Discussion 16.4

(<= 3000 char) In your classroom, you have established policies. In your school, there are established policies. [In your job if your are not a teacher, there are established policies.] Choose one such policy that you have been rethinking. State the current policy. Based upon the ULM, how should this policy be changed [enhanced, modified, dropped]. Justify you answer in a way that demonstrates your knowledge of and ability to apply the three principles and five rules of the ULM.

Three principles:

1. Learning is a product of working memory allocation.
2. Working memory’s capacity for allocation is affected by pior knowledge.
3. Working memory allocation is directed by motivation.

Five rules:

1. New learning requires attention.
2. Learning reuires repetition.
3. Learning is about connections.
4. Some learning is effortless, but some requires effort.
5. Learning is learning.

Currently, at our office (Instructional Design & Development, Extend Education & Outreach, UNL) we hire someone who has no previous work experience if he/she has masters degree. It has caused many problems in the past. In the future hiring:

• Some work experience should be required for the future hiring; or
• A better training program for new employees should be implemented.

New employees who had no previous work or professional experience typically lacked the knowledge of what being professional means and displayed very little to no capability of learning to work as a professional. We had a hard time getting the point (about professionalism) across to them as the lacked the prior knowledge about a severe work environment and what real professionals would do and think like.  They also had a difficult time making connections about different elements of business operations.

Since it is hard to find someone with both work/professional experience and a degree in the field or someone with good work experience in instructional design or technology, hiring someone with a degree in the field, but with no work experience has been the second best option. Without proper training, the work arrangement in the past simply did not work out, resulting in the termination of the employment or resignation, or it took them a whole year before they were comfortably and aptly handling the duties and responsibilities. So, there must be a more efficient and effective training process and on-the-job training system for new employees.

For anyone without prior work experience, it is a lot to handle all the logistics of business operations on the job. Without the proper prior knowledge, trying to make proper connections and process all the operational logistics on the job would easily overload their working memory capacity, resulting in little to no learning, so a set amount of time should be dedicated to an initial training period separately from the hands-on, on-the-job training.

At the same time, learning business operations requires repetitions of the operational tasks, which requires on-the-job training.  I suggest designating a colleague as a trainer or mentor to help the new employee gradually transition from observing the job to performing the job on his/her own. This process will help the new employee to ease his/her anxiety that comes from lack of experience and comfortably build up his/her level of self-efficacy in the job. It could turn the initial, confusing and frustrating 6 month probational period into a more pleasant, motivating learning experience.

I also suggest teaming up the new employees with old employees for several projects at the beginning when the time for pure training cannot be accommodated. While new employees with little work experience may not be ready to take on the entire project on their own as the real job doesn’t allow much room for repeated trials and errors, failures, and mistakes for the purpose of their learning, providing them with a scaffolding through collaboration with experienced employees will ensure the successful completion of the projects and fulfilling the learning needs of the new employees.

This approach will also allow the new employees to self-reflect on their understanding of the work duties and responsibilities, put pieces together (making connections), and fill wherever they lack the background knowledge in the business operations and instructional design and technology tasks required for the job. This approach also reduces the negative impact on self-efficacy and should help increase their motivation for the work. I’ve heard a comment like, “I enjoy coming to work because of you.”

The selection of an appropriate trainer/mentor is also necessary for its success. The trainer/mentor needs to be good at collaborating with others and be willing to share the knowledge and information frequently even without being asked questions. New employees who lack the work background often do not know how different things are connected and do not ask right questions or the questions that should be asked. Also, new employees lack proper schemas to understand or process certain tasks, so things that are common to the trainer/mentor may need elaborations on the new employee’s part. So, some sort of training to cover some basics of being an effective trainer/mentor should also be designed.

I myself unofficially served as a trainer/mentor for a couple of new employees here and the above two approaches seemed to help them gradually transition to becoming a self-sufficient and independent worker as well as a self-regulatory learner.

——————

Our office  has its own annual empolyee evaluation process in place. The current annual evaluation process consists of the employee self-evaluation on the work performance, evaluation by the supervisor on the work performance and goal accomplishment, and setting up operational goals and professional development goals for the upcoming year. Due to the rapidly changing work environment and circumstances for the past two to three years, the existing evaluation process may require some rethinking.

For instance, one of the evaluation criteria under the leadership category is volunteering for group projects. When I used to have a lot of extra time, I was able to volunteer to take on many tasks and responsibilities for team projects. However, due to the rapid increase in my workload (I have one of the heaviest workloads in our department; it tripled during the past four years), I have not been able to take on as many responsibilities and tasks for team projects. There are several evaluation criteria that are no longer relevant and they need to be reviewed. Knowing that I will be evaluated negatively on those criteria affects my motivation and where my priorities should be.

Setting operational and professional development goals may seem like a reasonable idea and may seem to improve the quality of the work, increase work efficiency, and promote professional growth, but it has not been working well for most people for the past two to three years partially due to the increased overall workload and mainly because goals can constantly change dynamically as our demands and needs change over time.  Since successfully completing individual projects and daily operations by meeting deadlines is one of the most important operational goals and much of professional development or learning can be done through successfully completing the projects and daily operations, these additional goals (operational goals and professional development goals) that are not supposed to be integrated into daily operations and into accomplishing individual projects successfully never really had motivational properties on most of us. The main motivator for accomplishing these goals has been the annual employee evaluation, but even then, many failed to sufficiently complete their operational goals and professional goals.

To address these issues with the goal setting portion of the annual employee evaluation, the goal setting — especially the professional development goals — should be aligned with the immediate needs for skills and knowledge that are required for the daily operations

Discussion 16.3

(<= 3000 char) A word we use often is motivation. Briefly and concisely, explain what you mean when you use the term motivation as applied to school learning. Assume you are writing for a very literate person who has limited technical vocabulary.

Motivation is a psychological construct that directs and sustains our attentional system and affects working memory allocation. What it means by that is that, with the top-down attentional system, more motivation means more attention and more allocation of working memory resources. As learning requires attention and learning is a product of working memory allocation, motivation has a huge impact and implications for learning.

Motivation can come in two different types: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Whichever motivation it may be, there are always motivating factors — i.e., motivators — underlying the motivation. So, what are the motivators as applied to school learning?

Goal is the most basic and most studied cognitive motivator. There are different types and orientations of goals. In a simplistic view, there are mastery goals vs. performance goals as well as approach vs. avoidance orientations. Different types of goals and goal orientations lead to different types and constructs of motivation.

Self-efficacy is also a major cognitive motivator. Self-efficacy derives from numbers of different factors, but the past successes and failures are the strongest factors that form our self-efficacy. Usually, more self-efficacy means more motivation.

In relation to self-efficacy, outcome expectancies such as means-ends expectancy, outcome expectancy, and success expectancy also play a huge role in motivation.

Emotions also play a huge role in motivation. Emotion directs working memory attention to things with positive emotions or negative emotions. It can redirect our attention away from a current goal or can help sustain the current working memory attention to allow repetitions and continued processing. Since emotion can take up working memory capacity available for the learning task, unfocused emotions can minimize our learning capacity.

Interest — both personal and situational — also plays a huge role in motivation. The underlying biology of personal interest is uncertain, but personal interest is probably the strongest motivator of all.

All these motivators channel working memory allocation to the knowledge and actions that have a history of having worked for us. These cognitive motivators are controllable, thus has realistic implications for school learning.

Discussion 16.2

(<= 3000 char) A word we use often is ability. Briefly and concisely, explain what you mean when you use the term ability as applied to school learning. Assume you are writing for a very literate person who has limited technical vocabulary.

Ability comes in two different types. Sheer working memory capacity — sometimes called fluid intelligence — is one type of ability. Another type of ability involves both working memory capacity and existing knowledge or schemata structure in long-term memory. This type of ability has more applications to and implications for school learning as it’s learnable and more modifiable.

So, ability is a product of working memory capacity and the stored knowledge in long-term memory. It has a lot in common with how expertise works and develops. As mentioned earlier, working memory has severely limited capacity; it can process up to about four chunks of information or tasks simultaneously. This limited ability can be extended with the use of long-term memory. While the number of chunks working memory can simultaneously process is small, it doesn’t matter to working memory how large each chunk can be. What it means by that is that even if the information is huge and complex or the task is complex and made of numbers of sub-tasks, if it is consolidated as a single chunk, one chunk means and works as just one chunk to working memory.

For example, for most native English speakers, a sentence “I’m so hungry I can eat a horse” may be just a single chunk and takes very little effort to process and comprehend its meaning while to someone who has just begun learning English, it may be well more than four chunks and a lot more tasking to process and comprehend its meaning.  Take a judo throw for example. To me it takes only one slot in working memory to execute it; all I have to do is to think of which throw to execute and it’s done automatically. On the other hand, it is a lot more difficult for beginners; beginners usually have to consciously process way over twenty different chunks of information and body moves individually in order to properly execute a typical throw.  So, the key to increasing and developing more complex abilities lies in creating more and larger chunks of knowledge (i.e., schemas) and storing them in long-term memory for quick and easy retrieval as needed. In other words, proceduralization of the knowledge is required. How can we proceduralize knowledge?

Proceduralization is same as automatization. For proceduralizing knowledge, it takes repetitions; firing up the same neural connections repeatedly will strengthen their firing potentials to fire up together, so the more you repeat a particular process (mental or physical), the more easily and accurately the process can be retrieved and performed.

So, in school setting, low ability students do have ample chances to acquire and develop abilities to the level of high ability students as long as proper schema development and proceduralization are done. It is not to say that there’s no room for sheer working memory capacity in school learning. It does make a difference in the amount of effort it takes to learn — i.e., how easy learning may come, but when we talk about the outcome of learning, acquisition of more sophisticated schemas weighs much more heavily.

Discussion 16.1

(<= 3000 char) A word we use often is learning. Briefly and concisely, explain what you mean when you use the term learning as used in schools. Assume you are writing for a very literate person who has limited technical vocabulary.

Learning is to make an alteration in long-term memory through schema acquisition and schema automation. Schema acquisition is done through creating brand new neural networks and/or rerouting/rewiring the existing neural networks. Schema automation is done through strengthening the neuronal connections, thus increasing their firing potential. This is what must happen on the most basic level (neural level) in order for learning to happen. Then, how can we ensure that such neuronal changes (i.e., learning) will happen?

1. Learning requires attention.

The human cognitive architecture consists of three major memory components: sensory memory (SM), working memory (WM), and long-term memory (LTM).  For learning to occur, the raw SM and/or stored info in LTM has to be moved into and processed in WM. Unfortunately (or fortunately), WM has a very limited capacity (can process up to about 4 chunks of information simultaneously), which is probably why processing in WM is a conscious process and the only SM or LTM that is attended to (you pay attention to) can be processed in WM.  So, attention is an essential function in learning and we can say that learning is a product of working memory allocation. By processing in WM, it means connecting and reorganizing chunks of information (i.e., neuronal connections) in order to make sense out of the SM and the retrieved LTM (prior knowledge). This process of making sense — creating a new frame of understanding and cognition — leads to schema acquisition mentioned earlier. However, as we all know, learning takes more than just understanding something.

2. Learning requires repetition.

What was understood or a new schema has to be stored in LTM in order for the learning effect to be relatively permanent, which often requires repetition. Every time neurons are fired up, their firing potentials increase, which means easier retrieval and longer retention. If a particular neural pattern (connection) is not activated for an extended period, its firing potential gradually weakens and may decay away to nothing.

3. Learning is about connections.

Chunks of information stored together in LTM are also activated together through the spreading effects of neurons, so, making connections — what connections you make — directly affects the content and quality of your learning.  For creating schemas that are useful, you must ensure that things that should be connected are connected and that things that shouldn’t be connected are not connected. As instructors, it is important to instruct students to attend to the proper connections.

4. Learning requires effort.

While some learning is effortless (i.e., episodic memory), deliberate learning of specific information or skills takes conscious effort. Most, if not all, of school learning is about learning specific information or skills, so attention, repetition, and effort are required.

5. Learning is learning.

Many factors such as prior knowledge and motivation affect individual learning, but all neurons — the smallest unit of learning — learn the same way. The mechanism of learning is based on the human cognitive architecture, which is ultimately, on the most basic level, based on the human neurobiological functions. This is good news because we have the solid bases on which we can design instructions.

Discussion 15.1

(<= 10000 char) What things have you thought appropriate to learning about teaching with technology that were not covered in this course that you wish had been. Develop a lesson introduction, write questions, and provide a reading list to support this assertion. If everything was covered, pick one of the lessons and suggest how you would improve it by the same means (a written description, questions, and a reading list).

Two things about teaching with technology that weren’t covered in our previous assignments and discussions were 1) use of assistive technologies and 2) use of technology to create and support collaborative learning communities. Assistive technology is a domain of its own and its focus does not necessarily coincide with the study and application of general learning theories and principles, so it may not be appropriate in this course.  While the origin of technology use for social cognitive learning has a long history dating back to mid 90s, its wide acceptance and application to teaching and learning have only become prevalent in recent years as the now popular concept and tools of Web 2.0 have emerged, and it is the area in which more research may be needed.

Lesson Introduction

So far in this course, we have mainly discussed how technology affects individual cognition in a secluded learning environment where the only interactions are between the learner and the computer-based learning environment. Here, I would like to shift a focus to interactions among learners to address the technology’s role in social cognitive aspects of learning.

We have learned so far that social interaction is fundamental to cognitive growth and the concept has been widely implemented and practiced in the traditional classroom environment for decades. So, the question is how we can create a successful social cognitive learning environment in the technology-assisted learning environment.

One of the successful social learning environments that I have witnessed emerging serendipitously out of the recent emergence and development of social networking technology and services is YouTube. Given that social interaction is fundamental to learning, it should not be surprising that YouTube has evolved beyond its original purpose (a video sharing service) into a social learning environment where millions of users all over the world constantly comment on, discuss, and seek help from each other on almost all imaginable topics in the world today.  One faculty member at UNL is using Facebook to facilitate the classroom learning. The Blackboard™ LMS has its own collaborative learning tools such as Blog, Wiki, Podcast, and Discussion Board, and many faculty members use one or more of them for their teaching. According to my survey of 50 UNL online undergraduate courses offered in Spring 2010, 32 of them used one or more forms of online collaborative learning tools.

Aside from how effectively it is actually used, technology-assisted, social, collaborative learning is happening both inside and outside the school environment. Questions such as 1) How can technology be used to help students collaborate? and 2) Can technology aid in the creation of a classroom learning community? need no answers today. People are already doing it. More important questions today, which should focus on its qualitative evaluation and be tied to learning outcomes, should be more like:

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the online social learning environment?
2. How can we help members of an online learning community actively engage in collaborative  learning?

To answer the first question, let us look at the following two articles:

• Wang, Q. and Woo, H.L. (2007). Comparing asynchronous online discussions and face-to-face discussions in a classroom setting. British Journal of  Educational Technology,  38(2), 272–286. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2006.00621
• Tiene, D. (2000). Online Discussions: A Survey of Advantages and Disadvantages Compared to Face-to-Face Discussions. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 9(4), 369-382. Charlottesville, VA: AACE.

Differences between face-to-face discussion and online discussion are the focus of these two papers. While discussion is only one of many features of the social learning environment, it is no doubt the basis of the social learning environment and its characteristics are, therefore, applicable to the broad spectrum of the social learning environment. Below are the summary of advantages and disadvantages of online discussions discussed in these two papers.

Pros of Online Discussions

• Gives more time to carefully articulate ideas. Encourages thoughtful/in-depth responses.
• Offers more equal opportunities for group members to voice their opinions. Dominance by more vocal individuals is less likely to happen. Allows more people to make useful contributions. Encourages more introvert people to participate.
• No constraints to agree on a common time and place
• Allows easy referencing of the participants’ responses

Cons of Online Discussions

• No immediate response and feedback
• Less social presence
• Requires a longer time frame due to its asynchronous access and speed of interactivity
• Does not involve nonverbal information such as tone of voice, gesture, and facial expression. No nonverbal information cues when the audience is unclear.

If you plan on using online discussions, you need to plan and conduct the discussions in a manner that ensures that these advantages are maximized and that the disadvantages are minimized. Now, let’s look at the second question.

To shed a light on the second question, let us look at the following article:

• Murphy, E. (2004). Recognising and promoting collaboration in an online asynchronous discussion. British Journal of  Educational Technology, 35(4), 421–431

Peer-to-peer collaborative learning will not occur simply because peer-to-peer interaction is supported and incorporated in instruction. Online discussions or any online collaborative activities will not succeed as learning experiences unless learners are motivated to participate in them and contribute to the collaborative learning process in productive manners. According to Murphy (2004), learners have to move through six major relational or communication processes or stages to create a purposeful collaborative relationship: i.e., (1) social presence, (2) articulating individual perspectives, (3) accommodating or reflecting the perspectives of others, (4) co-constructing shared perspectives and meanings, (5) building shared goals and purposes and (6) producing shared artefacts.

Please read the article for the definition, indicators, and examples of each process/stage and what actions and factors would contribute to attaining and fulfilling the requirements of each stage.

In a nutshell, Murphy suggests that the higher-level processes in the collaboration model would need to be “explicitly and effectively promoted in order to counteract a tendency on the part of participants to remain at the level of individual rather than group or collaborative effort.”  Supports and scaffolds should be aimed at guiding participants along the continuum through these processes/stages. Promoting collaboration can also be facilitated by sharing goals and purposes such as coming up with a solution to a problem. Finally, promoting collaboration in the online social learning environment requires the participants to appreciate the nature of the virtual environment and the unique ways in which the participants can interact without sharing spatial or temporal presence, which are quite different from interacting with each other in real time and in each others’ physical presence.

Discussion Questions

Q1
Explain the advantages and disadvantages of online discussions mentioned in the Wang and Tiene papers using the concepts and terminology of ULM. (3000 characters)

Q2
Online discussions or any online collaborative activities will not succeed as learning experiences unless learners are motivated to participate in them and contribute to the  collaborative learning process in productive manners. Based on the readings assigned here and your experience in classroom and online collaborative learning, create a list of suggestions or generic planning considerations for setting up and conduct an online collaborative learning environment. (4000 characters)

Discussion 14.5

(<= 3000 char) Read the Schnotz & Kürschner paper. Attempt to reinterpret this paper based upon the ULM.

1. Clarification of different kinds of cognitive load.

The paper attempts to clarify different kinds of cognitive load. Cognitive load is placed by the number of cognitive elements that have to be held simultaneously in working memory. Cognitive load can be classified into three different types: intrinsic load, extraneous load, and germane load.

Intrinsic cognitive load is unavoidable as it’s the load directly associated with the intrinsic nature/characteristics of the task itself. No intrinsic load means that there’s no task to be performed.

Extraneous load is the extra cognitive load unnecessarily placed on the learner’s working memory because of poor instructional designing. The extraneous load is associated with the cognitive processes that don’t pertain to the task performance or the learning task (schema acquisition and automation).

On the other hand, germane load is the load that’s not associated with the intrinsic nature of the task itself, but is indeed associated with the essential cognitive processes necessary for the task performance or the learning task (schema acquisition and automation).

2. Whether cognitive loads can be manipulated and how they should be manipulated to enhance learning.

Intrinsic cognitive load can be manipulated through developing expertise in the task at hand. In other words, intrinsic cognitive load cannot be manipulated with reference to a particular level of expertise. Developing expertise decreases intrinsic cognitive load through acquisition of schemata and schema automation, which in turn frees up available resources in working memory, which can be used for performing other cognitive processes.  Another way to manipulate intrinsic load is through providing structural support such as increasing the learner’s prior knowledge via providing a preliminary training/instruction or chunking the task into small steps.

Extraneous cognitive load can be manipulated (reduced) by avoiding split-attention effect, using multiple modality effect (use of n-coding system), and using redundancy effect. Extraneous load can also be manipulated by means of expert-reversal effect. Reversal effect can negatively affect redundancy effect. It is important to note that as new knowledge is proceduralized and automatized or is integrated as a schema in LTM, progressively less descriptive information or support is required for comprehension and task performance, which means that much of the descriptive information and support that was once relevant can become redundant.

Germane cognitive load can be manipulated (increased) by instructional designing through providing cognitive processes conducive to learning (schema construction and automation).

Reduction of cognitive load can sometimes impair learning rather than enhancing it. This is due to the fact that optimal learning can occur when the cognitive load associated with the tasks relevant for the learning goals is filling the working memory to its full capacity or near full capacity. Reducing inappropriate types of cognitive load can lead to decreased learning outcome. While reducing extraneous cognitive load enhances learning, reducing the intrinsic load means providing an easier task, thus reducing the max attainable learning outcome. Similarly, reducing germane load means reducing cognitive processes relevant for attaining the learning goals.

So, simply attempting to reduce the overall cognitive load by setting the intrinsic load too low and reducing the germane load unknowingly can lead to minimizing the max attainable learning outcome. To ensure the optimal level of intrinsic cognitive load, the task difficulty must be aligned with the learner’s level of expertise. In a more precise sense, the task difficulty needs to be controlled and maintained within the learner’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) in order to maximize learning.

3. To what extent working memory is in fact required for learning.

Learning has occurred when a change has occurred in LTM (addition of new knowledge, creation of new schemata, increased speed and efficiency in retrieval, more efficient schemata, that is more integrative, etc.).  As far as the biologically secondary learning (which most of school learning is about) is concerned, these changes in LTM cannot occur unless cognitive elements are processed in working memory. The functions of working memory in learning are 1) cognitively manipulate (organize, structure, and make connections) information and 2) store the result in LTM.

4. How cognitive load can be measured.

in the way it is supposed to be done (congruent with a learning goal) and 2) to store the result in LTM more effectively (better way of long-term potentiation).

Discussion 14.4

(<= 3000 char) The Kirschner paper suggests reasons why inquiry strategies might not be effective. Are there reasons to employ inquiry strategies? If your answer is ‘yes’, explain how you would decide what those situations are and how you would go about it. If your answer is ‘no’, use the ULM to explain why this is the case for your teaching circumstances.

Constructivist approach does address the human cognitive architecture as it aims at knowledge construction. It is an essential part of both guided and unguided instructions. Inquiry strategies are based on both constructivist approach and unguided instruction, so the question is whether unguided instructional approach can actually produce constructivist learning outcomes (knowledge construction).

Inquiry strategy requires the learner to engage in active processing and knowledge construction, which is inline with the human cognitive structure for learning, but it is true only if the learner can “successfully” discover and construct essential information. It can work when a task is easy enough or within the ZDP, but when  the task is too difficult due to its intrinsic difficulty and the learner’s lack of prior knowledge, providing no guidance can be detrimental to learning.

Inquiry strategies assume that the learner is capable of executing the learning tasks all on his/her own, but if the task is too difficult due to its intrinsic difficulty and lack of sufficient prior knowledge, the task can be confusing and may lead to misconception or abandoning of the thought process and reasoning, resorting to a hasty conclusion that the learner himself/herself knows is wrong.

So, inquiry strategy itself can work if variables in the learning environment are controlled to adjust the task difficulty so that it will fit below or within the learner’s ZDP by selecting or designing a task that’s appropriate to the learner’s cognitive capacity and prior knowledge.

When the goal is to construct a whole picture (representation of the whole concept), presenting all the parts will make it easy to construct the whole picture. Partially presenting the parts will make it harder to construct the whole picture. Not presenting the parts at all will make it much harder to construct the whole picture.

If the goal is to construct the learner’s own idea (theory, principle, or philosophy), giving minimum or no guidance for finding and constructing partial or whole ideas does make sense since the answers or conclusions can be open-ended or there are no known solutions or conclusions that the learner needs to arrive at. Giving instructional explanations in these situations may interfere with the learner’s own self-explanation process. Additionally, some of the problems that exist in the world today don’t have proven answers or solutions yet and new ideas and perspectives may be welcomed.

It’s true that giving instructional explanation can interfere with the learner’s own self-explanation process, but when the task is beyond the learner’s ZDP, self-explanation and knowledge construction may not occur with the unguided instructional approach and it should be avoided.

Inquiry strategy, when successful, may increase retention and retrieval due to the extra processing that the learner has to perform in order to construct the to-be-learned knowledge. So, my hypothesis is that it is not knowledge construction, but it is the retention and retrieval that inquiry strategy is helping with most.

When problem-solving search requires exploration of a highly complex environment, the learner without sufficient exiting knowledge on the subject may not be able to discover or construct a solution, but the free exploration process may help to learn and improve how to solve a problem.

So, inquiry-based approaches may be utilized when:

• the task difficulty is controlled to fall below or within the learner’s ZDP;
• the learner already possesses foundational schemata to process the new information effectively;
• the goal of the task is attainable with no or minimal guidance;
• knowledge retention and retrieval are emphasized; and
• learning how to solve problems (strategies and approaches to problem-solving) is part of instructional goals.

It’s not a good idea to confuse inquiry-based approaches with a laissez faire approach. Simply giving minimum or no guidance and not controlling the variables in the learning environment by making sure that the learner can actually learn on his/her own are like a laissez faire approach and are like forfeiting the instructional responsibility.

Discussion 14.3

(<= 3000 char) The Aleven paper points to serious problems with respect to learner use of help materials. Assuming this is a motivation problem (i.e., failure to allocate attention), how might you develop strategies to increase the likelihood that students will use quality help materials when they are available.

Some of the reasons why students may not use help materials even when quality help materials are available are:

• Students are performance-oriented rather than learning/mastery-oriented.
• Learning context such as classroom goals doesn’t encourage mastery, but rather encourages performance.
• The task is too difficult due to its intrinsic difficulty and the student’s lack of sufficient prior knowledge.
• Students don’t possess high metacognitive skills.

The student’s goal orientation toward performance as opposed to mastery can lead to an overuse of executive help such as focusing on simply completing the task by getting the right answer. One way to alleviate this problem and promote mastery-oriented learning is to use a help feature that prompts the learner to self-explanations.

In classroom situations, if performance-oriented goal is the classroom culture, it may encourage avoidance of help seeking among students in order to avoid the embarrassment of having to ask for help as asking for help is most likely to be considered as being incompetent in such an environment. In most interactive learning environments (ILEs), this problem may not be as prevalent as in classroom settings. In ILEs, help seeking can easily be done anonymously by means of computer-based, pre-designed feedback, query-based Q&A, and tangent learning materials. Even in the online social learning environments, there’s much greater level of anonymity compared to the traditional classroom settings and it has been repeatedly reported increased participation in online social learning settings.

When the task difficulty is too high compared to the level of the learner’s prior knowledge, the learner may not be able to see and ask relevant questions and seek help effectively as he/she may not know the nature of his/her difficulties in the learning task at hand. This can lead to inefficient help seeking behaviors especially with on-demand help approaches where the learning environment provides help only at the learner’s request and the learner controls the level of help. As the learner with a low prior knowledge level tend to benefit less from on-demand help and more from system-initiated help/feedback, creating a good balance between system-initiated help/feedback and student-initiated (on-demand) help seems to be one way to address different types/levels of learners all at once. Controlling the task difficulty and providing preliminary instruction or information may also increase the likelihood that the learner will be able to use help materials more effectively.

Metacognitive skills or help-seeking skills can also be directly taught. Providing preliminary instructions on help-seeking may be another way to address ineffective help-seeking behaviors.

Discussion 14.2

(<=4000 char) Briefly describe the Vygotskian Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Using only the terminology of the ULM, describe one or a few situations in which the ZPD might be used to describe the learning strategy issue involved.

When a task is too easy, it often causes boredom. When the task is too difficult, it often causes frustration. The zone of proximal development (ZPD) is based on the principle that optimal learning takes place at certain difficulty levels that are neither too hard nor too easy. This range of task difficulty that promotes the optimal learning is called zone of proximal development that ranges from the difficulty level that the learner can perform the task on his/her own without external help to the level that is slightly more difficult than the learner can perform or complete on his/her own without structural support support/scaffolding. Locating the ZPD for each learner and recognizing where he or she is within the ZPD can help educators define the learner’s immediate needs to gain the maximum learning benefit.

In designing and implementing an inquiry-based instructional strategy, it is crucial to locate the ZPD for each learner and recognize where he or she is within the ZPD to ensure that the strategy will produce desired learning outcomes. Inquiry strategy assumes that the learner is capable of executing the learning tasks all on his or her own, but if the task is too difficult due to its intrinsic difficulty and the learner’s lack of sufficient prior knowledge, it creates high cognitive load and the task can be confusing and may lead to misconception or abandoning of the thought process and reasoning, resorting to a hasty conclusion that the learner himself/herself knows is wrong.  So, for inquiry strategy to work, the task difficulty needs to be controlled below or within the learner’s ZPD.

The ZPD plays a vital role in skill development. For instance, in accent reduction training in ESL, keeping the corrective instructions and exercises within the student’s ZPD can ensure a student the fastest and easiest result in the accent reduction. Locating the ZPD for the student by examining his/her current accent and assessing his/her accent reduction needs is the first step. It is important to provide a scaffolding and keep the student on the difficult end of the ZPD while providing corrective instructions and exercises. By monitoring the student’s improvement and recognizing where the student is within the ZPD, the coach must set a new ZPD for the student as he/she moves toward the easy side of his/her ZPD. Locating the ZPD for the student works both directions. If the student struggles with certain accent trainings, putting the student in the previous ZPD is often necessary. The same principle can apply to increasing the complexity of sentences in conversation/speaking and writing in ELS instructions.

Unfortunately, there are a number of cases that international students who came to study in the US don’t place themselves in their ZPD for accent reduction, increasing their sentence complexities, or even their vocabulary levels. After four years or 10 years of living and studying in the U.S., many of them often don’t show much improvement in their procedural knowledge in these areas.

Discussion 14.1

(<= 3000 char) In what ways can technology help to provide an environment in which learner’s access materials better suited for their immediate learning needs?

Due to its portability, processing power, and global network, technology today can provide learners with three A’s as in accessing anything, anytime, anywhere. Most immediate learning needs usually fall into one of these three A’s.

Immediate learning needs may be accessing particular materials (anything) such as textbook content, lecture videos, syllabi, and assignment instructions. The ability to store and disseminate them in the digital electronic format combined with the processing power of consumer-level client technology made it possible to access almost any learning materials through a single device such as a personal computer or a handheld device. In 80’s and early 90’s, we needed different devices for different types of media: paper hard-copy or microfilm for written materials, VCR and TV set for videos, and cassette or CD player for audio. Limitation in the ready availability of such devises and difficulty to disseminate those media were major obstacles accessing anything learners wanted.

Immediate learning needs may be to access the learning materials at particular time of the day whenever needs arise (anytime). As portability of technology has increased, the level of anytime access has also increased. I remember I used to carry dictionaries, textbooks, and my favorite books in my backpack (which weighed about 50lbs) all day long to school, while in school, and after school. While the lack of portability didn’t discourage me from ensuring the anytime access to those materials, it put so much burden on my body and lifestyle. Today, a handheld device such as a cellphone or PDA can have multiple dictionaries. Thousands of books and articles can be stored and carried with electronic readers such as Kindle, Nook, and iPad. The 50lbs of backpack could have been a 10 ounce, 10-inch pad that can easily slid into the pocket of my jacket had we had today’s technology when I was in college.  It could have been so much easier and made my life so much easier and more importantly efficient.

Another immediate learning needs may be to access materials anywhere the learner may happen to be at.  Today’s networking technology and infrastructure which includes large-scale and small-size wireless networks (WAN, home wireless router, etc.) made it possible to be connected to vast arrays of networks (the Internet/WWW being the most prevalent example) and databases almost anywhere you may be. Not so long time ago, in order to access journal articles, students had to actually be in the library building. Today, due to digitization of journal articles, more and more articles can be accessed electronically wherever there is access to the Internet, which is practically everywhere. My personal files can be accessed and shared with others from anywhere I happen to be at.

Aside from the cost associated with obtaining the three A’s, the learner’s needs to access just the right material/information at the right time and right place are now vastly accommodated.  To ensure that 20 years ago was a physically arduous task and, for the most part, the learner had to adapt his/her lifestyle to the learning environment. Today, the learner can make the learning environment accommodate his/her lifestyle to a great extent.