Priti – kids learning grammar; phonological process deficit, some research shows what parts of the brain are involved; example of identifying neural problem, developing a tool that addresses those problems (almost cures ‘em)

Value of neuroscience – cost of doing that kind of research may outweigh the benefit; it’s not that neuroscience doesn’t have any benefits but that it is really expensive and may get at answers that could be found in another method for less; maybe used to justify rather than to figure something out
Discovering errors – cognitive tutors, distributed cognitive systems

Colleen – molded by experience and how that changes you; you’re not the same after an experience as you were before you had it

A little history -
learning – how are they changed by what they experience
Post-doc with Ed Hutchins was first work outside the lab

Why so much redundancy?
errors happening all the time, but so many people watching meant the errors got caught really fast
remarkable – how much time they hand to spend on each job before they counted as being good at it; 20 years to be considered one of the top
person doing the plotting knows from experience what might be different – remembers when he used to get a bearing wrong and can tell where errors are likely to occur
service – do the job before you can supervise anyone doing the job
Role of officers – why separate those functions
navigator is common sense guy – does your computation match what’s outside the window
another example: legal system – perspective you’re trying to show; can’t really judge the “guilty” evidence if you’re arguing “not guilty”; only seek confirming evidence rather than looking for disconfirming
best person to say if the computation is correct is a person outside the system
evaluation should be separate than the people doing the work
Contextual or not?
Stephanie’s comment – have talked about importance of contextual, but sounds like these tasks are totally decontextualized
Colleen’s response – classroom instruction talks about why you would want to do navigation in triangulation, etc.; huge attention problem – what’s hard about that task isn’t clear until you’re in that environment
on-the-job vs. in the classroom
physical context – may never see the people you’re working with
social context – you get to know the people you’re working with and what they’re grumpiness might be
work environment – high stakes, divided attention, orders, etc.

Why is navigating a ship so difficult
little margin of error, big ship turns really slowly, channels are deep enough
other jobs watch the ones they’re going to do next, overhearing (shared channel) what others do before
main focus for crew is reporting
plotter does all that in his head
all decisions about speed and direction are made based on the reports
Apprenticeship
witness for years before you’re in that role
corporate comparison – I want my boss’s job, so I need to watch what he does
horizon of observation – what you’re able to see happen
Priti – are there individual differences in horizon of observation?
Colleen’s answer – punishments if you fail to do your job well, off-the-job book work memorizing harbors

Training
pressure of performance missing in simulation
can practice reporting on the common channel and working on attention

Horizon of observation
things you can observe without attention – does another group come in really early in the morning or never does (office cubicles); what’s interesting – you weren’t trying to observe but did observe because of the work environment
How do you separate individual and group cognition?
References Hutchins book on distributed cognition
limits of individual cognition – can’t understand something from a perspective that’s not your own
still need a picture of each head and what info it gleans, interaction around those heads (feedback, comments, communication)
seemed theoretical to say that this system is a distributed mind, but it’s not that simple; “I wish it were that cool.”
Bratenburg – vehicles work; you see enough other with their lights on, and you turn yours on; nobody communicated about turning on their lights; not intended consequence of the group process, see the influence of the group
tragedy of the commons is big example – everyone’s decision about that affects everyone, but no group sat down and said this is our decision
music example – no individual can achieve that alone, but the coordination is important; product is an appreciation that’s not individual
rabbit-duckness – Eric’s example from the group/individual psych class
Colleen – keep thinking design will be the product; group computed something that the individuals couldn’t understand; individuals are contributing
how do these common references come up? group doesn’t necessarily have a product, what’s the role of intention? stephanie’s example of common gesture used to indicate a molecular structure later
emergenct cognition? is that an appropriate term?

technilogical devices that make the task easier

is culture ever intentional until it’s threatened? Armenia

Learning Sciences Agenda
take cues from online to make learning, self-guided, interesting
something you want to do because it’s fun
“lure of individualized” – not getting everybody to move in lock step; it’s not that we don’t organize information but that no one wants to learn it
goal = “concepts be in each head” learning sciences vs. situated cognition – shouldn’t conflate the terms
What about organizational learning?
distributed memory – org functions as though there’s a distributed memory, but what do you gain by looking at it at that level (the school of plankton vs. the plankton); what does distributed perspective help you understand about what’s going on?
“lure of Ed (Hutchins)” – almost Marxian in the elevation of collective
Richard Hackman – perception of the music group’s performance goes down with the percentage of women

What’s an organization if not an entity?
think about bee example – hives computing how fast to go collecting, really just a product of little rules
thinking about organizations – if the answer is task-specific, look at the tasks and see what they require
agent-based modeling and organizations – emerges out of small individual tasks but still isn’t necessarily an entity
people knowledge in success? what’s the role of knowing each other, having empathy, etc. in being able to learn together? rain in LA, snow in FL
sensemaking – information, acquire information and restate the problem
Colleen’s Dissertation
Dear Abby’s advice to lovelorn couples
neuroscience/biopsych – any kinds of brain except humans
cognitive neuroscience – determined by method, use pictures of brains working to figure stuff out
“if you’re interested in thinking, the brain’s not gonna tell us much.”
Are you a learning scientist?
felt left out because I’m not studying K-12; Shanck-sters building complex systems that don’t work
had to find a scientific group who’s interested in learning in the real world
just not an existing trend in learning sciences

Book/research recommendations:

The Mind at Work by Mike Rose
Anders Ericsson (expert performance, experts resist automaticity)

Quality of Life issues -

health care, nutrition, finances, local environmental conditions (research within the LIFE Center)

Themes -

• adaptive expertise – recognizing adaptability (when do my schemas apply?)
• innovation
• efficiency
• schemas (i.e. SAT problem types)
• constructive nature of knowing – we build knowledge out of what we already know
• people knowledge – figure out what we need people to share to identify with and learn from

“Innovation is the sudden cessation of stupidity.” (Bransford quoted someone else)

Learning from Others

people learn better from people they know

Thoughts

Research in the LIFE center seems really interesting; I should go explore that area some more to see if there are “informal learning environment” ties or analogies to what I’m working on. John’s talk included appropriate videos, images, etc to illustrate his points; it’s a nice change from the boring old PPTs that have been around lately.How could we get to know our students a little better to be able to teach more appropriately in the foundations? Seems like the 504 collections activity is interesting, but maybe not deep enough. Maybe I should’ve just read those autobiographical entries in the intranet; remember the reaction Molly had to Michael’s remembering her entry.

How does “adaptive expertise” fit in with the identity/learning/networks ideas that I’m researching for my field prelim? Must be careful not to get sucked into expertise literature just yet.

What if we went all the way to virtual worlds for classes? If we build a flexible area that’s private and imports data from existing UM resources, could a virtual world complement the resources available from CTools and the Wiki in a way that lets us get to know each other better so that we can learn more effectively together? Food for thought. Teachable agents? Give the students an agent to teach through concept mapping. See how the agents do.

John: 7 principles of game design
Games – rules + goal (default goal, not just one you make up; i.e. winning at basketball)
Addictive nature – from intermediate goals; short-term, long-term, overarching goals
Interactivity – concentrate on activity rather than story, character, artwork, etc.
Sidenote: gaming and surgeons; surgeons who played a lot of game (something like Smash Brothers) were better (faster, fewer errors)
Feedback – players need to know what goals they need to achieve, where they are in the goals, etc.
Variety
Limit meaningless repetition – skip parts already seen, goal-oriented repetition OK
Consistency – know what to expect, visible reason for failure
Fairness & balance – no single dominant strategy (rock/paper/scissors)

John’s editorial – games don’t really teach you anything about the real world; some exceptions

1. training – second-language learning example; game where you have to speak Arabic to achieve goals in the game; inflexibility of the game important in helping you pronounce appropriately

Chris – asks about Schank’s case simulation stuff
Note: John’s making distinction between training and education, skills vs. concepts

Do games help us learn? Priti and John – maybe games help with component skills (expanding working memory and visual attention) but not domain knowledge development

John – good game design and learning at odds – good games don’t allow time for reflection; good games move to new goal quickly

Gender and games – maybe these are design principles for “games for boys”
Jude – maybe role playing’s involved some how
LINK: purple moon – games for girls, different goals

Design vs. design research

John – generalization, taking findings from one place and using them elsewhere makes it research
Chris – James Paul Gee’s group at Wisconsin
John – 1/10 games makes money; we don’t have a science of entertainment (movies, games don’t always make money)Priti – John, are you a learning scientist?
John – no, I’m not a learning scientist; interested in how people learn, but it’s too difficult in how to understand that; not interested in sociological aspects of learning
Priti – we’d probably claim that’s learning sciences research

Chris on his chapter

Chapter written responding to/using Norman’s user-centered design approach

Discussing questions from CTools

Scaffold vs. tool? Our group claimed scaffolds were in service of tools rather than at odds with them

Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development – scaffold is something (a support?) to give the learner to get to the next level, improve performance
Scaffolding in software – help a learner do something with a little assistance; software feature that provides assistance; actually provides assistance, also temporary; once you’ve developed a skill, the scaffold goes away

Explicit vs. implicit – making something explicit may be part of the scaffolding; making the process explicit might be how you help a person move to next level; scaffolds really do go away, not just get implicit

Generalizability – Should software be like tofu? (able to take on the flavor of what’s around it). I ranted a bit about the flexibility and specificity available in software since development cost is really low. Group in corner (Joi, Marianne, Jenny) talked about modular development (different modules do different things), remember the teacher (let teacher decide when and how to use what modules)

LINK: Gabriel Saloman – “effects of” versus “effects with” technology; “cognitive residue” (referenced in Quintana chapter – here’s the article)

Notes about PIM research: Forks poetry faculty

Ann Brown – article in learning sciences
Cobb – Ed Researcher 2003

Intervention – for psych like treatment

Eric’s question: isn’t this like HCI? Barry’s answer: yeah, pretty much

Priti: figuring out what counts as a small theory
Barry: how would you test it? – falsifiability is key

Frameworks, theories, models –
Judy: frameworks are early, say what the variables might be; models and theories are predictable and formal, models more mathematical;
Priti: same in cogsci, models are just more specific
Barry: model of teaching built on theories
Question: how does this fit with 722? Theories inform models, etc.

Priti: for Anderson, ACT-R is the theory

Conjecture –
Maybe the “why” of hypotheses (conjecture: why A leads to B, where “A leads to B” is your hypothesis)
For Barab – the scheme or mechanism of how things are going to relate
Ex. Chi’s article –
Hypothesis: self-explanation improves learning
Conjectures: when and how self-explanation would lead to learning

Question: how do conjecture, model, formalism, coding scheme, design study fit together?
First pass: conjecture and model tell you what aspects you think are important and how they fit together, formalism is boxes for coding scheme that fit that model

Appropriate comparisons – not did they learn but would they have learned more in some other way?

Design vs. design-based research –
{diagrams on the board}
design-based research has a lot of variables, a lot of interactions, explanations for all of those, iterations on those variables and interactions
design – variables but not necessarily explanations of interactions
question: how is design-based research different from other kinds of research?
Answers: iteration, less control over variables (design-based research makes explanations but doesn’t necessarily control variables so much as report them)

How DBR is different –
More akin to engineering, turn theory and understanding into a difference in the world
Don’t just describe the world but perturb it

Question: where do design-based research studies get published, and what do those publications look like?
Answers:
ijCSCL
question is “who cares about this topic”
Cognitive Science Society – emerging learning sciences theme this year (implicit and explicit learning)

Ed Research –
Epidemiological – get a lot of data, just grab a lot of data (lots of variables) from all over, large statistical methods (public v. parochial)
Small-scale intervention – tardy slips, points for detention, reduce class size; small single change and examine what changes occur
History – Dewey lost, Benet won (psychological testing, quantifying educational success)

Judy:
Anderson automatic post office study
State transition diagrams about design meeting – size of bubble corresponds to total time in discussion
Go research (replicate Chase & Simon chess memory stuff)
Recall orders reconstruct patterns – name your family members, play Go or chess, give someone a place to start, regularities in the recall order indicate a tree structure
Acquiring structure of a field

Design-based research in collaboratories – go in thinking something’s going to work, try it out, tweak it, then see what happens and iterate

DBR and the field – don’t have to be in the field to be doing DBR

Barry asks Judy, “how do you relate to learning sciences”?
Judy: nope, I don’t study learning; maybe adoption

Barry: isn’t improving group performance a learning task?