Software for managing complex learning: Examples from an educational psychology course

Inquiry-based instruction including problem-, project-, and case-based methods often incorporate complex sets of learning activities. The numerous activities run the risk of becoming disconnected in the minds of learners and teachers. STAR.Legacy is a software shell that can help designers organize learning activities into an inquiry cycle that is easy to understand and pedagogically sound. To ensure that classroom teachers can adapt the inquiry activities according to their local resources and needs, STAR.Legacy was built upon four types of design principles: learner centered, knowledge centered, assessment centered, and community centered. We describe how a STAR.Legacy constructed for an educational psychology course helped preservice teachers design and learn about effective inquiry-based instruction. This work was supported by grant #R305F60090 from the Department of Education. The authors thank the educational psychology students for their contributions to this paper and Amy Ryce for her editorial talents.     

Toward a Learning Technologies knowledge network

The National Science Foundation-funded Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT) is designed to be a national resource for stimulating research and development of technology-enabled solutions to critical problems in K-14 science, math, engineering and technology learning. The Center, launched at the end of 1997, is organized around four themes identified as areas where research is likely to result in major gains in teaching and learning, and sponsors research across disciplines and institutions in its four theme areas. CILT brings together experts in the fields of cognitive science, educational technologies, computer science, subject matter learning, and engineering. It engages business through an Industry Alliance Program and is also training postdoctoral students. CILT's founding organizations are SRI International's Center for Technology in Learning, University of California at Berkeley (School of Education and Department of Computer Science), Vanderbilt University's Learning Technology Center, and the Concord Consortium. Through its programs, CILT seeks to reach beyond these organizations to create a web of organizations, individuals, industries, schools, foundations, government agencies, and labs, that is devoted to the production, sharing and use of new knowledge about how learning technologies can dramatically improve the processes and outcomes of learning and teaching. This paper describes the rationale and operations of the Center, and first-year progress in defining a set of CILT partnership projects with many other institutions that came out of our national theme-team workshops. Roy Pea, of SRI International, is Director of CILT. Marcia Linn (U. California, Berkeley), John Bransford (Vanderbilt University), Barbara Means (SRI International), and Robert Tinker (Concord Consortium), serve as CILT's coprincipal investigators. Sherry Hsi (Ubiquitous Computing) and Sean Brophy (Technology and Assessment Models) are among the first group of CILT Postdoctoral Fellows. Jeremy Roschelle (SRI International) and Nancy Songer (University of Michigan) are CILT theme-team leaders. Roy Pea and Marcia Linn would like to thank the Spencer Foundation for support during their year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, in which they developed the CILT concept with the other authors. CILT is funded by National Science Foundation grant #CDA-9720384. Pea and Linn would also like to acknowledge contributions to this article by the many authors of CILT partnership project proposals, and by theme-team leaders. The authors thankfully acknowledge Donna Baranski-Walker for her many contributions to developing the CILT Industrial Alliance Program while serving as its Director in 1998.     

Dynamic visual support for story comprehension and mental model building by young,at-risk children

Multimedia technology allows precise coordination of linguistic and visual information and may provide teachers with tools for enhancing literacy foundations in children–especially those who might otherwise be at-risk for school failure. This research explores the hypothesis that a multimedia environment with dynamic visual support facilitates language comprehension when children listen to short stories. Kindergarten children heard stories in three conditions: Helpful video, in which dynamic, silent video accompanied the beginning of stories; No video, in which children only heard the stories; and Minimal video, in which static images of characters and places accompanied the beginning of stories. In all conditions, the ending of the story was presented without visual support. Overall, the pattern of results suggests that dynamic visual support can provide a framework for understanding and remembering linguistic information.This research was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Development, grant P01 HD15051-12. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of that organization.     

A theory-driven approach to assessing the cognitive effects of PBL

Medical schools are increasingly looking to case-based formats such as problem-based learning (PBL) for their medical students. However, the effects of PBL have not been adequately assessed for an informed decision. An approach to assessment should consider not just the knowledge outcomes expected of all students, but should be tailored to the theoretical goals of PBL: clinical reasoning, integration of scientific and clinical knowledge, and lifelong learning skills. This means that problem-solving processes as well as products need to be measured. In addition, cognitive measures associated with expert performance can be used to assess the extent to which PBL affects the development of expertise. In this study, students taking an elective in PBL were compared with students taking other electives on a realistic pathophysiological explanation task. The problem-solving protocols were examined for coherence, use of science concepts, strategy use, and self-directed learning. The results indicate that cognitive measures can be used to distinguish students who have participated in PBL from their counterparts in terms of knowledge, reasoning, and learning strategies. This suggests that such measures may play a meaningful role in assessment of student learning.     

Telecommunications in rural America: An appraisal and a prediction

Abstract

Rural America has historically been plagued with a disproportionate shortage of health, education, and other public services. However, the application of rapidly changing telecommunications technologies can alleviate many of the problems associated with these isolated and “technologically undernourished” areas. Technologies such as low‐power television, direct broadcast satellites, and satellite‐fed cable services offer the opportunity for building a rural telecommunications network and thus improving services and the quality of life. However, in order for this goal to be realized, the economic constraints presented by insufficient consumer demand and unprofitable markets must be overcome. Direct government subsidization or increased support of projects may be necessary to encourage the private sector to increase investment in telecommunications facilities in rural communities.     

Students as ‘Producers’: using videodisc technology to create stories

The use of videodisc technology to teach a variety of subject matter across many disciplines is an area of interest to many educators. This paper discusses an interactive videodisc program that was implemented in a classroom setting with fifth and sixth grade children. The program, called Producer, was introduced to children and then used as part of a six‐week summer enrichment classroom. A discussion of how children interacted with the Producer program to create stories is discussed based on videotapes of the teaching sessions. The implications of using videodisc technology to teach children are reviewed.     

Rethinking advanced high school coursework: tackling the depth/breadth tension in the AP US Government and Politics course

This paper reports a design experiment that attempted to strike a balance between coverage and learning in an exam-oriented, college-preparatory, high school course—Advanced Placement (AP) US Government and Politics. Theoretically, the study provides a conceptual framework for penetrating the depth/breadth tension in such courses, which are known for coverage and perhaps ‘rigour’, but lag behind contemporary research on how people learn and what learning is. Methodologically, the paper details a mixed-methods study of an alternative approach to AP coursework, conducted with 314 students across three high schools. First-year findings indicate that a course of semi-repetitive, content-rich project cycles can lead to same or higher scores on the AP exam along with deeper conceptual learning, but that attention is needed to a collateral problem: orienting students to a new kind of coursework.     

Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K–12 Education in the United States: Findings Related to Research and Evaluation

The Panel on Educational Technology was organized in April 1995 under the auspices of the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) to provide advice to the President on matters related to the application of information technologies to K–12 education in the United States. Its findings and recommendations were set forth in March 1997 in the Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K–12 Education in the United States. This report was based on a review of the research literature and on written submissions and oral briefings from a number of academic and industrial researchers, practicing educators, software developers, governmental agencies, and professional and industry organizations involved in various ways with the application of technology to education. Its most important finding is that a large-scale program of rigorous, systematic research on education in general and educational technology in particular will ultimately prove necessary to ensure both the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of technology use within our nation's K–12 schools. Finding that less than 0.1 percent of our nation's expenditures for elementary and secondary education are currently invested to determine which educational techniques actually work, and to find ways to improve them—an extremely low level relative to comparable ratios within the private sector—the Panel recommended that this figure be increased over a period of several years to at least 0.5 percent, and sustained at that level on an ongoing basis. Further, because no one state, municipality, or private firm could hope to capture more than a small fraction of the benefits associated with a significant advance in our understanding of how best to educate K–12 students, the Panel concluded that such funding will have to be provided largely at the federal level in order to avoid a systematic underinvestment (attributable to a classical form of economic externality) relative to the level that would be optimal for the nation as a whole. This paper originally appeared as Section 8 of the report.     

A Comparison of Lecture-Based and Challenge-Based Learning in a Workplace Setting: Course Designs,Patterns of Interactivity,and Learning Outcomes

We describe findings from a research partnership involving a global airline manufacturing company (The Boeing Company), and learning scientists and aeronautical engineers from the University of Washington. Our starting point for the partnership focused on an 8-hour introductory composites course that was designed for company employees. In phase one, learning scientists observed the company's course development activities and the course as taught by company experts. In phase two, we collaboratively designed and implemented a quasi-experimental study comparing two approaches to teaching. One involved lectures with PowerPoint slides. The second, a “challenge-based” learning approach, combined a set of composites-relevant challenges with individual, small-group, and large-group collaborative inquiry. Comparisons between these methods showed greater interaction among participants in the challenge-based group. In addition, the challenge-based group performed significantly better on posttest items requiring integration and synthesis of concepts. Increased interactivity in the challenge course provided opportunities for participants to articulate connections among concepts and may have contributed to the challenge participants' better synthesis of learned concepts. This work highlighted the benefits for learning scientists of collaborating with industry partners to explore learning in workplace settings, as these settings provide illuminating contrasts to the structures of teaching, learning, and assessment found in schools.