Learning Theory 11/29/07

Took quiz #9 - got 80% on it.
We're going to review both chapters 10 and 11 because nobody bothered to read chapter 10.
How did the field of instructional design start - during WWII - big push to have training for the soldiers. (In the US Military in WWII) German Generals said that part of the reason they lost the war was that they had underestimated how many soldiers the US could train fast enough to get them into battle. (Focus of Instructional Design : one or more of these 3 factors : Faster, Cheaper or matter of More People) Used for the first time (instructional design elements) : films. - used for the first time in instructional settings in the US Military during WWII. Also, to a much larger extent than before, were simulators. Flight (plane) simulators, tank, ship, combat scenario simulations.

Father of ID - Robert Gagne - still today his theories are expected to be followed when you are hired to do ID

Pg 355

Taxonomy of Learning Outcomes (taxonomy - way to list something)

Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Outcomes (pg 357)

• Knowledge


• Comprehension


• Application


• Analysis
  
• Synthesis


• Evaluation

Taxonomy of Affective Outcomes (how people feel about something)

• Receiving


• Responding Valuing


• Organization


• Characterization by Value

Simpson's Taxonomy of Psycho motor Outcomes

• Perception


• Set


• Guided response


• Mechanism


• Complex Response


• Adaption


• Origination

Gagne's Taxonomy of Learning Outcomes

• Verbal Information


• Intellectual Skills


• Discrimination


• Concrete concepts


• Defined concepts


• Rules


• Higher order rules


• Cognitive Strategies


• Attitudes


• Motor skills

Very, very practical - chart on page 367
List of specific actions, conditions and teaching methods that Gagne claims are best for each type of learning outcome. This is the second part of Gagne's three part series on instructional design.

Final part : pg 373
Nine events of instruction associated with the internal learning process they support

1. Reception - gaining attention


2. Expectancy - informing learners of the objective


3. Retrieval to working memory - stimulating recall of prior learning


4. Selective perception - presenting the content


5. Semantic encoding - providing "learner guidance"


6. Responding - eliciting performance


7. Reinforcement - providing feedback


8. Retrieval and reinforcement - assessing performance


9. Retrieval and generalization - enhancing retention and transfer

Neuroscience of Learning Theories

Rather than talking about the mind and how it works, we're looking at the brain, it's physical existence, and how it works.

Basic nerve cell - neurons and dendrites (1 neuron has 30 - 40 thousand dendrite spikes)
dendrites receive information
axon - only one of them, but one axon can branch out to thousands of places - sends information

Humans : only 5% of neurons actually go out the spine - work on your sensory and motor systems. 95% of brain function deals with reflecting inside itself.
(lower mammals, rats for example, 50% of brain activity is involved in motor and sensory activity).

Bigger brains for controlling bigger bodies, follows somewhat linear progression, except human brain development is above the line

Instructional Design - the day before Thanksgiving

Started class with a 5 Star Instructional Design Rating Jeopardy game to go over the concepts of the article 5 Star Instructional Design Rating. We kicked butt - 4,800 points to 3,600.

Does your instruction rate 5 stars? Here is the link to the page Mr. Monson said there was a good video to watch on : http://id2.usu.edu/5star

Restructuring Education through Technology

Development of Instructional Technology - started with wordless transfer of knowledge (mime), which evolved into oral storytelling when language was developed. After that comes the written transfer and finally electronic transfer of information.

The teacher - student relationship. changes since 1991
- feedback

- "power"

4 essential components of education - 4 core elements and the interaction between them is what education is.

- teacher

- student

- content

- context

Teacher-Content relationship.

- controlled to freedom of content.

Student - Context relationship

what does a technology rich environment look like for the student?

Teacher - Context relationship.

what does a technology rich environment look like for the teacher

Educational system - environmental relationship

limited : communication, period, activity(limited to certain places) and links to the outside world.

Highly centralized.

We just got told the story about the Greek god Thueth and King Thamus. Shouldn't it be Thueth and Thamuth? Thath the way I thee it. The story isn't that great, I just thought the names sounded funny, so I had to post them here. But for the record, the god Thueth created writing and was so excited about it that he took it to King Thamus. King Thamus, on the other hand was not so excited, he felt that transmitting knowledge through writing would detract from the actual learning, that the focus would be on the writing and would result in unauthentic learning. The comparison is with technology today. To some degree I agree with this, technology for the sake of technology is not necessarily good - it must fit authentically with the subject matter and teacher's teaching style.

The 2 things he wants us to take away with us tonight.

1. Information is not instruction.

2. Technology is really not machines.

Next week - debate Clark & Kosma.

Clark says - media has no bearing on learning. Media is to learning as milk truck is to nutrition.

Kozma - argues with Clark's statement.

Only need to read the Clark articles.

We're going to do it online, so there won't be class held here next week.

FOR THE FINAL :

book page xvii

Need to come ready to present on our project -

- what project was

- what learned along the way

- how solved the problem

Stuff we need to turn in to him

- first two documents

- third document - includes copy of first two documents

- Copy of instructional materials.

- stuff listed on page xvii - report #3

- have someone look over the instructional materials - get some feedback. Best would be to have someone try to do the tiling from the materials, but that being unfeasible, just having them look it over and make comments about what is and isn't clear.

Prototyping.

Provide client with a vision of what the instruction will be

Choose a Delivery System - best thing to do, most economical or what's available?

Consider

- setting

- media characteristics

- instructional materials

- time

- instructors

Learning Theory - 11/15/07

Professor was late - he called Ross to tell him to keep us here, Joanna made a comment about Pablo & Ross being BF F's (Best Friends Forever - a lot of the non-teacher people didn't get it. ) Ross was not amused.

Pablo's here, we're ready to go -

Learning theories a lot like the three blind men and the elephant

(one grabs the trunk and thinks it's a snake like animal, another grabs the leg and thinks it's a tree type thing and the last the head and thinks it's a hairy boulder.)

Chapter is divided into 3 parts :

• Motivation
• Self regulation
• How to apply these two

We're thinking about something that we are motivated to do and what, who or why are we motivated to do it.

I thought about a couple of things - cars and computers. I've been motivated by cars since before I can remember so I have no idea who, how or why. As for computers, I like learning about programs because of the things that can be produced - the product is the motivator.

Self Efficacy : Belief about ones own abilities - be it good or bad. "I can't do that, I'm too stupid." or "I'm good at that, it's going to be easy."

ARCS - attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction.

- how about social motivation - when it's cool to fail, or to exceed. either way, the peer pressure or cultural expectations effect motivation.

Now we're thinking about teachers that motivated us.

My teacher is a comparison thing. I took the required history class up here at the U twice, once from a guy who read out of the book, had us do readings and the tests were all what happened on what day, etc. I flunked it famously. The next time I took it was from a professor who taught it like a story - he would just stand in front of the class and tell the story of history. His tests were all essay - why did things happen, which events caused what other events to happen. Chronological order was necessary, but knowing that X happened on a specific day was irrelevant.

Objective #1 : Given a learning outcome, target audience and learning theory describe an instructional module using principles of the learning theory to appropriately address the learning outcome.

The Final? How can we do an assessment of Objective #1

Last day - the 13th of December.

On Dec 6th we each get instructional objective, target audience and 2 learning theories to develop one lesson to address the objective using the 2 theories.

On the 13th we have to present it in front of Pablo and 2 peers.

Instructional Design 11/14/07

First presentation : Distance Learning.

instruction and learning taking place via telecommunications

• physical seperation


• 2 way communication

informative presentation
practice with feedback
access to learning resources

Unique aspects

role of student, teacher and facilitatior
more monitoring of student progress
adaptation of instructional materials
copyright lenience (teacher act of 2002)

Endora the explorer.

Loved the Tie the Tie thing.

Sans Serif & Serif

letters with feet create a horizontal line, making it easier to read - letters without feet draw eyes vertically.

headers should be sans serif - keep it short

leading - spacing out the lines

This lettering thing is something I'm going to have to keep in mind for all the technology flyers I end up sending out.

Four main elements

nature of innovation

• The Innovation : Relative Advantage - "what is in it for me? benefits v. costs, incremental v. preventative, incentives, mandates, status.


• Compatibility - is it consistent with existing values, beliefs and experiences


• Complexity - is it difficult to use


• Triability - can it be experimented on in a limited basis?


• Observability - are the results observable to others "How do others see me?"

Innovators : 2.5% - venturesome

• gate keepers in adoption of new ideas/things


• daring


• risky


• substantial financial resources


• willing to accept a setback


• often connected with other innovators

early adoptors (13.5%) : Respect

• individual "to check with" before using a new idea


• role models


• respected


• makes judicious decisions


• conveys subjective evolutions to peers

early majority (34%) : deliberate

• deliberates for some time


• be not the first, nor the last.

late majority (34%) : skeptical

• adopt by economic necessity


• skeptical and cautious


• motivated by pressure from peers


• often have scarce resources

laggards (16%) : traditional

• no opinion leadership


• suspicious of innovations and change-agents


• resistance is rational to them


• must be certain the idea will not fail

Instructional Design 11/07/07

Formative Evaluation - why?
Usability Testing

basically testing, checking on the progress of the learner so that you don't get to the end and have learners that did not learn what they were supposed to.

• efficiency, effectiveness

test for all kinds of stuff - learnability, ease of use, errors, productivity, retention

tools - demographic information, observational checklist, specific tasks for the users, think aloud/verbal reports, video analysis, debrief/oral interview.

find someone who is your typical learner - meets all your prerequisites. don't want to use someone that is not going to fit the type of person that is your audience.

Taking the test - what I noticed about Joanna taking the survey :

Well, starting with her computer crashing as soon as she tried to open the web page - not a very good omen...........

computer spazzing out - Joanna is showing a little bit of aggrivation.... but now she has it up and running, and is reading the directions.... she seemed to comprehend the directions easily - the 0 - 7 scale - it would have been better if there wasn't all the talking going on in the room - it is distracting to her that the people around her are reading the same things that she is.

wording of some of the questions seems to be confusing - double negatives that make it hard to understand exactly what they are asking. meanwhile some of the questions are worded in a way that they are quickly understood.

result from that survey

- low level of completion

- question of accuracy of responses

• modified visual design
• drop down choice other than bunch of dots
• survey broken into sections
• demographic data first
• question numbering
• definition for unfamiliar words
• informed that surveyer was a student
• offered reward for completion

LEARNING THEORY 11/01/07

And we just finished the test on Piaget - I scored 13/15 (86.7%)

Jerome Bruner and his impact on learning theory - took Piaget and looked at his theories from a different prespective - are the stages variant?

The aim of education is to make the learner as autonomous and self-propelled a thinker as possible (Bruner, 1961)

Humans use 3 systems to represent their environments

1. patterned motor acts (ie: ENACTIVE REPRESENTATION) - learning to ride a bike or swim - once you learn it you don't unlearn it. or how I do the graphs with the students out on the lawn - where they are the points on the line and they have to figure out their y coordinate and move to the correct place to form the line.
2. imagery and perception (ie: ICONIC REPRESENTATION) - representing events using images, maps, diagrams. Octagon = stop, triangle = yield, clock represents time - numbers represent time - hours, minutes and seconds.
3. language and reason (ie: SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION) - represent mental and physical things using symbols - speech, writing, mathematics.

Piaget : is the learner ready for the learning task? Does the learner's method of understanding the world compatible with the learning task?

Bruner : is learning task represented in a way that is compatible with the learner's mode of representing the world.

Discovery Learner : an expectation of finding regularities and relationships in the environment - he did not beleive this was the usual in classrooms.

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