Week 7 - Meaningful Learning and Schema Theory

This blog entry will double as my blog entry for the class. I will copy/paste it to the class blog after I'm done.

WEEK 7 - Meaningful Learning and Schema Theory

We started out class with some technical difficulties with getting links of our personal blogs listed on the class blog. We finally figured it out and Kim said she would collect our blog urls and list them on the class blog. For those who didn't create their blogs yet, Kim mentioned that our personal blogs should be reflections of what we learned in class. Kim also talked briefly about Illuminate, an application - there are (3) free accounts available through our class site license. It allows you to see PPTs, documents, etc. Next we quickly ran through the main ideas of this chapter.

OVERVIEW OF IDEAS

[Derivative Subsumption]
KIM: Parts of a tree: trunk, leaves, roots, branches.

[Correlative Subsumption]
KIM: What will happen when you show someone a tiny tree or a tree that isn't green? They would have to change their schema, their concept of what a tree is. Overtime, their schema is stretched.

[Superordinate Learning]
KIM: Different types of plants are all categorized as trees.

[Combinatorial Learning]
WALTER: Computer Networks. You already know how to connect computers through IP addresses. A switch does something similar, but with physical or MAT addresses. So the two things do similar things.

[Advance Organizer]
KIM: Providing concrete examples in advance of instruction.

[Comparative Organizer]
KIM: Comparing two ideas simeautaneously.

[Progressive Differentiation]
Teaching from simple to complex

[Schema]
KIM: "How many people in your party?" Where is this question asked? A restaurant. We have past experiences that determine a schema. In a foreign country, if you walk into a restaurant with your shoes on, you might not know to take them off. After that one experience, your exprience and schema will be modified.

[Accretion]
KIM: Going to one restaurant, then going to another similar restaurant. Your schema isn't modified.

[Tuning]
KIM: Going to a new kind of restaurant, your schema undergoes change.

[Restructuring]
KIM: A total re-organization of schema.

[Mental Model VS Schema]
Mental Models are the process of solving or thinking through a concept or problem.

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After briefly going over these terms, we the split up into small groups to think of examples of derivative subsumption, correlative subsumption, superordinate learning, and combinatorial learning. My group's example was about sports balls. Another group used guitars, and another about buying technological devices (recording tv shows).

- Derivative Subsumption: What is a ball? Ping pong ball, a tennis ball, basketball
- Correlative Subsumption: Adding a football to the group, a person would expand their definition (schema) of a ball because
of its different shape.
- Superordinate Learning: All these balls are sports equipment.
- Combinatorial Learning: A mouse ball is introduced, which is still a ball, but not sports equipment. Their schema would change.

For a instructional designer, the toughest thing is what content to present. How do you take apart and sequence things so that people can learn. This is known as Content Analysis. Most of the presentations covered theory. It's important how to apply this to actual instructional design. All of this informs us about how we do good instructional design. Each of the concepts above are a starting place for us to build upon them.

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Next, Kim asked us to take from the examples that we got from our small groups and design instruction with Gagnes Instructional taxonomy and 9 events of instruction. For our group, we had to create instruction on how to distinguish between different movie formats (VHS, laserdiscs, DVDs) and how to use them with their respective machines. Our goals were based on Verbal Information (the names of the different formats, acronyms) + Motor Skills (how to put the formats in their readers). Our attention getter was to let them see the devices turned on then turn them off. For prior knowledge, we would present a the childhood shape toy. Then we'd explain how one shape fits another. Watch as they do it, then let them do it on their own, then show them other media to have them apply that same principle.

Kim stressed that you don't have to use all the 9 events for every instructional situation.

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For the midterm exam, fundamentals will be covered (like Gagnes Learning Taxonomy, and 9 Events of Instruction). Also, we talked about how it would be helpful if we had a list of important ideas. Kim agreed to come up with a list of important ideas for us. By the end of the semester, ideally, the whole class might use a wiki to have a list of all the important ideas.

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Next Week: Situated Cognition! Hooray!