Connections Research Blog

Framework for Educational Technology Research

August 31st, 2009

A lot of educational technology research is very specific and focused on a specific technology. For the last couple of years, there has been a movement to get more of a theoretical base around the research. This has led to the development of what researchers call Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK).

This idea derives from the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) work of Shulman. PCK is a combination of the knowledge about a specific content topic and knowledge about teaching, which results in knowledge about teaching specific content. Add to this knowledge about educational technology, and the overlap is knowing how to use educational technology to teach specific content. What technology makes sense for what topics? The main idea is that there is no technology that makes sense for all teachers in all classes on all topics. How do teachers thoughtfully use technology in a given area to maximize learning?

Cognitive Biases that Increase with Education

August 28th, 2009

We usually think of education as reducing misconceptions and poor reasoning. However, it appears this is not always the case. Cognitive biases are those “short cuts” in thinking we take that save cognitive effort, but often cause us to reach erroneous conclusions. For example, the bandwagon effect is the tendency to believe something because many other people do; the confirmation bias causes us to seek out information that confirms our previously held beliefs.

Morsanyi, Primi, Chiesi, & Handley investigated the effects of instruction in statistics on two cognitive biases:

Representativeness heuristic – this tool leads people to associate items or people with groups that they seem similar to. The classic example is given a description of a fastidious, intelligent, mechanical person, people are likely to indicate he is highly likely to be an engineer, despite the low percentage of individuals who really are engineers.

Equiprobability bias – this is the tendency for people to think of random events as equally probable, even if they occur with different probabilities. For example, people will judge the chance of picking a boy or a girl’s name out of a hat to be equal even if there are 4 girl’s names and 8 boy’s names.

The authors investigated the effects of both individual characteristics and statistics education on the use of these biases. Overall, there was actually an increase in the equiprobability bias with statistics education. The authors hypothesize that the students learn just enough about probability theory to misuse it. As we say, “they know enough to be dangerous.” As support for this theory, they note that higher ability students were less likely to show the bias after instruction, suggesting that those with lower ability are more likely to misunderstand how to apply the probability theory they have been taught.

I think this is an example of an interesting phenomenon that occurs when we first start to learn something; we may actually get worse at it. Totally anecdotally, the first time I play a Wii game, I’m usually not that good, but often do OK. I don’t use any strategy, just react to whatever is there. Then, the second or third time I play, I have a better idea of what I am supposed to do and be focused on, but I don’t have anything automatized and I often do worse trying to focus on all those things. It takes more practice with the skills and task for me to again start to improve with it.

Also interesting was that people tended to show the bias more when asked questions about people (e.g., how likely is it that Joe…”) than about objects (e.g., how likely is it that a coin flip…). The authors hypothesize that students are more likely to think about people as agents to which they attribute greater unpredictability, thus leading to the idea that all actions are of equal probability. I think this is a very important point; there is a resistance to applying probability principles to people, as if it somehow takes away their “free will.”

Finally, it was noted that use of the representativeness heuristic did decrease IF students receive explicit instruction about the heuristic. This instruction, however, did not generalize to other cognitive biases.

I’ve been interested in these cognitive shortcuts that we all take using various heuristics, and the experiments researchers do to demonstrate them, and where they may fail us. Kahneman and Tversky’s book Judgment Under Uncertainty is a good read if you’re interested.

Morsanyi, K., Primi, C., Chiesi, F., & Handley, S. (2009). The effects and side-effects of statistics education: Psychology students’ (mis-)conceptions of probability Contemporary Educational Psychology, 34 (3), 210-220 DOI: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2009.05.001

Posted in Students | Comments (1)

Socializing during science lab work

August 24th, 2009

So what did you do in science class while you were waiting for all those chemical reactions to happen? Did you sit around and chit-chat with your lab partner? What did you talk about? Does it matter?

Del Carlo & Bodner think it does matter. They completed a participant observation of four chemistry classes over the course of a semester (one each of 100, 200, 300, and 400 level) focusing not on the on-task conversation, but on the seemingly off-task discussions. The types of categories that the talk fell into categories including:

background talk – getting-to-know you kinds of conversations; happen more in lower-level classes
chem classes – discussion related to either lecture component or other chem classes – more common in upper level classes
non-chem class – discussion related to classes in other subjects- less in 400 level classes (because they are taking fewer non-chem classes)
joking- more common in 200 and 300 level classes (either because of the tone of the classes or, as the researcher notes, the 100 and 400 level sections were at 7:30 AM)
killing time – conversation that happens while waiting for experiment to run- does not occur in 100 level because of shorter labs
social commentary – conversations of a personal nature about day-to-day life or society, politics, etc.- increases as number of courses increases

The researchers conducted focus groups and interviews with students to better understand the social nature of the classes. Many students claimed that the socializing during lab time first made things more fun, but second allowed them to feel more comfortable with other students, which then made them more comfortable asking peers for help.

The title of the paper is “The ‘Chemistry Mafia,’” a term which apparently came up in a focus group to describe a group of about 20 students who all worked closely together and through their interactions in shared courses developed relationships. Within the article the researchers describe the benefits to the members in terms of using each other as resources and providing confidence to the members. However, they also give a quote from someone who had transferred in from another major saying that he wasn’t part of that group. The authors don’t discuss the implications for those who aren’t in this group, but they do point out that students who are not a part of it feel they are at a disadvantage. To me, even the name “chemistry mafia” certainly has negative connotations… for all the popularity of The Sopranos, you don’t get into the mafia easily! In the end the authors are very positive about the types of social bonds created in class, but it looks to me like members of the “out group” might be worse off, observing all of those in the mafia.

The authors conclude that the seemingly off-task socialization is actually an important part of building bonds that likely do lead to more academic success. They suggest it might also relate to retention of students overall, although they do not have any evidence to back that up. They do recommend that instructors do not focus solely on keeping students “on-task.”

Del Carlo, D. I., & Bodner, G. M. (2009). The “Chemistry Mafia”: The Social Structure of Chemistry Majors in Lab Electronic Journal of Science Education, 13 (1)

Tags: science labs, socialization
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i3: Investing in Innovation

August 21st, 2009

capitol Arne Duncan spoke yesterday about the ideas behind the i3 program, which is seeking to invest in educational innovation. Right now the program is funded by $650 million in the Recovery Act. He said they are looking for programs that are:

Outcome driven
Scalable
Sustainable

They will give three different types of grants:

Pure Innovation – fund promising ideas
Strategic Investment – for programs that need to build a research base (!) or organizational capacity
Grow What Works – money for proven programs to expand

Four key areas they want to target:

College and career-ready standards
Data systems to support improved instruction
Teacher and principal quality
Turnaround schools

My favorites are money for programs that need research support and data systems to support improved instruction. Will it make a difference?

Tags: department of education, education innovation, i3
Posted in Policy/ Government | Comments (0)

5 Cautions For Wikis in Classrooms

August 19th, 2009

I think there is a lot of potential for use of wikis in classrooms, particularly in the area of collaborative writing. There are a number of articles out there extolling the possible virtues of the tool. However, I also think it is important to look at potential pitfalls so they can (hopefully) be addressed during implementation. Here are five areas of caution that peer-reviewed articles have suggested: typing

1. Not giving an incentive for wiki use. Neumann and Hood (2009) compared scientific report writing skills and engagement of two groups, one who used a group wiki for a practice report and one who individually used word processing to practice. Unfortunately, most of the wiki groups did not complete the practice report. There was no incentive (credit, grade, etc.) for completing the projects, and most did not. Apart from course credit, another incentive might be publishing the resulting wiki publicly.
2. Not knowing what you need from the wiki solution. Consider in advance what features you need in your wiki solution in order to make sure the one you use is appropriate. Trentin (2009) gives a very nice example of using wiki logs and ratings to quantitatively evaluate students’ individual participation in group writing projects. However, there are logging and administrative features that would make this easier. If you would like to use logging tools as part of your evaluation, make sure those are available. Other things to think about:
- How will you manage reviewing all of the content created?
- Is there an overall organization for student-generated content?
- How easy is the interface to edit? How much can you do with the WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor without learning coding language?
- Can more than one person at a time edit a page?
3. Not providing scaffolding. Cole (2009) attempted to implement a wiki in an information systems class and halfway through the semester there were no postings. Apart from point number 1 above, her research found that students had technical difficulties with the system and also were hesitant about being the first to post. Although her students were the “digital natives” we always hear about, most had not participated in a wiki environment, and Cole found that skills did not always transfer from other technology areas to the wiki. She recommends that a series of “cascading exercises” would be useful at the beginning of the course, walking through simple posting, annotating comments, linking etc. Cronin (2009) also found students were not familiar with wikis and suggested spending more class time than you think you need familiarizing them with wikis, recommending a review of the organization and structure of Wikipedia as a starting point. Also, allow them time to play in your wiki’s sandbox.
4. Not structuring participation. How much should students contribute on their own? How much should they edit others’ contributions? How much do they comment vs. edit? Wheeler, Yeomans, & Wheeler (2008) found that dividing content responsibility among the students resulted in clear roles, which the students liked, but resulted in few students reading and commenting on others’ postings. Both Wheeler et al and Cronin report that students felt a sense of ownership over “their” pages and responded negatively to others making changes to them. Issues of ownership and norms for editing should be established up front.
5. Not setting content standards. Wheeler, Yeomans, & Wheeler as well as Cronin noted that many students started out copying information from other sites. How do you want students to generate content? Give examples of commentary with hyperlinks to relevant sites. Do you want pictures? Video? Define what you want the end product to look like.

I think there is a lot of potential but, as with any educational solution, there is a significant amount of work to be done to make it successful.

Neumann, D. L., & Hood, M. (2009). The effects of using a wiki on student engagement and learning of report writing skills in a university statistics course Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 25 (3), 382-398

Trentin, G. (2009). Using a wiki to evaluate individual contribution to a collaborative learning project Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 25 (1), 43-55 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2008.00276.x

COLE, M. (2009). Using Wiki technology to support student engagement: Lessons from the trenches Computers & Education, 52 (1), 141-146 DOI: 10.1016/j.compedu.2008.07.003

Cronin, J. (2008). Upgrading to Web 2.0: An Experiential Project to Build a Marketing Wiki Journal of Marketing Education, 31 (1), 66-75 DOI: 10.1177/0273475308329250

Wheeler, S., Yeomans, P., & Wheeler, D. (2008). The good, the bad and the wiki: Evaluating student-generated content for collaborative learning British Journal of Educational Technology, 39 (6), 987-995 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8535.2007.00799.x

Tags: education, wikis
Posted in Technology | Comments (2)

Podcasting in Education

August 17th, 2009

Podcasting is a relatively new addition to many classrooms and as such, research on it is somewhat limited. McGarr recently reviewed existing studies and identified three types of usage: apple_music

Substantial – delivering full lectures
Supplemental – reviewing and/or synthesizing material
Creative – having students create podcasts

Podcasting is interesting to me because although it uses new technology, it largely replicates the passive learning of lecture, rather than advancing active learning (with the exception of the creative use above, which was found to be by far the least common use).

McGarr reports that, across studies, substantial podcasting did not appear to reduce attendance at in-person lectures and that students reported preferring the in-person lectures. In classes I teach, I don’t give the same lecture via podcast and in-person. Rather, I have used the podcasts to move the lecture portions of class to out-of-class time so I can use inclass time for more active learning. That doesn’t seem to have been a model that was investigated.

A couple interesting findings:

A majority of traditional students listened to the podcasts on their computers (so much for my fantasies of students listening to my voice as they run on the treadmill at the gym).
Some findings suggest students given podcasts used them instead of reading the assigned text, rather than as a supplement (40% of students in one study reported this).

Most findings report that students like the podcast option, but there have yet to be studies done on how they can be used in ways that will be most beneficial educationally. More work for researchers…

McGarr, O. (2009). A review of podcasting in higher education: Its influence on the traditional lecture Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 25 (3), 309-321

Tags: lecture, podcasting
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Administrators’ Dilemmas with Web2.0

August 12th, 2009

School administrators are in a tight spot with Web 2.0 technologies and a recent survey by the Metiri group highlights ways in which their reported attitudes differ from their implemented policies.
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On one hand, nearly three-quarters of superintendents and curriculum directors indicated that web 2.0 technologies had a positive influence on student communication skills and quality of school work. On the other hand, 70% ban social networking sites and chat rooms. Other web 2.0 tools (blogs, wikis, etc.) are allowed for “prescribed educational purposes” (who does the prescribing?). Only about 30% allow participation in online communities of interest or playing interactive games.

Based on other survey responses, it is clear that administrators are worried about student safety. However, the report also indicates that use of Web 2.0 is primarily left to the teachers and not incorporated into curricula. Very few districts have systematically researched or planned ways to use these technologies.

I agree that it seems like use of these tools very much relies on innovative teachers to implement. If these technologies are really going to be used, one could argue that there needs to be action on the part of district leaders, not just general lip service. However, I’m guessing we’re in the middle of a developmental progression in which, a few years ago, the administrators would have been much less positive about web 2.0 tools. Now their attitudes are changing, and eventually their behavior, but it sure is slow going.

Tags: administrator attitudes, web2.0
Posted in Technology | Comments (0)

Mirror Neurons Help Reduce Cognitive Load

August 10th, 2009

Educational Psychology Review devoted a recent issue to cognitive load theory. I recently blogged about an article relating the theory to collaborative learning. A second article looks at how our neurons may be helping us reduce cognitive load. connect

Van Gog, Paas, Marcus, Ayres & Sweller remind us about mirror neurons. These are the neurons that fire whether we are actually performing an action or watching someone else perform it. They are what allow us to learn by observing.

The authors first apply the idea of these neurons to learning motor tasks from video or animation. There has been some evidence that these dynamic representations require a high cognitive load; a lot of your mental resources are required to process the current information, remember the past information, and relate the two. It may be that the automaticity of these mirror neurons working and “recording” the observation may help free up cognitive space (reducing cognitive load) for things like elaboration. If this is the case, there are a few things we might learn about the use of dynamic representations in instruction: 1) they may be most effective for tasks that involve human movement (as opposed to mechanical objects) because that is what mirror neurons seem most likely to record and 2) should be used over static representations when human movement is to be learned.

A second section of the paper begins with the question of whether these mirror neurons would also record cognitive skills. These skills often aren’t readily observable, except perhaps by think aloud or worked examples. It will be interesting to see if further research can help us understand whether these neurons function in this environment.

There is a hunger in the education world for anything that looks like “brain-based” education. In many cases the insights that these analyses have to offer do not live up to the expectations of educational practitioners. We are still in the infancy of learning about the brain in some ways, and then applying it to a real world setting with all its complexities is difficult. However, this article does provide a small step in the right direction.

Gog, T., Paas, F., Marcus, N., Ayres, P., & Sweller, J. (2008). The Mirror Neuron System and Observational Learning: Implications for the Effectiveness of Dynamic Visualizations Educational Psychology Review, 21 (1), 21-30 DOI: 10.1007/s10648-008-9094-3

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Motivation and Textbooks

July 31st, 2009

Who uses textbooks? Do students actually read the text? A study out in Teaching Educational Psychology by Derryberry & Wininger looked books at the relationship between student motivation and textbook selection and use.

The authors combine a group of measures to create a group of “internal motivation” measures, including need for cognition (enjoying effortful thinking), mastery goal orientation (focus on increasing competence), and intrinsic motivation. Similarly, a separate group of measures was combined to create a measure of “external motivation”: performance goal orientation (focus on judgments of others) and external regulation. Finally, they also had an “amotivation” scale measured level of motivation. Most previous research on motivation suggests that those with internal motivation are more likely to engage in deeper processing of materal and have higher degrees of self-regulation.

Choice of text

For one of two semester studied, the authors first allowed students to select one of two textbooks for a course. They identified one as more advanced than the other and proceeded to analyze how student motivation was related to choice. Unfortunately, they do not describe how students made the choice. We are left to believe the students walked into the bookstore, saw there were two options, and just flipped through them to choose one. Was there a description given in class? How was that worded? Could other factors like price have played a factor in choice? I would need to know this before I can judge the results.

Use of textbook

Students were then asked whether they did the recommended readings for the course. Students who did or did not do the readings did not differ on their mean scores for external motivation or amotivation. The results for internal motivation were mixed. In the semester where students did not have a choice of books, those who did NOT read had slightly higher internal motivation scores than those who did. In the semester in which students did have a choice, those who DID read had higher internal motivation scores. This is certainly suggestive that there is an interaction between choice, motivation, and reading.

Finally, students were asked which described their approach to reading: skimming, reading, or reading with highlighting and notes. When there was a choice of books, students who read with highlighting and notes had higher internal motivation scores than students in the other groups. When there was no choice, there was no difference in approaches. Similarly, when there was a book choice, the students who read with highlighting and notes had lower external motivation scores.

There is an interesting question here. Are internal and external motivation influenced by having choice or is motivation something the individual brings to the situation that is rather unchangeable? Does giving students choice encourage internal motivation, which encourages deeper processing of content? Or do internally motivated students prefer choice and “reward” giving that choice with more reading and deeper processing of material? What is cause and effect here? The authors looked at mean motivation score differences between the usage groups. Another way to look at the data would be to see if usage group membership predicted motivation score. This way, you could also look at whether choice predicts motivation score.

Derryberry, W. P., & Wininger, S. R. (2008). Relationships among textbook usage and cognitive-motivational constructs Teaching Educational Psychology, 3 (2), 1-11

Tags: motivation, reading, textbooks
Posted in Curriculum and Materials, Students | Comments (0)

Describing Schools in Research

July 29th, 2009

school So often in research, we describe schools generally as public or private, charter or traditional district-run, etc. However, the variation within these categories are huge. Is there some way we could better describe characteristics of schools so that after we complete our research, we really know what elements of the school are related to what we are studying?

Enter the Variable-Based Descriptive Framework for Schools. The model uses three broad categories: learning model, administration, and facilities and resources. Within each of these are more variables. For example, within learning model are descriptions of:

curriculum
assessment of learning
place and time
teacher to student programs
student to student programs
other learning related variables

For each of these, there are more potential variables with what might be described as a rubric to score the variable. For example within curriculum are: amount of structure, course offerings, authentic pedagogy, individual learning plans, and more.

To create this taxonomy of schools, the creators attempted to “catalogue differences in schools that could be expected to impact student outcomes.” The idea is that this is an empirical, rather than a theoretical taxonomy. They next want to describe a large number of schools using these descriptions and use clustering techniques to see if these characteristics “hang together” and form types of schools that are more meaningful than charter vs. district run.

I think the descriptions, even as they are, are useful for researchers looking at school-level variables. It can provide a framework by which to gather data describing schools in a systematic way.

Tags: taxonomy of schools
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Connections Research is the blog for Connections Learning & Education Research. Look for summaries and commentary on new education-related research, as well my own observations of the field.

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