Learning how to learn

Category: Theories

  • How much should you know as a learning researcher?

    How much should you know as a learning researcher?

    robot-507811_1280Coming out of school as a Ph.D in instructional technology, I had accumulated quite amount of reading (if not knowledge) of psychology, education, and sociology. However, how much you should know about technology? As a researcher of human learning, what should be the composition of your knowledge domain?

    Right now I work as an instructional designer at a research university, designing online courses for the professional education sector. The university I work at is Georgia Tech, ranking #7 in public universities of USA and heavily focusing on STEM. We have some world top level professors and researchers. Being in this environment, I try to take advantage of it, and to understand more about what our faculty on campus on doing in the field of learning research. Therefore, in my self learning time, I started reading articles about research projects done by our faculty. Soon, I notice that these articles heavily focus on AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning). I started feeling interested – what are the definitions of AI and ML, and what are the knowledges scopes of these two areas? How are they related to our traditional educational research fields, i.e. education, psychology and sociology? Are they completely are two different parallel universes? Or most likely, they intercorrelate and overlap? If they do intercorrelate and overlap, how do they do that?

    It will be interesting to conduct a literature review on papers published on main streamed journals on both side: AI and ML research led by STEM faculties, and educational research led by educational faculty.

    Things to be considered: names of journals in the areas of instructional technology and AI/ML, conference names; main knowledge models/theoretical frameworks; main research methods; main research participants; main funding resources and funding amount.

     

  • ebook vs. web app

    The SLIDER project I currently work on may want to publish their curriculum as an “eBOOK”. However, what my customer wants seem more than just a regular eBook like those you see on kindle or nook.
    What is the difference between a traditional ebook (published with epub 3 etc.) and a web app? Shouldn’t that be much easier to just wrap a html(5) based website and publish it as an app then use it as an eBook? I decide to do some digging.
    An interesting article read about it is: http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/10/ebooks-as-native-apps-vs-web-apps.html
    More results will be reported and discussed here later.

  • Developmental research & design based research

    It was was 3 years ago that I took Dr. Reeves’ doctoral course on design based research. We students in the class worked in groups, under his guidance, built this DBR EPSS (http://projects.coe.uga.edu/dbr/index.htm). We were discussing the differences among several similar terms or phrases: design experiment, design based research, experimental research, and experimental design. However, today I cam across Dr. Monica Tracey’s  (2006) article on ID model construction and validation and for one moment the concepts of developmental research was mixed with the concept of DBR in my head. So I think it is necessary to make sure myself clearly understand the difference between this two:

    According to the DBR EPSS,

    Design-based research is research on how theory and innovative learning environments converge to support human learning and performance. The dual purposes of design-based research are to 1) develop theoretical design principles that are grounded in systematic inquiry about the process of teaching and learning, and 2) develop innovative tools, technologies, methods, and resources that put these design principles into practice.
    (Generated by Thomas Reeves, Richard West and Chandra Orrill during EDIT 9990 online discussion)

    Whereas Rita Richey (1994) defined developmental research as

    Developmental research, as opposed to simple instructional development, has been defined as the systematic study of designing, developing, and evaluating instructional programs, processes, and products that must meet criteria of internal consistency and effectiveness. Developmental research is particularly important in the field of instructional technology. The most common types of developmental research involve situations in which the product-development process is analyzed and described, and the final product is evaluated. A second type of developmental research focuses more on the impact of the product on the learner or the organization. A third type of study is oriented toward a general analysis of design development or evaluation processes as a whole or as components. A fundamental distinction should be made between reports of actual developmental research (practice) and descriptions of design and development procedural models (theory). Although it has frequently been misunderstood, developmental research has contributed much to the growth of the field as a whole, often serving as a basis for model construction and theorizing. One figure illustrates the discussion.

  • Gardner’s 7 ways of knowing the world & learning styles

    1. verbal-linguistic
    2. logic-mathematical
    3. musical-rhythmic
    4. visual-spatial
    5. bodily-kinesthetic
    6. interpersonal intelligence
    7. intrapersonal intelligence

    This website and several other websites say:
    The learning styles are:

    Interesting enough, the learning styles item on wikipedia has not mentioned any learning style models related to Multiple intelligence.

  • reading reflection on Fiedler Rebecca’s dissertation

    Contradictions and tensions are important to the activity theorist because they give rise to
    the “need states” which lead to change as the actors in the network seek ways to satisfy needs the
    existing activity system can not satisfy. (p.64)

  • Researching Lived Experience: Human Sicence for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy

    Pedagogy is the activity of teaching, parenting, educating, or generally living with children, that requires constant practical acting in concrete situations and relations. p.2

    So phenomenology does not offer us the possibility of effective theory with which we can now explain and/or control the world, but rather it offers us the possibility of plausible insights that bring us in more direct contact with the world. p. 9

    A person cannot reflect on lived experience while living through the experience. For example, if one tries to reflect on one’s anger while being angry, one finds that the anger has already changed or dissipated. Thus, phenomenological reflection is not introspective bu retrospective. Reflection on lived experience is always re collective ; it is reflection on experience that is already passed or lived through. P. 10

    Phenomenological human science is the study of lived or existential meanings; it attempts to describe and interpret these meanings to a certain degree of depth and richness. P.11

    As in poetry, it is inappropriate to ask for a conclusion or a summary of a phenomenological study. p. 13

    One difference is that phenomenology aims at making exlicit and seeking universal meaning where poety and literature remain implicit and particular. ….””human science starts there where poetry has reached its end point.”” p. 19

    But what does progress mean in phenomenological human science research? It dos not necessarily imply that sound human science will lead to increasingly effective management or control of human behavior. In fact, just the opposite may be the case. Human science operates on the principle of the recognition of the existence of freedom in human life. And self-consciously free human beings who have acquired a deepended understanding of the meaning of certain human experiences or phenomena may in fact be less susceptible to the effective management or control of others. p .21

    And yet, phenomenological human science, too, sponsors a certain concept of progress. It is the progress of humanizing human life and humanizing human institutions to help human beings to become increasingly thoughtful and thus better prepared to act tactfully in situations. In other words, sound human sceicne research of the kind advocated in this text, helps those who partake in it to produce action sensitive knowledge. p. 21

  • Schraw, G., Bendixen, L. D., & Dunkle, M. E.

    At the end of the chapter, they wrote, “Three salient cognitive outcome measures see especially important to us, including moral reasoning, cirtical thinking and argumentation, and identity formation”.
    How do epistemological beliefs influence or predict faculty members’ identify formation in their teaching, and therefore predict or influence the way that they assess their students?

  • Barnard, 2007: The Expert Ceiling in Epistemological Beliefs

    Paulsen and Wells (1998) stated that, “it seems unlikely that substantial differences in
    epistemological beliefs across domains would persist in studies of faculty or other more
    advanced experts,” (p. 380).

    According to Schommer’s work, epistemological beliefs as a whole appear to be more
    or less domain general when controlling for a variety of background characteristics including
    academic discipline, which indicates a certain degree of association of academic discipline with
    epistemological beliefs. When not controlling for academic discipline (as did Paulsen and Wells
    (1998)), Jehng et al. (1993) discerned differences in epistemological beliefs of college students,
    “who study in the soft fields (i.e. social science and arts/humanities) have a stronger tendency of
    believe that knowledge is uncertain, are more reliant on their independent reasoning ability, and
    have a stronger feeling that learning is not an orderly process than students in hard fields,” (p.
    23). Hofer (2000) found strong disciplinary differences among college students whereas students
    in psychology more so viewed personal knowledge as a basis for justification of knowing than
    students in science while students in science viewed authority and expertise more as the source
    of knowledge than students in psychology.

    In concluding their study examining the epistemological beliefs of college students across
    domains of study, Paulsen and Wells (1998) stated that, “it seems unlikely that substantial
    differences in epistemological beliefs across domains would persist in studies of faculty or other
    more advanced experts,” (p. 380). This statement of Paulsen and Wells regarding experts implies
    the existence of an upper limit or ceiling effect in epistemological beliefs as delimited by
    expertise across domains. While Hofer and Pintrich (1997) have noted that, “it is unclear where
    the process of epistemological understanding begins” (p. 122), the researcher contends that it is
    equally unclear where the process of epistemological understanding ends except perhaps as
    associated with the achievement of expertise as an outcome. An examination of differences in
    the epistemological beliefs of any group of experts however has yet to be studied, thus the
    existence of an expert ceiling effect in these beliefs has not been substantiated either way by any
    empirical evidence despite its significance to the study of epistemological understanding and the
    development of expertise.

    As while much literature discusses how novices and experts differ,
    there is little research discussing how experts are similar as a whole, where research is restricted
    to the study of particular expertise in isolation to one another (e.g. Berliner, 1986 & Sternberg &
    Horvath, 1995 in re expert teachers; Lichtenberg, 1997 for counseling psychologists; Rolfe, 1997
    for nurse practitioners; Tanaka & Curran, 2001 studying recognition capabilities of bird and dog
    experts; Wood, 1999 in re visual expertise of radiologists).

    P.90
    The results of this study lend support to the statement of Paulsen and Wells (1998) that it
    is, “unlikely that substantial differences in epistemological beliefs across domains would persist
    in studies of faculty or other more advanced experts,” (p. 380). Evidence from this study further
    lends support for the hypothesis of an upper limit or ceiling effect in the sophistication of
    epistemological beliefs among experts given that the researcher empirically studied the self-
    reported epistemological beliefs of faculty members across forty-six academic disciplines
    represented. No other study to date has examined the epistemological beliefs of experts across
    such a variety of disciplines. The overarching significance of this study is that (1) a ceiling effect
    in the epistemological beliefs among experts can be supported and (2) that we can determine an
    important characteristic of experts in general as having highly sophisticated and similar
    epistemological beliefs.

    P. 91
    An understanding by faculty members as to how they are epistemologically different from their students given evidence supporting an expert ceiling in these beliefs can only improve faculty’s understanding of how their students may best learn. A faculty member knowing for instance that their students’ beliefs about knowledge are generally more naive or less sophisticated in nature permits faculty members to be sensitive to the epistemological development of their students and to scaffold and differentiate appropriately.

    Possible research question:
    To what extent do faculty members understand the difference of epistemological beliefs between theirs and their students?

    To read list:

    • EBI (Schraw, Bendixen, & Dunkle, 2002)
    • Schommer (1990): omniscient
      authority; simple knowledge; certain knowledge; fixed (innate) ability; and quick learning.
    • Paulsen and Wells (1998)

  • Barnard, et. al 2007

    When they analyzed the data from the survey of the facutly members, they categorized a descipline as:

    • hard or soft refers to the degree of paradigmatic development of a field.”Disciplines such as chemistry, biology, and mathematics, for example, were categorized as hard
      while disciplines such as political science, psychology, and fields in the fine arts were
      categorized as soft. “
    • pure and applied.

    Procedure
    As the researchers did not have direct access to the e-mail addresses of faculty members across
    colleges of the university, participation of faculty members was solicited by requesting
    individual departmental and college administrators to forward the recruitment e-mail message to
    their respective listservs of faculty members. The researchers also posted a similar recruitment
    message that was distributed via a university-wide faculty e-mail listserv system after university
    administrative approval.

    To read list:

    • Generally, the attitudes of faculty members towards persons with disabilities become more positive with years of experience in higher education (Leyser et al., 1998) along with their epistemological beliefs becoming more sophisticated (Schommer-Aikins, Duell, & Hutter, 2005; Schommer, 1993).

  • Schraw , 2001

    Epistemological theoretical framework used in my dissertation kinda evaluates or even judge faculty members. I feel it will be difficult to investigate on this aspect, and it will be embarrassing to ask faculty members questions like that.
    Anyhow, it is really embarrassing to use faculty members as the participants in my study…
    Unless, I use them as clients and to ask to evaluate certain CMSs.
    So, what is the theoretical framework behind this?????

    P458
    “A fourth area of future research is to investigate the stability of beliefs across a variety of demographic variables such as age, gender, culture, and academic domain… Jehng et al. (1993) also reported that epistemological beliefs differed across academic domains. Those in the hard sciences, such as physics and engineering, reported more sophisticated beliefs than those in education and the humanities.”

    p460
    “School shape and change beliefs, both as purveyors of knowledge and as epistemological training grounds for developing students. The existing research invites the conclusion that schools should make the effort to change beliefs in positive ways, although it is less clear how those changes should occur”.

    Possible research question: which dimension of epistomological belief influence faculty members’ decision of assessment practice?

    P456
    “There is widespread agreement among researchers that epistemological beliefs develop over time, particularly as a function of college and graduate education”.

    p460-461
    “Third, for better or worse, teachers model their beliefs for students. It makes sense to help teachers become more aware of their own beliefs, how they model those beliefs, and how their beliefs affect students’ own beliefs and learning”.

    P461
    “These include helping teachers to understand their own beliefs, understanding factors that impact students’ beliefs, promoting a critical thinking pedagogy, and introducing conceptual change into the classroom.”
    Possible research question:
    To what extent are faculty members aware of their own epistemological beliefs?
    To what extent are faculty members aware of the way to model their own beliefs and how their beliefs affect students’ own beliefs and learning?
    To what extent do faculty members understand factors that impact students’ beliefs? (To what extent do faculty members agree that their assessment practice influence their student’s epistemological beliefs?)

    P. 463
    “Indeed, social activities may be ideally suited to develop what Tishman et al. refer to as a “thinking dispositions” that promote deeper learning and critical reasoning”.

    “Reading the second questions, we must focus more attention on developing a guiding model of epistemological beliefs and to use this model to change educaitonal practice”.