A question about the article "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?" The question -- do we buy the argument that Google and other Web 2.0 tools are necessarily pushing us to think broad but not deep. They also push the ideas from Information Behavior and the Research of the Future. I also recommend reading Miler's classic paper, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information.
students aren't always good at determining when they need help.
three times that learners use tools well:
• there must be an opportunity for support (some type of help is there when the user needs its)
• learners recognize that there is an opportunity; he or she knows why the tool could be of help to them
• learners need to be motivated to look for help when they need it
in general, students tend not to use help enough or overuse it (use it too much, grow dependent on it or try to use it to answer questiosn instead of thinking it through themselves)
tools that provide direct information are more used, but meta-cognitive and generalized tools that support building skills to help oneself are less used.
they are asking: when students use help does it help their learning, when they provide advice do students use tools more, and does using tools help with student variables such as goal orientation, motivation, etc..?
Groups that received advice on how to use the help tools inline spent more time with the help tools. Mastery-oriented students used help tools significantly less frequently than did others.
Talk 3: Using or not using help tools during collaborative tasks
Date: 2005
ISBN: 1-85433-422-0
TALK 1: Learning with Hypermedia:
• Metacognitive tools, Extension of Computers as cognitive tools
• Computer environments are more open-ended, and students are increasingly in charge of their cognitive, metacognitive, and affective processing
• Moving beyond declarative knowledge into complex learning
• Very dynamic and simulative environments, but no "intelligent" (non-adaptive)
• Support and foster various self-regulatory processes, such as cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, and affective processes
Findings:
• Students rarely develop deep conceptual understanding of science topics
• They suggest focusing on increasing the amount of time (motivational construct) to improve learning outcomes...I think...
• They build computer-aided systems that address various self-regulatory processes (multiple approaches to information
• IPT Model of SRL (Winne and Hadwin, 1998; Winne 2001) -- A model of self-regulatory learning in online learning
NOTE: This could be useful for the Journalism program
• CAMM: Cognitive, Affective, Motivational, and Metacognitive processing
email: razevedo@memphis.edu
TALK #3: Betty's Brain
Betty's brain is out of Vanderbilt and is a concept mapping system not unlike CSILE. The basic idea is that students teach Betty, an online person, about a concept, so they add ideas and concepts with data and metadata to teach her what she should know about the concept. They have access to resources and text resources.
Betty takes quizzes that they design -- its quite interesting.
He defines metacognition as self-monitoring and remediating against problem areas.
Findings: SRL students who didn't get external feedback began to monitor their own learning better and spent much more time trying to teach themselves in order to teach Betty.
TALK 5: Process for cognitive and metacognitive processing
They have a narrow focus, just cognitive, not motivational or affective dimensions
They try to foster planning, monitoring, and evaluation
• They use simulations which allow students to collect data and build models, and they study regulative support
• They ask not only what, but also why they thought certain things (what are the important variables, and why are those the relevant variables?
• They have built a tool called Co-Lab