Complex Learning Situations Research Articles

Learning Geographic Information from a Map and Text: Learning Environment and Individual Differences

A map is frequently combined with a text to provide spatial and non-spatial information for learners. How a map and a text are combined and the characteristics of learners are keys for understanding successful learning. This study used a cognitive experiment to investigate spatial learning by explaining performance on a test of acquired knowledge with variables related to the learning environment and to individual differences of learners. Results indicate that having participants read a text beside a map produced the best performance. Participants were more successful at learning the information in the text and less successful at learning the information on the map. Performance was measured by accuracy, reaction time, and confidence measures; a standardized index for overall efficiency combined these measures. Performance was significantly related to individual difference variables measuring experience, verbal and spatial working memory capacity, 2D/4D digit ratio, and cognitive style. Sex and gender variables were not significantly related to variations in performance. In complex learning situations, as in processing a combined map and text, the expected verbal and spatial processing advantages of female and male learners may both produce positive results. In more complex cases, variables related to brain asymmetry, memory capacity, and cognitive style may provide more useful explanations of performance.

A Unified Theory of All-or-None and Incremental Learning Processes via a New Application of Study-Test-Rest Presentation Programs and Psychophysiological Measures

The all-or-none (AON) versus incremental learning debate was newly examined using heart rate (HR) and galvanic skin response (GSR) under varied study-test-rest (STR) presentation programs. Fifty university students learned a list of 20 consonant-vowel-consonant-2-digit pairs in a simple learning situation. Three item types were analyzed: items learned, never learned, and in-between. Learning performance moved from the unlearned to the learned state in one jump in the AON fashion, despite nonsignificant incremental trends during some precriterion trials. New HR and GSR phenomena were unveiled: Persistent relaxation occurred abruptly a few trials before actual learning. The relaxation attained unconsciously, after intense conscious effort, might facilitate mastery. Unlearned items lacked such jumps for all 3 response measures. Of all conditions examined, STTTTTTT produced the most efficient learning with the greatest attention (HR), most relaxation (GSR), and least test anxiety (interprogram comparisons). By using Estes' mathematical derivations, a unified theory is advocated: AON learning can be regarded as a special case of incremental learning. The former is associated with very simple learning situations, whereas the latter involves complex learning situations. The 2 positions are not irreconcilable; instead, they represent 2 extremes of such experiments, the simple and complex learning situations.

Situating CoWeb: a scholarship of application

Since 1998, we have been developing and researching CoWeb, a version of Wiki designed to support collaborative learning. In this article, we summarize our results of situating CoWeb across the academic landscape of Georgia Tech. In architecture, CoWeb enabled faculty to serve more students in a design-based course. In English composition, a comparison study demonstrated significant learning benefits without incurring disproportionate costs. Yet, situating CoWeb was not always successful. In many STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) classes, students actively resisted collaboration. From these studies, we conclude that the culture of the classroom and the discipline needs to be compatible with the medium for computer-supported collaborative learning to be effective. Finally, we demonstrate how collaboration can be designed into the culture. A new class on introductory computing was explicitly designed to take advantage of the collaborative possibilities that CoWeb affords. We report our findings of the success of this approach. We characterize this research as a scholarship of application. We demonstrate that this mode of scholarship is a viable mode of scholarship in the learning sciences. Unlike traditional scholarship of discovery, we are not solely concerned with discovering new knowledge. Instead, we support others in the application of a new technology to serve genuine and complex learning situations. By doing so, we seek to understand the potential that one new medium, a Wiki, has for supporting learning.

Defining core competencies of an instructional technologist

Development of effective learning environments in an efficient manner is the goal of instructional development. The process of instructional development in highly complex learning situations requires that instructional technologists be competent in three basic core knowledge areas. This article defines the competency requirements for instructional technologists. Competency in the areas of educational foundations, ISD methodology, and ID process would improve learning and reduce the overall risk in the field of technology-based learning. Included in this article is a worksheet ( Appendix) to help the reader rate his or her own competency.

The Effect of Incentive Contracts on Learning and Performance

This paper reports the results of an experiment that examines how incentive-based compensation contracts compare to flat-wage compensation contracts in motivating individual learning and performance. I use a multiperiod cognitive task where the accounting system generates information (feedback) that has both a contracting role and a belief-revision role. The results suggest that incentives enhance performance and the rate of improvement in performance by increasing both: (1) the amount of time participants devoted to the task, and (2) participants' analysis and use of information. Further, I find evidence that incentives improve performance only after considerable feedback and experience, which may help explain why many prior one-shot decision-making experiments show no incentive effects. Collectively, the results suggest that incentives induce individuals to work longer and smarter, thereby increasing the likelihood that they will develop and use the innovative strategies frequently required to perform well in complex judgment tasks and learning situations.

Abstraction of covariations in incidental learning and covariation bias

Experiment 1 was devised to distinguish, in a given set of features composing drawn robots, those whose variations were related a priori for participants from those whose variations were a priori independent. In Expt 2, correlations were experimentally induced between a priori‐related features for one group of participants (pre‐primed group), and between a priori‐independent features for another group {arbitrary group), in incidental learning conditions. A subsequent transfer phase revealed that participants' performances were sensitive to experimentally induced correlations in both groups. However, only the performances of the pre‐primed group accurately matched the predictions of a statistical model devised by K. Richardson (e.g. Richardson & Carthy, 1990), postulating the acquisition of genuine knowledge of the correlational structure. Participants' sensitivity to arbitrary correlations appeared to be a by‐product of the memory of specific study exemplars. These results demand the reinterpretation of some prior experimental evidence for covariation abstraction, and more generally, are consonant with a current view of implicit learning which emphasizes the role of specific prior episodes in complex learning situations.

Creating engaging courseware using system dynamics

There is much discussion in the instructional technology literature concerning the importance for engaging courseware, especially in contrast to page-turning courseware. While we believe that there is a useful place for simple, page-turning courseware (e.g., in tutorials accompanying software products, for overview introductions to a topic, etc.), we agree that for more sophisticated and complex learning situations the key to a successful learning environment is the degree to which learners are cognitively engaged with the subject matter. System dynamics has been shown to be an effective tool in managing (representing, modeling, and comprehending) the complexities of domains that involve complex structures, especially those characterized by feedback loops, delays, and uncertainty (Forrester, 1961, 1985, 1992; Senge, 1990). In this paper, we shall suggest a framework for using system dynamic tools and technologies as the basis for constructing highly engaging learning environments.

Passion and Precision: Response to “Curriculum-Based Assessment and Direct Instruction: Critical Reflections on Fundamental Assumptions”

Perhaps that was because with the best will in the world, they couldn't make sense. They were speaking a that was accurate for their experience but out of phase with the of (others).... The simple truths of each sounded like nonsense to speakers of the other. (Hardison, 1989, p. 7) * There seems no room for compromise between those espousing an empiricist/behavioral orientation towards special education and those espousing a holistic orientation. Typically, the advocates of each position know the other approach is wrong, harmful, and antiquated. The empiricist tradition is often accused of being mechanistic. hi a similar vein, since holistic approaches are not data based, they are deemed not worthy of further discussion by many hard-line empiricists. Through the issues it raises, Heshusius' (1991) essay makes a contribution. The emotional tenor of the essay reflects the intensity of the conflict. However, its uncompromising stance typifies several unfortunate tendencies. The first is the danger of polemics. The second is a lack of understanding and empathy for alternative points of view. And the third is the vast distance between rhetoric and reality. As noted in the opening quotation, Heshusius speaks a different language from me and many of my colleagues. Using that language, she has presented at best an incomplete, and at worst a distorted, picture of direct instruction (DI). For example, merging curriculum-based assessment (CBA) and DI--two disparate traditions--assists Heshusius rhetorically, but does not reflect the realities of practice. She also includes statements that are rhetorical distortions and oversimplifications of the DI philosophy, for example: mastering skills is ... seen as separate and prior to involvement in learning for intrinsic relevant purposes (p. 320), and her assertion that empiricists fail to see that children and rats function at different levels of complexities (p. 321). The purpose of this essay is twofold. I wish first to respond to Heshusius with a balanced picture of some of the key ideas within the DI tradition. More broadly, I wish to reflect on Heshusius' essay from a more applied perspective--one that incorporates the realities of class-rooms. THE HEART OF THE MATTER The DI tradition relies on two pillars: an empathy for students' desire for success and an understanding of students' need for clarity, especially when confronted with new or demanding material. The artful modulation of intellectual challenge with success and clarity represents the core of DI. To this end, the DI movement has attempted a more precise understanding of teaching and learning. Admittedly, in the early years some issues were oversimplified-jtist as holistic educators such as Heshusius and Poplin currently oversimplify. More recently, research from cognitive psychology and teacher cognition has forced a reexamination of some earlier conceptions. As Heshusius notes, we have been grappling with increasingly complex learning situations, in which several responses to a question make sense or the knowledge base is not well defined (Gersten, Carnine, & Woodward, 1987; Gersten & Dimino, in press). The resulting refinements of key DI concepts represent both a shift in our thinking and an enrichment of the DI tradition. However, clarity and student success-the initial cornerstones of the movement--remain at the heart of this tradition. Heshusius states that in DI, student-generated ideas are to be avoided (p. 319). She supports that assertion by citing a 1986 article by Gersten, Woodward, and Darch which discussed the need for precision, clarity, and focus in teaching students with disabilities. This is a case of ignoring context to distort the author's intent. The example in the article described a teacher attempting to convey technical material--in this case information on oceanography--to a group of low performing students. …

Methodologies for studying human knowledge

AbstractThe appropriate methodology for psychological research depends on whether one is studying mental algorithms or their implementation. Mental algorithms are abstract specifications of the steps taken by procedures that run in the mind. Implementational issues concern the speed and reliability of these procedures. The algorithmic level can be explored only by studying across-task variation. This contrasts with psychology's dominant methodology of looking for within-task generalities, which is appropriate only for studying implementational issues.The implementation-algorithm distinction is related to a number of other “levels” considered in cognitive science. Its realization in Anderson's ACT theory of cognition is discussed. Research at the algorithmic level is more promising because it is hard to make further fundamental scientific progress at the implementational level with the methodologies available. Protocol data, which are appropriate only for algorithm-level theories, provide a richer source than data at the implementational level. Research at the algorithmic level will also yield more insight into fundamental properties of human knowledge because it is the level at which significant learning transitions are defined.The best way to study the algorithmic level is to look for differential learning outcomes in pedagogical experiments that manipulate instructional experience. This provides control and prediction in realistically complex learning situations. The intelligent tutoring paradigm provides a particularly fruitful way to implement such experiments.The implications of this analysis for the issue of modularity of mind, the status of language, research on human/computer interaction, and connectionist models are also examined.

Variations on a Theme by Kolb

Both counseling and supervision of counseling are seen as complex learning situations that may be analyzed from the standpoint of an experiential learning model. This perspective-based on the work of David Kolb-identifies four modes of experience, each of which is involved in an experiential learning cycle. These modes of experience-Concrete Experience (CE), Reflective Observation (RO), Abstract Conceptualization (AC), and Active Experimentation (AE)-must all be accessible to the learner (client or student counselor) for optimum functioning. An analysis of clinical dialogue between client and counselor and between counselor-in-training and supervisor is used to demonstrate that effective counseling and supervision demands that all four modes of experience be available to the clinician and that treatment be seen as making these modes available to the client.

A theoretical account of the effects of environmental context upon cognitive processes

Although the environmental context effect typically refers to superior performance in the context of original learning, this result is not consistently found across all experimental paradigms or instructional sets. Thus far, a precise statement of the underlying mechanisms and boundaries of the context effect has been absent from the literature, with the research having focused primarily on the robustness of the effect. The current exposition of a theoretical model and interpretation of the environmental context effect not only provides an explanation of the same-context testing superiority, but also provides the necessary parameters allowing for the prediction of situations in which same-context testing should be superior. Furthermore, the model has implications for complex learning situations which have not been tested in the research literature. The current model is grounded in the principles of classical conditioning. Thus, it is assumed that environmental context stimuli function in the same way that classically conditioned stimuli do and, as such, have effects on the various phenomena and processes associated with classical conditioning (e.g, acquisition, transfer, extinction and spontaneous recovery, and latent inhibition). Furthermore, the saliency of such stimuli should be subject to boundaries analogous to those affecting other conditioned stimuli.

Awareness, conditioning, and information processing in complex learning situations

Lindahl, Maj‐Britt. Awareness, conditioning, and information processing in complex learning situations. Scand. J. Psychol., 1973, 14, 121–130.‐Learning without awareness was studied with a method involving three phases for each of 2. 10 subjects: (1) a problem solving phase, (2) a phase of applying the solution found in (1), and (3) a test phase. In (2) the solution was applied to the classification of 50 successively presented instances. These were in one condition sampled so that a perceptually easily discriminable basis of classification obtained that was different from and redundant to the one of the solution of phase (1). The results of the test phase showed that this redundant basis of classification influenced the performance of the subjects in this condition despite unawareness of it according to verbal reports. The phenomenon was interpreted as a case of learning without awareness, describable in conditioning terms, that influenced performance. The limitations of this type of learning were discussed, and its relationship to an aware information processing type of learning was outlined.

Behavior in Complex Learning Situations Involving Three Levels of Difficulty

Behavior in Complex Learning Situations Involving Three Levels of Difficulty

A Paradigm for Experimental Modification of the Effects of Test Anxiety on Cognitive Processes

Test anxiety refers to a state of uneasiness, discomfort, fear, or nervousness which an individual may experience when he perceives that his performance is going to be evaluated. The way in which test anxiety is manifested depends on its extent, the situation in which it is aroused, and the individual's characteristic mode of response. Accordingly, anxiety may be manifested in a number of ways varying from admission of nervousness to denial of warranted fear, from avoidance or impulsive blundering through test situations to overly meticulous caution. Test anxiety usually lowers performance in complex learning and problem-solving situations (Spence & Spence, 1966). The major causes of performance decrement are believed to be failure to attend to relevant parts of the task, intrusion of irrelevant thoughts which interferes with synthesis of task-relevant data, and withdrawal from the task in order to avoid anxiety (Sarason, Davidson, Lighthall, Waite & Ruebush, 1960). The interference of anxiety with cognitive processes has long been recognized (Freud, 1925; Taylor & Spence, 1952; Farber & Spence, 1953, Spielberger, 1966). Moreover, recent studies have shown that test anxiety has a cumulatively adverse effect on IQ measures and school performance throughout the elementaryschool years (Sarason, et al., 1960; Hill and Sarason, 1966), and is a major cause of failure in college (Spielberger 1962). However,

The acquisition of conditional discriminations in baboons following temporal and frontal lesions

Baboons with bilateral inferotemporal lesions or with more extensive temporal lobe lesions learned a size-color conditional problem as easily as the normal controls, and more easily than those with dorsolateral frontal lesions. Despite the use of training techniques designed to equalize the initial learning scores of all the animals, the temporal operates were significantly impaired on the acquisition of the size discrimination. However, the finding that they were able to use this newly acquired visual information in the more complex conditional learning situation does not indicate a general inability to form stimulus-response associations with visual information. On the contrary, the results suggest that the principal difficulty of animals with temporal lesions is related to the initial perceptual analysis of the discrimination. If they are given sufficient experience with certain visual material, this acquired information is available for use in more complex visual learning situations. This experiment therefore provides another demonstration of the fact that despite a severe impairment on classical pattern discriminations, animals with inferotemporal lesions are able to learn certain visual problems.

Interaction of anxiety and ability in complex learning situations.

Interaction of anxiety and ability in complex learning situations.

PERCEPTUAL RIGIDITY AND CLOSURE PHENOMENON AS A FUNCTION OF MANIFEST ANXIETY IN CHILDREN

An increasing number of investigations have been concerned with the psychological and behavioral correlates of the Taylor manifest anxiety scale (i9). The Taylor scale (MAS) is coordinated with the theoretical drive (D) variable in Hull's behavior theory; i.e., scores on the test presumably reflect variations in the emotional reactivity (drive) of the individual. Predictions generated from the Hullian assumptions regarding the functional relationship between drive level and performance have been, in general, confirmed in a variety of simple and complex learning situations (e.g., 5, 7). However, the failure of several studies (I, 9, 12) to yield data consistent with these assumptions indicates the need for continued experimental efforts designed to clarify the functional properties of the manifest anxiety scale. The present investigation was designed to explore certain consequences of manifest anxiety in children. In a recent review of experimental studies concerned with the relationship between motivation and learning, Bruner et al. (3) indicate that a reduction in behavioral adaptivity is often associated with high levels of drive. These writers suggest that . . conditions requiring increased speed and efficiency of goal attainment . . . (e.g., deprivation) . . . may have the effect of the range of environmental cues to which the individual responds (3, P- 9). Similar perceptual constriction effects have been noted to be associated with induced anxiety (18), motivational relevance and context of the task stimuli (8), and level of anxiety (13)However, the theoretical and experimental problems associated with specifying the processes which mediate the narrowing of the field have received relatively little attention. One plausible explanation for the reduction in responsiveness to environmental cues is that relatively high motivational levels tend to increase 1 The data for this study were collected while the author was a member of the staff of the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station, State University of Iowa.