CS 6398 Class Notes

Scribe, Annie Archbold

April 4, 1996

Opening Statement

Just as the business community has begun to acknowledge a sense of disappointment in technology - when computers merely mechanize older ways of doing work - so has the educational community become frustrated with technology that serves only to extend existing practices instead of causing society to rethink what learning is and what it can become. (Gerard Fischer)

We began our outdoor session with Mark asking what we thought educational software like Road Trip did for students.

Our response was that it was very goal oriented and provided less constraints or scaffolding for students.

We then were asked to discuss the differences between Roger Schank and Gerhardt Fischer.

Schank

• Schank has an ask system with little room for student reflection (Roadmap and Broadcase News) Broadcast

• The system knows the answer (yes/no).

• Instructionist system where the teacher knows the answer.

• Schank"s idea is that we need to grow a whole new group of people who are not in computers or education to create educational software.

• His software do not engage the user, but is an agency within a system.

• His corporate work with Arthur Anderson and Northwest Water are training software.

• What is the student learning if the initial items are pre-selected for the student, who then merely chooses among pre-chosen items?

• ILS is not a done in a classroom, but is done in a laboratory setting.

Fischer

• Goal is learning.

• HyperGami is constructionist where the user is building something; this is not process oriented learning and there is no immediate feedback.

• Orientation of learning by mistakes and students do not do any specific task as in Schank"s Sickle Cell Counselor.

One of the student's responded that knowing, teaching and learning is often overlooked in the process of developing educational software.

Mark: John Anderson's Intelligent Tutoring has advantages for low end students in teaching for a test. The program knows the path and can monitor when the student goes off the path and then prompt the student for movement. It can't help students learn to think.