minds On Fire

By John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler
This is a summary of the article. The full article can be found at http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0811.pdf.

“The Internet has also fostered a new culture of sharing, one in which content is freely contributed and distributed with few restrictions or costs.” Web 2.0 applications such as social networking sites, blogs, wikis, etc. are reversing the traditional roles of providers presenting and providing content to consumers becoming the providers of content on the Web. Some examples are YouTube, FaceBook, Flickr, SecondLife, Blogger, MySpace, etc. where people can share and distribute ideas. “…Web 2.0 is creating a new kind of participatory medium that is ideal for supporting multiple modes of learning.

Social Learning
The Internet has impacted the ability to expand and support social learning. Social learning according to the authors is:

"…based on the premise that our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions. The focus is not so much on what we are learning but on how we are learning."

There is evidence that social interaction improves learning. One study supporting this type of interaction in learning comes from Richard J. Light, of Harvard. Light found:

"…that the method used by students to study and do home work assignments is a far stronger predictor of engagement and learning than particular details of their instructor’s teaching style. Specifically, those students who study outside of class in small groups of four to six students, even just once a week, benefit enormously. …as a result of their study group discussion, students are far more engaged and better prepared for class, learning significantly more (http://athome.harvard.edu/programs/light/light5/light5.html)."

Traditionally, emphasis in education has been on transferring knowledge from the instructor to the student. However, social learning focuses “…our attention from the content of a subject to the learning activities and human interactions around which that content is situated.” In these groups students are able to ask questions, clarify, and take on the role of instructor, which is a powerful method of learning.

Learning to Be
"There is a second, perhaps even more significant, aspect of social learning. Mastering a field of knowledge involves not only ‘learning about’ the subject matter but also ‘learning to be’ a full participant in the field. This involves acquiring the practices and the norms of established practitioners in that field or acculturating into a community of practice."

This is similar to apprenticeship programs where the apprentice begins with small simple tasks and gradually progresses to more demanding tasks as skills improve, all done under the supervision of an expert. A variation of the apprenticeship is where students work together and participate in each other’s design under the guidance of an expert. The students all benefit from the instructors comments on and critique of each other’s projects.

Wikipedia is an example of that type of learning as well. Anyone can edit the content. Then on one tab a person can see who made the contributions and when, as well as discussions about the content, which may be questioned by the reader.

"In this open environment, both the content and the process by which it is created are equally visible, thereby enabling a new kind of critical reading… that invites the reader to join in the consideration of what information is reliable and/or important."

In traditional teaching students may spend years learning about a subject, then only later they are able to practice and apply that knowledge.

"…viewing learning as the process of joining a community of practice reverses this pattern and allows new students to engage in ‘learning to be’ even as they are mastering the content of a field. This encourages the practice of… seeking the knowledge when it is needed in order to carry out a particular situated task."

Social Learning Online
This section describes several examples of social learning online where students are able to join a community of professionals, participate, and make contributions.

Second Life is an online virtual world. It supports lecture style teaching and students to break off into groups. The instructor can send messages to the groups, or virtually visit the group. Harvard Law School experimented with Second Life for the course “CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion.” There were three levels of participation. First, students registered for the course attended in person. Second, Harvard students who were not law students could attend the course, attend lectures, participate in discussions, and visit faculty during their business hours in Second Life. Third, anyone could review lectures and course materials through Second Life at no cost.

Another initiative called the “Digital Study Hall” records lectures from model teachers. The recordings are then distributed to schools in India where they lack resources for teaching. A local teacher or bright student plays the recording and pauses it a various places and asks questions to engage the students and initiate discussion.

With the online social networks like FaceBook, there is informal and formal learning happening. John King, associate provost of the University of Michigan, claimed that although the university has an enrollment of 40,000 the actual number of students being reached by the university is closer to 250,000. Students coming to the university are bringing with them their friends virtually through their social networks. Through these connections the students extend the discussions, study groups, and debates that take place in their classes. “…it makes sense for colleges and universities to consider how they can leverage these new connections through the variety of social software platforms that are being established for other reasons.”

Two initiatives have helped students in astronomy, the Faulkes Telescope project (http://faulkes-telescope.com/) and the Hands-On Universe (HOU) (http://www.handsonuniverse.org/). In both cases, students can work on their own projects and also collaborate and participate on projects with professional astronomers in the field. The Faulkes project allows students to control high-powered robotic telescopes, one in Hawaii and the other in Australia. In HOU, students can request observations from professional observatories and then analyze the data from the software provided to them which encourages the interaction between professionals and students. “The students are making small, but meaningful contributions to astronomy.” The director of Yerkes Observatory said, “This is not education in which people come in and lecture in a classroom. We’re helping students work with real data.”

The Bug-scope project (http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/) also helps students to become participants in a field. K – 12 students send insects they find to the University of Illinois. Then via the Internet they are able to log on and control the microscope in real time to see their specimens.

The Decameron Web project (http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/dweb.shtml), developed by Brown University, “…is an impressive example of how the web can not only provide access to scholarly materials but also give students the opportunity to observe and emulate scholars at work.” The site provides the text of Decameron, as well as many other resources like bibliographies, commentaries, audio and visual materials, etc. “…the emphasis is on building a community of students and scholars as much as on providing access to educational content.” The site is a forum for discussions on the Decameron and related topics.

“Both scholars and students are invited to submit their own contributions…. The site serves as an apprenticeship platform for students by allowing them to observe how scholars in the field argue with each other and also to publish their own contributions, which can be relatively small—an example of the “legitimate peripheral participation” that is characteristic of open source communities. This allows students to “learn to be,” in this instance by participating in the kind of rigorous argumentation that is generated around a particular form of deep scholarship. A community like this, in which students can acculturate into a particular scholarly practice, can be seen as a virtual “spike”: a highly specialized site that can serve as a global resource for its field."

David Wiley at Utah State University taught a graduate seminar in which all students needed to post their writings on public blogs. The first few weeks the writing was average, but then on the fourth week Wiley shared the links to all the students’ blogs with each other and encouraged the students to reach each other’s blogs. The writing improved significantly. The students wrote more and the writing “was more thoughtful.” Then people from outside the class subscribed to the blogs and made comments on some. When the students saw they were part of a larger community, “…the quality of the writing improved again. The power of peer review had been brought to bear on the assignments.”

The Internet offers many niche communities of experts where students can join and participate. “These communities are harbingers of the emergence of a new form of technology-enhanced learning-Learning 2.0-which goes beyond providing free access to traditional course materials and educational tools and creates a participatory architecture for supporting communities of learners.”

From Web 2.0 to Learning 2.0
"…the Web 2.0… is sparking an even more far-reaching revolution. Tools such as blogs, wikis, social networks, tagging systems, mashups, and content-sharing sites are examples of a new user-centric information infrastructure that emphasizes participation… over presentation, that encourages focused conversation and short briefs… rather than traditional publication, and that facilitates innovative explorations, experimentations, and purposeful tinkering that often form the basis of a situated understanding emerging from action, not passivity."

Students need a demand-pull style of learning rather than the supply-push approach where knowledge is transferred to the student and stored for when it is needed. Emphasis should be on enabling participation through participation and informal learning.

"The demand-pull approach is based on providing students with access to rich… learning communities built around a practice. It is passion-based learning, motivated by the student either wanting to become a member of a particular community of practice or just wanting to learn about, make, or perform something. Often the learning that transpires is informal rather than formally conducted in a structured setting. The learning occurs in part… from being embedded in a community of practice that may be supported by both a physical and a virtual presence and by collaboration between newcomers and professional practitioners/scholars."

“The building blocks provided by… Web 2.0, are creating the conditions for the emergence of new kinds of open participatory learning ecosystems that will support active, passion-based learning: Learning 2.0.”

Factors in Learning

Here are some of my thoughts on factors in learning. Some of my experiences come from my work at the Missionary Training Center. The factors important in learning that I chose are to do it, and making the learning relevant.

Do it

Too often teachers will lecture to the students. We sometimes feel as a teacher that I have knowledge and my goal is to transfer that knowledge to the students. Students can be seen as a sponge and like water they will just soak up all the knowledge I tell them—the traditional “chalk-talk”.

Learning is not passive, but rather active. Elder Bednar said it this way, “…experience has enabled me to understand that an answer given by another person usually is not remembered for very long, if remembered at all. But an answer we discover or obtain through the exercise of faith, typically, is retained for a lifetime. The most important learnings of life are caught—not taught” (“Seek Learning by Faith,” Ensign, Sep 2007, 60–68).

Rather than learning about a topic, a learner needs to be able to do, and to participate. They need to be able to become. For example, a missionary can never “be” a missionary if they just listen all day to their teacher for 15 hours each day. An article on social learning states, “Mastering a field of knowledge involves not only ‘learning about’ the subject matter but also ‘learning to be’ a full participant in the field. This involves acquiring the practices and the norms of established practitioners in that field or acculturating into a community of practice” (John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler, “Minds on Fire”, http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0811.pdf, 19).

Until missionaries do what missionaries do that they begin to become missionaries. For example, missionaries teach. Therefore, in the MTC missionaries should teach because missionaries are teachers, and teaching is a big part of their curriculum and what they do in the field.

One example of this is the Faulkes Telescope Project, sponsored by the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network. The project allows students collaborate with scientists. The students can control telescopes in Australia and Hawaii to do their own research and collaborate with expert astronomers. Students have made “…small but meaningful contributions to astronomy” (John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler, “Minds on Fire”, http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0811.pdf, 24).

Make it Relevant

I think one of the failures in teaching is where we teach learners concepts that are not relevant to them. The learner should not have the question unanswered, “Why should I learn this?” A teacher must help the learners see how a concept is relevant to them, how will it help them, or why should they learn it. When a learner understands the “why”, his or her level of motivation to learn increases.

I think we see this with things like food storage. When hard times come, demand for food storage items increase. More people start getting their food storage ready when they can see a need for it. Likewise, when a student knows he or she will present a topic in front of the class, they want to do better on the presentation than he or she would do otherwise.

One reason I mention relevancy as a factor is because of my work at the MTC. In the MTC missionaries have 3 – 10 weeks to learn to be a missionary and do what missionaries should do in the field. We tell them the doctrine they should know, how they should teach, how they should plan, how to study, how to use the Book of Mormon, teach by the spirit, etc. I have no doubt that missionaries are motivated to learn, in fact, I don’t think you can find a more motivated group of learners. However, I think what is missing is relevancy. We teach them all these things they should do, but the one important element is why they should do it. Yes, we tell them why, but until they are actually teaching someone and trying to “invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel…” (Preach My Gospel, p. 1), do all the concepts taught in the MTC really begin to make sense. When they get to the field and begin teaching people is when the missionaries really see the “why”—whey must they plan, set goals, know the doctrine, etc. Until someone starts asking a missionary questions about the doctrine they believe, a missionary won’t see the importance of knowing it themselves. In the MTC no one is challenging their doctrinal beliefs.

Several years ago, a young man was struggling with his testimony. I invited him to volunteer with me in the Referral Center once a week for about 2 months. There in the Referral Center people would call in and request offers from the media campaigns the Church would run, like a Book of Mormon or video.

I remember one of the calls the young man received which I listened in on. After some conversation the man asked, “Do you believe in Christmas?” The young man answered, “Yes, we believe in Christmas.” “Do you practice polygamy?” “No”, was the response, “We stopped that a long time ago.” Then the next question was, “Why are you called Mormons?” The young man paused for a moment and thought about it. Then looked at me and while holding the phone so the caller couldn’t hear he whispered, “We’re called Mormons because of the Book of Mormon, right?” I whispered back to him, “Yes, that’s right.”

After we were done at the Referral Center that day, I asked him how he was liking the experience. He responded, “Boy, have I got a lot to learn!” I’m sure his parents had told him he ought to learn the gospel before, but he didn’t see the need for it then. However, once he was put into a situation where people were asking him questions about it, he could see why he needed to study the gospel more. I might add his level of motivation to learn also went up because learning the gospel suddenly became more relevant.