Three Perspectives on Teaching and Learning DesignNicholas D. Fila, Mel Chua, Corey Schimpf, and Farrah Fayyaz9/26/2012 – Design, Cognition, and Learning class notesReleased under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 license – feel free to share!

These notes are from a small group class discussion about various lens and frameworks that can be used to think about teaching and learning design. We grouped things into three general lens – in chronological order, they are: (1) the behaviorist view, which focuses on externally viewable stimulus-responses, (2) the cognitive view, which focuses on the internal mental constructs that individual people construct in their heads to organize information, and (3) the situative view, which considers knowledge to be embodied outside an individual in the artifacts and communities they interact with. They look strikingly different in practice.

Behaviorist Cognitive Situative

Viewpointon mind

Parallel CS history

“The mind is a black box. We don't care what happens inside it, only what we see outside.”

Behaviorism was developed before PCs were widespread. Computer scientists were talking about the Chinese Room and the Turing Test, which are both about the computer as black box and the importance of watching external responses.

“The mind is an information processing machine. We model the heck out of it.”

Cognitive theories bloomed at the same time as the PC revolution. Expert knowledge was a hot CS topic; how do we model the decision-making processes of experts using a computer?

“Don't talk about a single mind – talk instead about a network of minds, embodied in a world.”

Situative theories came of age around the same time as the internet exploded, facilitating communication and social networking across a distance in a way humanity had never seen before.

What is knowing?

Knowing is stimulus-response. Individuals develop responses or patterns or responses to various stimuli or cues. Knowledge is the organization of these contextual responses.

Individuals develop schemata to help them organize and understand new information. The closer info is to existing schemata, the easier it is to process. Knowledge can be considered the extent of one’s schemata, or the concepts one understands.

Knowledge is situated within communities, which include people as well as artifacts. Individual knowing can be thought of as the extent to which one is integrated into the community, thus knowing is attributed to the system rather than the individual.

What is learning?

Learning is sequential, with simpler tasks acting as prerequisites for more difficult tasks. The learner needs to be shaped to learning environment, not the other way around. Taking this view of learning may result in rote/mechanical knowledge.

Learning is an act of active process construction that is best supported by pedagogies of engagement. Misconceptions may develop as a result of less strict learning schemes.

Learning is about becoming able to participate in a community of practice, and is entirely situated in the dialogues and practices of that community. It is a social construct; if the community accepts you as having learned, you have learned.

How transfer works

Ability to transfer knowledge is based on similarity of knowledge to that required in new situations. The goal would be to expose to comprehensive stimuli so that responses are applicable to a broader range of situations.

The general schema is acquired first. With practice applying this schema to different situations, more schemata can be introduced, so there's sort of a transfer-begets-more-transfer effect.

Transfer of knowledge requires attunement to constraints and affordances that are common to both learning and transfer situations. Unlike the cognitive view, situative theory says that all knowledge is learned in a specific situation – even if you are learning a general schema, you encounter a specific variant of it in a particular time and place. We generalize from there.

How to motivate learners

Extrinsically, with carrot and stick. There is an emphasis on negative reinforcement and mastery (get it right before you're allowed to move on).

Intrinsically. The motivation to learn happens when existing knowledge is not sufficient for new situations.

With identity. As one begins to identify oneself as a member of the community, they are more motivated to learn and participate in the community.

What does it look like?

• Routine• Goals, feedback, reinforcement• Individual learning• A lot of QA engineering• Most lab assignments• Heathkits

• Interactive• Non-routine• Most senior design and

capstone/project courses in engineering

• Inquiry, social• Identity development• Human-centered design• Any book discussing IDEO• EPICS (community-service

engineering projects at Purdue)

Curricular design

Sequential based on complexity Sequential based on distance from current schemata; general

Situated in disciplinary discourse and representation; authentic

How to test

Tests of knowledge (uniform) Extended projects (variety of excellence)

Participation in inquiry and social practices

So what for design learning?

• Suggests one right way to do design. Ability is based on a hierarchy of more complex skills.

• Expose students to a variety of simple tasks with gradually increased complexity

• Likely little creativity, more consistent with technical design

• Extended design projects• Development of robust

schemata such that suggests can handle unpredictable design situations

• Opportunities for creativity and cross-disciplinary work

• Thrust students into disciplinary design processes (through internships or even an apprenticeship model)

• Do authentic projects for real clients

• Develop disciplinary ways of knowing

• Difficulty of developing shared understanding between disciplines

What is design about?

Getting the right answer! (We'll set criteria beforehand as to what makes an answer “right.”)

Transfer and generalization, making a solution that will work for as many people as possible.

Understanding a specific problem for specific people in a specific time and place; helping them.