EIPT 6333 : Week 4 Reflective Notes (Calvinly.com)

Sherlock I is a computer-based environment for avionics troubleshooting, and Bio-world is a computer coached learning environment that teaches high school students to diagnose infections. I like both of these cognitive tools because they provide a lot of cognitive capabilities for the learners. For one, they both support memory processes. Whenever learners need help, the tool can provide them with a summary or a recap of the learner’s activities. In Bio-world, students get access to declarative and conceptual knowledge through an on-line Medical Library. With this support for memory processes, learners can free up the heavy load of information as well as encourage metacognitive awareness of the problem-solving process. Another good thing about the two cognitive tools is that they act as a partner and shares the cognitive load with the learners. This really helps the student focus on more critical, high-level task while the computer helps to process the lower-level tasks. In many situations, it is not feasible for students to complete a task or an activity in a real world setting. For example, it would be dangerous for students to diagnose real-life patience as a classroom activity. These cognitive tools provide learners with the ability to engage in cognitive activities that are out of their reach otherwise. The final function for these tools is that it can support hypothesis testing. I like this idea because it gives learners a change to try out new things and explore different paths for the solution to the problem. For example, in the Bio-World, students can get information and with that information, be able to conclude a hypothesis on a type of diagnosis for a particular infection. If the diagnosis is wrong or inappropriate, they can conduct another hypothesis. This is a great way for students to try out new things as well as troubleshooting their problems.

The good thing about these two cognitive tools is that they both satisfy the model builders and the model breakers, because they both have some modeling but is not constraining the problem-solving process by forcing students down one correct path. A suggestion to improve the tools is perhaps modifying the interface and providing ways to motivate the learners. The interface for Bio-world seems to be quite complex and a lot of information presented at one time (Figure 9.6). Perhaps having it more simplified and a more appealing look can provide simplicity and easy-to-read and visualize information.

Chapter 10
This chapter focuses on collaboration in computer-systems. The author discusses three main dimensions to designing a framework for computer-based collaborative learning situations: (1) the role of collaborative learning with the curriculum, (2) the instructional methods and activities used to carry out this role, and (3) the computerized tutor’s function during these activities.

The tutors (whether human or machine) have three main roles to play while students are engaged in collaborative learning activities. They should first provide advice on demand. This can be similar to a coach giving advice to their player(s). They should secondly provide quality control over peer critiquing and other collaborative activities. Tutors should keep the students on track of the learning goal and not mislead them to different goals or task. For example, if a student’s critique is misleading to the other student, the tutor should let the student know or provide ways to improving the critique to where it is not misleading. And lastly, tutors should manage collaborative activities which can include selecting tasks for students to work on together, or being able to identify students who would work well together.

A lot of research has been conducted on social interaction. Many theorist (Piaget, Vygotsky, etc.) believe that social interaction promotes learning. When peers work together, they support each other by sharing ideas and working on tasks together in solving a problem.

Sherlock II is a coached practice environment developed to train avionics technicians to troubleshoot a complex electronic testing device. Some of the features include allowing students to ask for help at any point while troubleshooting, determining how much support each student needs (depending on their previous skill level), and creating a record of the goals students have achieved and how they achieved them. During an episode of an exercise, students can be involved in collaborative situations by playing roles as a producer (performs the task at hand) and critic (evaluated the performance). Following are some activities that can take place for either role:

Students can work together to solve problems by talking to each other and manipulating a simulated task environment on the computer.
Students can pose problems to each other.
Student can review each other’s work.

Sherlock also supports the tutors three main roles as discussed earlier. By supporting the first role (providing advice for students at hand), Sherlock II can tell students which goal it would achieve next, say or model exactly how it would achieve that goal, scaffold the development of students’ ability to construct mental models by providing abstract block diagrams, and coach students in acquiring troubleshooting strategies. By supporting the second role (quality control director), Sherlock II plans to have student critiques examined (ex: filtering out misleading or inaccurate comments) by Sherlock before they are passed on to another student. An finally, by supporting the last role (tutors as managers of collaborative activities), Sherlock II plans to include the selections of problems for students to work on, solutions for them to critique, and possibly pairing (or grouping) of students to optimize the learning opportunities each affords for a partner.

I was very interested when they were talking about the computer system being able to group students relative to their characteristics and experience. I just think this would be a great feature to have. Since some students find it difficult to work with other students, because they both share different knowledge, characteristics, and interests, I think having the ability to match students together based on those things can really enhance the collaborative effort of both peers.

Chapter 11
This chapter focuses on the Discovery and Reflection Notation (DARN), which is a graphical trace notation intended to encourage students’ self-regulation and evaluate their process of learning. The author notes two different kinds of self-regulation. The first kind of self-regulation is goal orientation, which is the ability to organize goals and sub-goals and be able to build relationships and meaning into them. The second kind of self-regulation is the ability to evaluate and critique one’s own processes of experimentation.

DARN consisted of three different views, Student View, Plan View, and Expert View. The Student View was intended to assist students in evaluating and reflecting on their actions, and to check for changing variables, making predictions, and recording data. The student view is in a graphical table-format that has five columns in which each column has graphical buttons: plan button, variable changes button, predictions button, tools button, and hypothesis button. Each type of button has its own graphics representation (ex. Plan buttons are diamond-shaped, hypothesis buttons are circle-shaped, etc.) . When clicked, each button displays information about that particular section. The plan buttons indicate those cases where the student changes his or her plan by stating a new one to the computer. The Variable Change buttons summarizes all the changes made to the manipulable variables in the program simulation. The prediction button follows an observation only if the student has chosen to make a prediction. The Tools button assists students in taking, recording, and managing data. The hypothesis buttons is used to show that the student has made a hypothesis about a particular law or principle. The colors of the hypothesis button (circle-shaped) represents whether the students got it correctly or incorrectly. The Plan View indicates whether experimentation activity is consistent or inconsistent with the current plan. The Expert View organizes the student’s observation with an expert’s view. The purpose of the Expert View is to encourage the student to spend additional effort interpreting the data that reveal important laws he or she has overlooked.

The research study was to see whether DARN encourage students to engage in the two kinds of self-regulation, goal orientation and the ability or evaluate and critique their own work). The pilot data observed that students spontaneously make self-evaluative comments about the sufficiency and validity of their evidence, their plans, their experimental heuristics, the plausibility of their hypotheses, and their overall progress.

I thought this study was very interesting. It added another element of cognitive activity, self-regulation, in which other systems did not specifically provide. I would only wish they could have added more screen shots. From the screen shots provided, it does not explain much about how each buttons are presented. It was very difficult for me to visualize how each button and menu worked. If I could see how it worked, I could perhaps give some suggestions on how to improve the usability of the system.