Learner Centered Design

CS6398 : Class notes (March 28, '96)



Quotable Quotes

  1. "Learning is assimilation, augmentation, and reorganization of the incomplete mental structures held by the learners..." [Learner Centered Design Theory paper from CHI'96]

  2. [In the Socioculturalism context] "Learning is enculturation" [Learner Centered Design Theory paper from CHI'96]

  3. "Of course, one goal should still be to use that increased zorch to make computers even easier to use..." [Soloway, Guzdial, and Hay paper from Interactions]

Discussions

Several questions arose during the discussion of the first quote for the day. Mark elaborated on the phrase "assimilation and accomodation" (which is also part of the cognitive science definition of "constructivism"), giving the following definitions:
Assimilation
Involves bringing in knowledge, and connecting to the learner's existing world model. This requires no reorganization of the existing model.
Accomodation
This involves bringing in new knowledge that doesn't fit into the learner's existing knowledge and structures, and thus requires reorganization of the learner's world model.
An isssue that was raised was one about the long-term goals of teaching children, namely "are we trying to make scientists of children or are we trying to get functional children who know science". Two research groups at opposite ends of the spectrum on this issue were mentioned: John "Children are not short scientists" Richards [head of the Educational Technologies Dept. at BBN], and Marlene Scandamalia & Carl Bereiter (both are at OISE, and were part of the team that built CSILE.

Another topic of discussion involved the use of, and the theory behind Emile and the Explorer series (anyone have a link for this?). The Explorer packages only allowed learner's to inspect and criticise an existing model -- the actual workings of the model were hidden from the learner. In contrast, Emile requires a learner to create/build his own models. Thus, while a learner understands the fundamentals of a world model in Emile (since it has been constructed by the learner), it also involves a higher level of complexity than the Explorer series.

There was also a discussion (intermingled with a lot of the other discussions) on techniques to be used on planners v/s bricoleurs. The concept of "bricolage" was used by Turkle and Papert in their paper "Epistemological Pluralism and the Revaluation of the Concrete."

Last modified: Mon Apr 1 15:18:09 EST 1996