Professional Development

Intensive Workshop Participatory Applied Research

on Enhancing Learning: a Spectrum of Small Change to

Transformation.Eric Hamilton, Pepperdine University

eric.hamilton@pepperdine.eduhttp://tinyurl.com/tuskegee-par-jan2013

thank you!

• honor to be here• goal is for us to be more effective at

enhancing student learning• workshop is participatory• so is the work• 3 parts – a) intro and planning, then divide

into b) media authoring or model-eliciting activities

topics & keywords

• introductions• key challenges we share• future learning environments, action research,

complex reasoning, creativity, passion and immersion in learning; intergenerational collaboration; media-making; tablets; participatory content development

Other notes

• finding ways or tools to change.• our models are insufficient

what we do was already insufficient getting better at what we used to will still be

insufficient for what comes next now at an intense historical nexus and a tantalizing and breathtaking precipice of

tools and possibilities

what is different?

• about what you are teaching• who you are teaching• the culture of our teaching

Pop culture …• … is so easy to ridicule• But sometimes expresses compelling truths• Schooling and testing is largely a memory fade race. • We try to leverage long-term knowledge by getting students

to experience memory fade after the test rather than before.• How can we not only get learners to develop but sustainably

use new ideas?• the quest is for disciplinary learner engagement and

immersion

A vision for the future• In every aspect of life (except schools!) what it means to learn

has changed from the pre-digital era.• The nature of complex thinking and the competencies

required for functioning in society have changed.• We rely more on social interaction and intelligence in our own

learning journeys• The fields of learning science and human and social dynamics

help focus on the possibilities of for future educational environments

ten principles of future learning environments

Increased… Described as …Interactional bandwidth

The capacity of the learning environment to mediate meaningful content, especially including sightlines

Emphasis on Elicitation

Drawing out, rather than just putting in. A fundamental reorientation with a lovely paradox

Emphasis on modeling

A greater stress on systems in how learning “tasks” are structured and in how assessment is carried out

Connectedness Individuals more meaningfully connected;

Customization and one-to-oneness

A greater sense of individualization and customization emulating a one-to-one tutoring experience.

ten principles of future learning environments, con't

Increased… Described as …Repetition and Iteration

Ideas and skills take hold through repeated application in varied contexts

Self-regulatory competencies

Learners function in ways that entail just-in-time learning, sophisticated searching, and many of the skills formerly assumed by professors

Necessity Learning occurs when we engage in activities that have consequences, with a lovely paradox

Fluidity of learning context

Hybrid and multifaceted context switching and multitasking

Generativity and creativity

Learners function in more imaginative settings in which they are able to be more imaginative

A complex system• Each principle insinuates itself into each of

these others and derives meaning from the others

• These are all inputs into and outputs from each other

• Together, they form a complex system with amazing and infinite combinatoric possibilities how we shape student experience and intellectual development

it's all about engagement

• if you don't learn the way I teach, I must learn to teach the way you learn

• the principles – and each of our personalized adaptation of them – are integral to a quest for engaging

• engagement mediates learning• (notes on a continuum of engagement to

flow)

It’s all about me

• Flow is highly phenomenological• Autotelic functioning is personalized• The research is on the individual• Michael Jordan in the zone, Game 2, 1992

Finals against the Blazers

What are the analogs to group flow?

• Not Jordan in the 1992 Finals but the Horace Grant dish to John Paxson to close out the 1993 finals

• An orchestra that loses a sense of time while maintaining a perfect sense of timing

Interactional bandwidth Consider two human activities

Hand-raising in a classroom Multi-tasking in electronically-mediated

activities like video games or television Human attentional & interactional capacity

is significantly higher than hand-raising patterns of typical classrooms suggest!

Future learning environments, with higher bandwidth, will enable greater cognitive/affective density and layering. 110.. 300.. 1200..4800.. 14400.. 56K... 256.. 10Mbs .. 100Mbs

Summary of principles

Sightlines

• See structure in– Cognition– Relationships– Content

• Featural elements of knowledge• Take me to the wizard• Visualization and simulation systems let us

see more, and see more accurately

Summary of principles

Connectivity

• We nourish each other• We impart not only knowledge one to

another, but meaning• The cognitive neuroscience of learning in

social contexts is markedly different than isolated learning

Summary of principles

Modeling

• Systems thinking becomes more salient than factual accretion

• Retention is a different in part because synaptic connectivity is richer and has more pathways

Fluid contextual transitionsGreater emphasis on heterogeneous competencies

and hybrid functionality • Between virtual and IRL• Social and solitary, analytic and immersive, drill and

flow• Examining objects to being an object• Emulating an agent and being emulated• Analytic, reflective, immersive• More interoperability of individual-social-machine

knowledge forms. Summary of principles

Individualization

• Imagine a world where schools conformed to youngsters rather than vice versa

• Take a moment to inventory the human and social tragedy that ascends from only a small fraction of learners forming natural fits with the schooling environment– Alienation– Disengagement

Summary of principles

Four grand challenges

• Break-out role influencing society innovative tools and ways of thinking about collaboration.

• Agility in learning through the life cycle• Ultra-deep model collaboration: sharing

human experience • Unlocking group “flow” in the science of

collaboration.

introduction to measEric Hamilton, Pepperdine

Common questions

• What are they? What aren’t they?• Do they “work” ?• Can they be assessed?• Is this problem-based learning?• Brad Pitt and Oakland CA

One way to think of them

• Tools to help understand how knowledge and complex reasoning evolve and grow

• Tools to help knowledge and complex reasoning evolve and grow

• MEAs, as much as anything, are about how to interpret what is seen

Two important axioms

• Knowledge and competencies are structure and interconnected – they are not additive.

• Knowledge and competencies can represented with models that are expressed orally, visually, or in countless other ways

The most important tool a [researcher][professor] has

• …is to understand the models that learners possess.

elicitation

• The best way to understand or work with models is to elicit them, to draw them out

• Not the same as pounding them in• Sort of a “reverse polarity”

Elicitation part 2

• Elicitation – drawing out – is essential for understanding cognition. And it needs to be done carefully, in a way that preserves structure.

• Years of research produced the six principles for elicitation.

• Not just elicitation though…but testing, revision and transformation

A funny, symmetrical thing happened

• …on the road to understanding conceptual evolution

• Elicitation implies translation and representation

• Testing implies representational manipulaton and adaptation

• Revision implies re-adaptation

Model Eliciting Activities (MEAs)

• Developed by math educators (Lesh)• Client-driven, open-ended problems

designed to be model eliciting and thought revealing

• Require students to mathematize information and structure in context e.g., quantify, organize, dimensionalize

• Adapted to engineering (Diefes-Dux)