Technologies For Learning

WHAT ARE TECHNOLOGIES FOR LEARNING?

The concept of technologies for learning was introduced in Chapter 1. Let's explore it together in more de tail now. You may want to reread the descriptions of learning and technology in that chapter. We define technologies for learning as specific teaching-learning patterns that serve reliably as templates for achieving demonstrably effective learning.

As mentioned in Chapter 1, successful instruction, regardless of the psychological perspective-behaviorist, cognitivist, constructivist, or social-psychologist includes a number of common features:

• Active participation and interaction
• Practice
• Individualized instruction
• Reinforcement or feedback
• Realistic context
• Cooperative groups

COOPERATIVE LEARNING

Cooperative learning involves small heterogeneous groups of students working together to achieve a common academic goal or task while working together to learn col laboration and social skills. Group members are intende pendent that is, each is dependent on the others for achieving their goal. As a technology for learning, cooper ative learning involves active participation by all students. Individual differences among students are minimized as they practice the content and social skills. These should be practiced in a realistic, often simulated context while re ceiving feedback from peers, the teacher, or a computer.

LEARNING TOGETHER MODEL

Johnson and Johnson (1993) have determined that feed back about your performance-knowing what is working well and what is not-is a critical factor in successful learn ing. Further, their research indicates that the most power ful and effective source of feedback is another person. For this reason, they have developed a specific format for co operative learning that maximizes interpersonal feedback. Johnson and Johnson's interdependent learning group, known as the Learning Together model, requires four basic elements:

1. Positive interdependence

2. Face-to-face helping interaction

3. Individual accountability

4. Teaching interpersonal and small-group skills

Team-Assisted Individualization (TAI) 

Robert Slavin (1985) and his colleagues have developed a different format for cooperative learning, Team-As sisted Individualization (TAI), which they developed for mathematics instruction in grades three to six. TAI was specifically intended to avoid some of the problems. encountered with individualized programmed instruction. It incorporates features that allow students to pro ceed more efficiently and effectively on their own with fewer demands on the teacher for individual checking and motivating. The format includes direct instruction to small groups, individual followup practice using pro grammed materials, and team study techniques (Figure 2.1). TAI has achieved impressive results in field tests. Not only do TAI students score higher on computation and application skills, they also show better social relations with students with disabilities and with students of other ethnic and cultural origin. TAI follows this pattern:

1. Teaching groups

2. Team formation

3. Self-instructional material

4. Team study

Computer-Based Cooperative Learning

Computer assistance can alleviate some of the logistical obstacles to using cooperative learning methods, particularly the tasks of managing information, allocating different individual responsibilities, presenting and monitoring instructional material, analyzing learner responses, administering tests, and scoring and providing remediation for those tests (Figure 2.2).

Mentioned earlier was the critical problem of ensuring that learners recognize their interdependence. Some soft ware programs parcel out different information to differ ent individuals so that they have to constantly check with each other and pool their information to make good decisions. Other programs provide information or give. feedback only in displays that are flashed for a limited pe riod of time. Group members are forced to delegate re sponsibility for watching for certain kinds of messages if they are to succeed. Each member has something differ ent and essential to contribute to the group deliberations.

GAMES

The terms game, simulation, and simulation game are often used interchangeably. But because these terms have different meanings, we will discuss them separately here (Figure 2.3). A game is an activity in which participants follow prescribed rules that differ from those of real life as they strive to attain a challenging goal.

The distinction between play and reality is what makes games entertaining. Most people seem to enjoy setting aside the logical rules of everyday life occasionally and en tering an artificial environment with different dynamics. For example, in chess the markers each have arbitrarily different movement patterns based roughly on the mili tary potentials of certain societal roles in some ancient time. Players capture each other's markers by observing elaborate rules of play rather than simply reaching across the board to grab the marker.

SIMULATIONS

A simulation is an abstraction or simplification of some real-life situation or process. In simulations, par ticipants usually play a role that involves them in interactions with other people or with elements of the simulated environment. A business management simulation, for example, might put participants into the role of production manager of a mythical corporation, provide them with statistics about business conditions, and direct them to negotiate a new labor contract with the union bargaining team.

Simulations can vary greatly in the extent to which they fully reflect the realities of the situation they are in tended to model. A simulation that incorporates too many details of a complex situation might be too com plicated and time consuming for the intended audience. On the other hand, if the model is oversimplified, it may fail completely to communicate its intended point. A well-designed simulation provides a faithful model of elements that are most salient to the immediate objective, and it informs the instructor and participants about elements that have been simplified or eliminated.

Simulators

Competencies in the motor skill domain require practice under conditions of high feedback, which gives learners the feel of the action. Although it might be ideal to prac tice such skills under real-life conditions, some (e.g., piloting an airplane or driving a car) can be practiced much more safely and conveniently by means of simulated conditions. The device employed to represent a physical system in a scaledown form is referred to as a simulator.

Role Plays

Role play refers to a type of simulation in which the dominant feature is relatively open-ended interaction among people. In essence, a role play asks someone to imagine that she is another person or is in a particular situation; the person then behaves as the other person would or in the way the situation seems to demand. The purpose is to learn something about another kind of person or about the dynamics of an unfamiliar situation. The role descriptions may be very general, leaving participants great latitude. The purpose in many cases is to allow the person's own traits to emerge so that they can be discussed and possibly modified. In other simulations, such as historical recreations, highly detailed roles are described to project the realities of life in that period.

SIMULATION GAMES

A simulation game combines the attributes of a simulation (role playing, a model of reality) with the attrib utes of a game (striving toward a goal, specific rules). Like a simulation, it may be relatively high or low in its modeling of reality. Like a game, it may or may not entail competition.

Because they combine the characteristics of both simulations and games, instructional simulation games have advantages, limitations, and applications in common with both formats.

LEARNING CENTERS

Another technology for learning, the learning center, is a self-contained environment designed to promote in dividual or small-group learning around a specific task. A learning center may be as simple as a table and some chairs around which students discuss, or it may be as sophisticated as several networked computers used by a group for collaborative research and problem solving.

An individual teacher may use one learning center within one classroom as a way of breaking the class into small groups to perform hands-on activities (eg, in a science class with a laboratory-type learning cen ter). Or a whole school may be organized to incorpo rate learning centers into the daily mix of activities, as in the Project CHILD schools; see "Close-Up" on Page 42.

PROGRAMMED INSTRUCTION

Programmed instruction was chronologically the first technology for learning and is an explicit application of principles of learning theory-operant conditioning or reinforcement theory. Since reinforcement theory sug gested that people have a tendency to learn behaviors that are followed by reinforcers, psychologist B. F. Skin ner wanted to develop a method of instruction whereby students would spend most of their time performing the skills or displaying the knowledge being taught-not just sitting and listening. And each performance must somehow be followed by a reinforcer. Skinner decided that since humans were naturally curious, he could use

"knowledge of the correct response" as the reinforcer that would follow the correct performance.

PROGRAMMED TEACHING

Programmed teaching, also known as direct instruction, is an attempt to apply the principles of programmed instruction in a large-group setting. In this approach, a whole class is broken into smaller groups of 5 to 10 students. These smaller groups are led through a lesson by a teacher, paraprofessional, or student peer following a highly prescriptive lesson plan. The critical features of these lessons include union reponding by learners to prompts (or cues) given by the instructor, rapid pacing, and procedures for reinforcement or correction.

PERSONALIZED SYSTEM OF INSTRUCTION

The final technology for this chapter is the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI), sometimes referred to as the Keller Plan after Fred Keller, who developed it. It can be described as a template for managing instruction. It is derived from the same roo as mastery learning, the idea that all students can succeed-achieve basic mastery but need different amounts of time and practice to get there. A major principle of mas tery learning is that students should not be permitted to go on to later units of study until they have demonstrated that they have mastered the prerequisite knowledge and skills.