Learning theories and their implications on educational technology

LEARNING THEORIES AND INTEGRATION MODELS

Skinner’s Behaviorist Theories of Learning : Building on the S-R Connection

Internal processes involved in learning could not be seen directly. Concentrated on cause and effect relationships that could be established by observation. Human behavior could be shaped by “contingencies of reinforcement” or situations in which reinforcement for a learner is made contingent on a desired response. Basic Teachings

Positive Reinforcement Negative Reinforcement Punishment THREE kinds of situations that can shape behavior

Teaching is a process of arranging contingencies of reinforcement effectively to bring about learning High level of capabilities as critical thinking and creativity could be taught by reinforcement Learning is simply a matter of establishing chains of behavior through principles of reinforcement Programmed instruction is the most efficient means available for learning skills Implications for Education

Modern instructional design models and methods have their roots in Gagne. One component of a systematic instructional design process was the use of learning hierarchies to develop curriculum maps. Basic Teachings

Most drill and practice softwares were based on Skinner’s reinforcement principles. Tutorial software usually is based on the idea of programmed instruction. The idea behind drill software is to increase the frequency of correct answering in response to stimuli, these packages often are used to help students memorize important basic information, while tutorial software gives students an efficient path through concepts they want to learn. Implications for Technology Integration

The Information-Processing Theorists: The Mind as Computer

The mind as computer Based on a model of memory and storage The brain contains certain structures that process information much like a computer The human mind has three kinds of memories or “stores” Basic Teachings

Sensory Register Short-Term Memory (STM) Long-Term Memory (LTM) THREE kinds of memories or “stores”

Become the basis for many common classroom practices. (for example, teachers ask interesting questions and display eye-catching materials to increase the likelihood that students will pay attention to the new topic) While presenting information they give instruction that emphasizes important points and characteristics in the new material and suggests methods of encoding or remembering them by linking them to information students already know. Implications for Education

Teachers also give students practice exercise to help ensure the transfer of information from short-term memory to long-term memory. The use of Gagne’s “Bottom-up approach” – students learn lower skills first. Ausubel’s “Top-down” approach – teachers provide advance organizer or overviews of the way information will be presented to help students develop mental frameworks on which to “hang” new information. Implications for Education

Information Processing Theories have guided the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications – an attempt to develop computer software that can stimulate the thinking and learning behaviors of humans. Many of the drill and practice softwares available are designed to help students encode and store newly learned information into long-term memory. Implications for Technology Integration

Gagne’s Principles: Providing Tools for the Teachers

Gagne built on the work of behavioral and information processing theories by translating principles from their learning theories into practical instructional strategies that teachers could employ with directed instruction. Gagne is best known for his “events of instruction”, “Types of learning”, and “learning hierarchies”. Basic Teachings

1. Gaining Attention 2. Informing the learner of the objective 3. Stimulating recall of pre-requisite knowledge 4. Presenting new material 5. Providing learning guidance 6. Eliciting performance 7. Providing feedback about correctness 8. Assessing performance 9. Enhancing retention and recall 9 Events of Instruction

1. Intellectual skills Problem solving Higher order rules Defined concepts Concrete concepts Discriminations 2. Cognitive Strategies 3. Verbal information 4. Motor skills 5. Attitudes Types of Learning

The development of “intelelctual skills requires learning that amounts to a building process. Lower level skills provide a necessary foundation for higher level ones. To teach a skill, a teacher must first identify its prerequisite skills and make sure the students possess them. The list of building block skills is called learning hierarchies. Learning Hierarchies

The events of instruction and learning hierarchies have been widely used to develop systematic instructional design principles. Many school curriculum development projects still use a learning hierarchy approach to sequencing skills. Implications for Education

Gagne’s events of instruction could be used to plan lessons using each kind of instructional software (drill, tutorial, simulation) Only tutorial could “stand by itself” and accomplish all the necessary events of instruction. The other kinds of software require teacher-led activities to accomplish events before and after software use. Implications for Technology Integration

Systems Approaches and the Design of Instruction: Managing the Complexity of Teaching

Systems approaches to designing instruction had great influence on training programs. Performance objectives and sequences for instructional activities still are widely used. Implications for Education

Most directed models for using technology resources are based on systems approaches, that is, teachers set objectives for a lesson, then develop a sequence of activities. A software package or an internet activity is selected to carry out part of the instructional sequence. (For example, the teacher may introduce a principle of genetics, then allow students to experiement with a simulation package to “breed” cats in order to see the principle in action. Implications for Technology Integration

John Dewey: Educational Reform as Social Activism

Curriculum should arise from students’ interests. Curriculum topics should be integrated, rather than isolated from each other. Education is growth, rather than an end in itself. Education occurs through its connection with life, rather than through participation in curriculum. Learning should be hands-on and experience based, rather than abstract. Basic Teachings

Dewey’s philosophy directly caused some of the trends in current educational practice like interdisciplinary curriculum, hands-on, experience based curriculum. Implications for Education

Dewey would likely have approved of technologies like the internet being used to help students communicate with each other and learn about their society. Dewey’s emphasis on the need for cooperative learning would mesh well with technologies used for developing group projects and presentations. Implications for Technology Integration

The Contributions of Lev Vygotsky: Building a Scaffold to Learning

Cognitive development is directly related to and based on social development. What children learn and how they think are derived directly from the culture around them. The social world is the source of all concepts, ideas, facts, skills, and attitudes. Basic Teachings

ZPD refers to the difference between the levels of cognitive functioning of an adult –expert and child-novice. Teachers could provide good instruction by finding out where each child was in his or her development and building on the child’s experiences. This building process is called “ Scaffolding ”. Teachers promote students’ cognitive development by presenting some classroom tasks that they can complete only with assistance, i.e. within each student’s ZPD. Zone of Proximal Development

Education is intended to develop children’s personalities. Human personality is linked to its creative potential. Teaching and learning assume that students master their inner values through some personal activity. The most valuable methods for student learning are those that correspond to their individual developmental stages and needs, and therefore, can not be uniform across students. Implications for Education

Many constructivists models of technology use the concepts of scaffolding and developing each individual’s potential. Many of the visual tools are used under the assumption that they can help bring the student up from their level of understanding to a higher level by showing graphic examples and by giving them real-life experiences relevant to their individual neds. Implications for Technology Integration

Jean Piaget’s Theories: Cognitive Development in Children

Sensorimotor stage (birth to 2) Pre-Operational Stage ( 2 to 7) Concrete Operational Stage (7 to 11) Formal Operational Stage (12 to 15) Basic Teachings

Children explore the world around them through their senses and motor activities Children can not differentiate between themselves and their environment Children begin to have some perceptions of cause and effects. Children develop the ability to follow something with their eyes. Sensorimotor Stage (birth to 2)

They develop greater abilities to communicate through speech and engage in symbolic activities such as drawing objects and playing by pretending and imagining. Develop numerical abilities such as the skill of assigning a number to each object in a group as it is counted. Unable to do “conservation task” (task that call for recognizing that a substance remains the same even though its appearance changes) Pre-operational Stage (2 to 7)

Children increase in abstract reasoning ability. Develop ability to generalize from concrete experiences. Can perform conservation task. Concrete Operational Stage (7 to 11)

They can form and test hypotheses They can organize information They can reason scientifically They can show results of abstract thinking in the form of symbolic materials Formal Operations Stage (12 to 15)

There is a need for concrete examples and experiences when teaching abstract concepts to young children who may not have reached a formal operations stage. Implications for Education

Many technology – using teachers feel that using visual resources such as simulations can help raise children’s developmental levels more quickly than they would have occured through maturation. Other educators feel that young children should experience things in the “real world” before seeing them represented in the more abstract ways they are shown in software.(e.g. Computer simulations) Implications for Technology Integration

The Contributions of Jerome Brunner: Learning as Discovery

Enactive Stage (birth to 3) Iconic Stage ( 3 to 8) Symbolic Stage (8 and above) Three Stages of Development

Children perceive the environment solely through actions they initiate. They describe and explain objects solely in terms of what a child can do with them. Showing and modeling have more learning value than telling for children at this stage. Enactive Stage (birth to 3)

Children can remember and use information through imagery (mental pictures or icons). Visual memory increases and children can imagine or think about actions without actually experiencing them. Decisions are made on the basis of perceptions, rather than language. Iconic Stage (3 to 8)

Children begin to use symbols (words or drawn pictures) to represent people, activities, and things. They have the ability to think and talk about things in abstract terms. They can better understand mathematical principles and the use of symbolic idioms. Symbolic Stage (8 and above)

Discovery learning is an approach to instruction through which students interact with their environment by exploring and manipulating objects, wrestling with questions and controversies or performing experiments. Students were more likely to understand and remember concepts they had discovered in the course of their own exploration. Teachers have found that discovery learning is most successful when students have pre-requisite knowledge and undergo some structured experiences. Implications for Education

Radical reconstructivist uses of technology employ a discovery learning approach. Use of technology as guided discovery learning approach. Implications for Technology Integration

One of the first to raise national consciousness about the potential role of technology in creating alternatives to what he percieved as inadequate and harmful educational methods. He popularized the use of LOGO (a high level programming language originally designed as an AI language but later popularized by Papert as an environment to allow children to learn problem solving behaviors and skills. Basic Teachings

Children should be allowed to “teach themselves” with LOGO. In a LOGO environment, new ideas are often acquired as a means of satisfying a personal need to do something one could not do before. Papert feel that children need great flexibility to develop their own powerful ideas or insights about new concepts. Implications for Education

Papert perceived Logo as a resource with ideal properties for encouraging learning. LOGO is graphics oriented, it allows children to see cause and effect relationships between the logic of programming commands and the pictures that result. This logical, cause and effect quality of logo activities makes possible “microworlds,” or self-contained environments where all actions are orderly and rule governed. Implications for Technology Integration

He called these microworlds, “incubators for knowledge” where children could pose and test out hypotheses. After LOGO, technology resources began to be evalauted according to how they could be used as “microworlds” and “incubators for knowledge” in which learners could generate their own knowledge. Implications for Technology Integration

The Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt (CTGV): Tying Technology to Constructivism

Preventing Inert knowledge The nature of situated cognition and the need for anchored instruction Building knowledge through generative activities Basic Teachings

The CTGV proposed that the best way of providing instruction that would meet all the required criteria was to present it as videodisc based scenarios posing interesting but difficult problems for students to solve. Implications for Education & Technology Integration

Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences

Gardner is the only one to define the role of intelligence in learning Gardner’s theory is that at least 8 different and relatively independent types of intelligence exist. Linguistic Musical Logico-Mathematical Spatial Bodily-kinesthetic Intrapersonal Interpersonal Naturalist Basic Teachings

If Gardner’s theory is correct, then IQ tests (which tend to stress linguistic and logical – mathematical abilities) may not be the best way to judge a given student’s ability to learn, and traditional academic tasks may not be the best reflection of ability. Teachers should try to determine which type or types of intelligence each student has and direct the student to learning activities that capitalize on these innate abilities. Distributed intelligence may be considered where each student makes a different, but valued contribution to creating a product. Implications for Education

Gardner’s theory meshes well with the trend toward using technology to support group work. When educators assign students to groups to develop a multimedia product, they can assign students roles based on their type of intelligence. Implications for Technology Integration

Learning theories and their implications on educational technology

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Learning theories and their implications on educational technology