Leilei IP&T 692 blog

More thinking on the moral dilemma

2004-12-01T19:44:00.000-08:00

Originally, I thought I didn't understant what Russell means by moral dimensions and ethics issues. I could not tell the difference between the common sense of "moral" and the specific meaning in the paper. After I read the ISPI Codes of Ethics and Standard Summary, I realized that it probably refers more to the responsibility of the designers to the clients and the instructional context in their working process. After the discussion in class, I have more questions on the honesty issue of the designers. Obviously we should try to be honest as much as we can. But in the real situation, troubles or difficulties that are encountered may challenge the honesty. As Sam said in class, the designer might even lose his or her job if they disclose the truth or they refuse to conduct something illegal. Sometimes, it is no use doing what you like, you have to like what you do. I am not saying that honesty is not a good thing, but I just doubt from the real world perspective that does every designer strictly follow the ethical codes in their design or do they sacrifice ethics for the sake of personal benefit or even organizational benefit?

Reflections on Ethical Dilemma

2004-12-01T19:43:00.000-08:00

I actually did this reflection before Thanksgiving. But I forgot to post it.

I like the examples given in this paper, which shows me the unsuccessful results of instructional design without appreciate consideration of the users’ accessibility. I think when instructional designer is developing an online course or other products, they should treat it as a face-to-face interaction with students or clients even though they do not actually appears in the PowerPoint slides or the multimedia effects when students are learning. They should consider the facts that “students change the way they see themselves in relation to others and to the world around them. “

One thing I am still frustrated on is that, even after I finished reading the whole paper, I am still not sure what the paper means by “Moral Dimensions”. It is stated in this article that “Our use of the word moral emphasizes neither ethical codes of conduct nor direct teaching of virtues; rather we wish to focus on the ways in which instructional designers conduct and view their work in relation to those who will uses their instructional products. ” Does that mean that, as long as the instructional designers devote themselves to the design, the practice of designing instructional interactions then will become moral dimensional? Does “dimension” mean the amount of consideration the designers take of the students’ needs? We are supposed to read something about “Ethical Dilemma” for this week, but where is the dilemma? Is it rising from the difference between fully or partially commitment to the instructional design? Furthermore, I was wondering how to differentiate what is right and good from what is not using the framework? The paper claimed to use the framework to improve instructional designers’ practice through the so-called “reflexive judgment”, but it didn’t say how to use it through this judgment.

Also, I have a feeling that this paper is kind of using a lofty attitude to see instructional design and encourage instructional designers to work imaginative to avoid seeing themselves as technicians hired to produce a preconceived instructional product. We definitely need imagination and should enjoy the working process. But from our tour in Allen communication or interview with the instructional designer, we know it is repeat work! Needs assessment, usually results the same. (I do know it is very important and necessary from both my software engineering class and this class.)

Finally, a question on the criterion for good instructional design: How do instructional designers know their products are successful? By the students’ performance, by the test scores, by the rating or complains from the students or by the number of students who register the next semester’s online classes? From our tour in the Independent Study Center, we heard that those statistic numbers are not accurate and is confounded with several variables. How to evaluate and improve the design to get a better outcome? Do we have any quantified or precise approaches?

Is instructional design a moral endeavor

2004-12-01T13:09:00.000-08:00

I think instructional design is a moral endeavor. Because:

First,the instructional designers have to provide organizations or individuals with the skills, knowledgte, abilities or attitudes necessary to create oppotunities so that they can achieve the desired goals or social effects. The designers have to put their clients' needs in the first place.

Second, the instructional designers have to acquire the knowledge through a systematic approach rather than the way of just going for and doing it so that they can meet the requirement of performance.

Third, the instructional designers will have to consider the evaluation or assessments from the clients. They must take responsibility for the clients. This also means that the designers should interact with their clients, add new values into their produce, update and validate their design practice, keep on improving until the project is done. (I am not sure if the last one is feasible or not thougth).

Finally, I think probably a good collaboration with other designers and the ability to work both independently and in a team spirit is very important for an instructional designer.

Career research links

2004-11-22T07:55:00.000-08:00

A resume from a instructional technologist:
http://www.aace.org/JobBoard/messageview.cfm?catid=2&threadid=138

The Proper Way to Become an Instructional Technologist (AECT lecture)
http://it.coe.uga.edu/~lrieber/pdean/pdean.html

INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGIST Job in WC
http://www.wc.cc.va.us/pp/organdjobs/jobDescriptions/academic/library/instructionalTechnologist.html

http://www.itrc.wvu.edu/aboutus/web_developer.pdf

Reflection on HPT skill sets

2004-11-17T22:38:00.000-08:00

The paper groups the basic skills into two categories in terms of "Technical Skills" and "People Skills", where the former refers to the analysis and design skills that the HP technologist should personally have and the latter refers to the interaction skills such as management and communication that takes effect when the HP technologists are working and talking with people.

For the technical skill part, when the technologist deals with a case, it is like he has to cut the complicated, twisted situation into small, simple pieces of factors, (The sub-factors may be parallel or hierarchical), then analyze each of these, and explain the comined relations between the sub-factors as well.

One interesting thing I found here is that the paper talked about "HP technologists should be able to explain a variety of implementation alternatives, each potentially differeing in cost, speed of implementation and overal performance improvement impact. All alternatives, however, should be powerful enough to solve the performance deficiency." I didn't realize that they have to find a few alternatives to solve the problem before I read this. I had thought that they only need to find an optimal way, whatever it is maximum likelihood, parsimoney or something else, only one best fit model to settle the problem. My understanding here is: Is it that the HP technologist proposes several feasible solutions, weigh the strength and weakness of each, and pick up the most suitable one according to some particular rule, standard or their previous experience? It seems to me that it is more pratical that they focus on only one solutio, keep on adjusting this one by adding some parameters, changing some variables, etc., rather than developing a couple of alternatives and compare different alternatives to get the best one. If the first one doesn't fit, then they can turn to another one. I guess I also doubt that in the real world, the possibility and feasibility to work out a lot of alternatives, all have the attributes of "cost-saving, effective, speed-up the implementation".

Furthermore, for the "People Skills" part, I learn that a good personal character is very important for a HP technologist. Like it says in the paper, "the HP technologist must become a person with whom others want to do business". Even though what the paper mean by people skill are mainly on management and communication interpersonal skills, it seems to me that these skills are more of an art than a science. Given two HP technologists with pretty similar analyzing and designing skills, usually it is the truth that the clients would prefer a nice looking, polite, humorous technologist who are good at communication and experts in management. Those "soft" skills help the technologists to build trust with the clients, know better what the clients think and want, convey their design ideas more clearly and effectively to the customers and identify the problem more efficiently.

For the future skills for HP technologists, I think one important qualification is the ability to locate the useful resources that they need to solve the problem. This is an information century. Tons of informations are available on line. If they can effectively grab the information they want out of less useful resources with this powerful "library", they would benefit a lot, saving time and energy, using other HP technologists' work for references, etc. I was also thinking that maybe in future, the position of HP technologists will become more interdisciplinary because they need to have a large knowledge base to solve a wide range of performance problems and also because the Human Performance technology doesn't primarily focus on creating new theories and consequently they will borrow more from other theories and disciplines.

Prof. Orgs

2004-11-17T13:18:00.000-08:00

http://bcol02.ed.gov/Programs/EROD/org_list_by_territory.cfm?territory_cd=sc

Class Notes on Children Learning

2004-11-08T11:59:00.000-08:00

memory retain:

BE

Learn to

Know To

participation in group study, corresponds to real context,

Design Experiment:

Field guide to design experiment
http://www.soe.berkeley.edu/sandhtdocs/guide.html

Reflection on Computer-based Technologies

2004-11-06T17:07:00.000-08:00

This article talks about how and what computer-based technologies change children’s learning. Computer-based technologies can be powerful tools to enhance learning if employed in a correct and effective way. They change the way we learn, provide varied visualized approaches to simulate the real world. Just as it described in the article, computer-based technologies can not only help children “learn things better”, but can also help them “learn better things”. The point lies behind the technologies is that it is no so simple to utilize the technologies even though they can lead to improvements in learning.

I think at least three problems will arise when using computer-based technologies:
First: in the past, the instructors spent most of their time in preparing the contents of the class. But now, they have to spend part of the total preparing time to deal with the computer, such as making the slides, getting to know how to use some software, coding to produce vivid effects, and etc. Some instructors may focus too much on the form of the class so that they do not pay enough attention to the contents, which may result in a lower quality in class. Furthermore, it is often the case that the instructors are late or forget to update their slides or correct the errors which may mislead the students in class. It is common in CS dept that many slides that are still used today were made 1992. Finally, I found that some instructors are too dependent on the computer-based technologies that they are really lazy to do any hand-writing notes. Last winter, I took a networking class. I was so surprised to see that the professor just searched the slides casually in class and then started talking about the unprepared slides. Sometimes, when the Internet gets down or there is some technical problem with the computer, it is kind of low efficient for some instructors to follow that day's schedule to convey all the ideas they want to show in class.

(One good thing is that the instructors can exchange their teaching ways through comparing the slides.)

Class notes

2004-11-01T13:11:00.000-08:00

Explicit Knowledge: -instraciated in some physicd medium; -text->proceedure, process,

Tacit Knowledge: http://www.sveiby.com/articles/Polanyi.html

Knowledge repositories

data, information, knowledge,
wisdom: someone who has knowledge and konws how to use it

Knowledge Management

2004-10-30T14:49:00.000-07:00

From google search: "The most comprehensive web site that I have found on Knowledge Management." - Karl-Erik Sveiby

http://www.kmnetwork.com/WhatIsKM.html#whatis

Its definition for KM is:

"Knowledge Management caters to the critical issues of organizational adaptation, survival, and competence in face of increasingly discontinuous environmental change.... Essentially, it embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings."

My understanding about KM is that it reconstructs, reforms or reorganizes the information and knowledge into a more meaningful and accessible way to facilitate people who need it to use.

One thing I feel important in the paper is that "Data are raw facts and numbers which can be informative buy by themselves provide little value for decision making". A case in point is from my research in computational biology. We have bunch of data from sfmg company about DNA sequence and geanology. But the people in the company don't konw how to utilize those information and then they employ students in the CS department to make the best use of the data. Only when the raw data are put into "context" and the "relations between daa and context are understood", can we find a satisfied solution to harness those data.

Another point that is impressive to me is about workforce knowledge management. "An astonishing 42 percent is stored in emplyees 'heads'".(Malhotra, 2001). I can see that if companies can fully or further share and utilize those precious experience and knowledge in the employees' minds, they can save plenty of time, energy and money. And I think that it is very likely that older employees may have more valuable to share than the younge ones. But I really feel regrettable that companies in China are laying off tons of experienced employees and losing one their "human assets". I hope when I go back to my country, I will be able to contribute to improve the current situation.

ISD and PT issues

2004-10-27T20:33:00.000-07:00

I just saw a paper saying that "ISD Is Like Building A Deli Sandwich."
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/templates/deli.html

"Jumping straight into developing a training program is the same as heading for the deli to buy something nutritional and winding up at the candy shop buying junk-food." If we do not analyze the problem, we might end up with junk-training, which is just like junk-food – it provides no nutritional value and too much of it is harmful." Only after we actually analyze the problem, understand the specific environment of the project and what task we are trying to accomplish, find the real cause of a performance problem can we get to design our instruction. In the "Attack on ISD" paper, the author mentioned "Start with outcomes" and "work backwards". This reminds me of the three approaches that are used in my "Information Extraction" class: Bottom-up and Top-Down, Middle-Out. It seems to me in the paper that the bottom-up approach is favored than the top-donw one. "Get a prototype as fast as possible and show it to people" and ask them if this is what they need. But in my opinion, the whole process is not that simple as described in the paper. From my software engineering or database model creating classes, the instructors always warned us that the software or model designer should spend more time in designing their software prototype rather than go straightly to implement a model. You need to ask the clients as many questions as possible about their needs. But still, it is highly likely that when you present your draft model to the customers, they are not sure if this model will fully satisfy their needs. And they will keep on complaining on the software and ask u to add new functions. Thus, software engineers, when designing their software, have to follow some regular steps and consider a lot more things than just the descriptions from the customers. So it is with the instructional system design. Of course the designers should frequently ask the learners or managers their needs, but they shouls also follow some rule-of-thumb steps to conduct their design. And those steps make their work more systematic and methodological. Additonally, when they analyze the problems, they probably also follow some educated steps that may help thme to get a clear understanding.

"The design and development phase can be though of as the deli sandwich. First comes the objectives, which is top layer of bread, and then the tests, which is the bottom layer of bread." The designer have to decide what types of meats and cheeses they should choose and how these material should go in your sandwich (the performance steps).

"The performance steps or learning steps is the basic outline that gets you from one layer of bread to the next." That is, you have your objectives (top layer of bread); then you have the various performance steps (meat and cheeses); and on the other end is the test (bottom layer of bread).

Finally, it is now time to eat the sandwich - - This is the implement step.
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Reflection on Job Aids issues:

It seems to me job aids are fast and more to solve temporary problems comparing with training. If the problems or needs require skills that involv long time memory or instance response, then training is better. Job Aids are not good when individuals confront novel and largely unpredictable circumstances.

Why an effective coaching job aids press the individual to skip a consideration, add or highlight factors?

I have a question on the "guidelines for when job aids are appropriate" from Rosset and Gautier-Downes:
The second one says "it is a complex, multistep or multiattribute situation" while the six mentions "there is high turnover and the task is simple". Are they conflict with each other or does that mean "Job Aids" is a panacea that is suitable for both complex and simple situation?

Another question is: in the Table 27-2 "Kinds of Job Aids", the author compared the Traditional and Expanded view of Job Aids. I am not exactly sure what the author wants to express in the "When" part. "During performance" is the "Traditional" way while "During Performance, Just prior to performance and Just after performance" are given in "Expanded View". Does it mean that currently the Job Aids can also be given before and after the people perform? How do the job aids designers know they should give what type of specific aids to the people who need help before the people really perform? How do the designers know what problems the workers will bring before the workers really perform something wrong?

Media vs. Methods

2004-10-25T08:13:00.000-07:00

When I first looked at our discussion topic: Do media influence learning? I just took it for granted that media do influence learning. I never doubt the influence of media on learning before and thought about questions like "can media compensate for poor methods" or "can methods compensate for poor media" (Su Ling proposed), or "Are media integrated in methods or not?" Then I looked at Clark's paper and the Pro-method groups' discussion, I realized that there are lots of things I didn't consider before.

LS vs IS

2004-10-17T14:19:00.000-07:00

After reading those papers, I think I become more confused with the difference between IS and LS.

I don't have much trouble in catching that they ground from seperated communities, have different scope and goals, use different methods and epistemology and history contexts prevent them from being aware of each other. But I kind of find it unclear about their future.

As Duffy described in the paper: "IT tend to focus on the design of the instruction", LS tends to "focus on the learning process and the social context."
LS is "highly interdisciplinary, collaborative approach, derive design principles from a cohesive theory" while IT "spends much time in “defining” principles."
His sense is that "learning sciences field does not give sufficient attention to identifying and testing the role of particular cognitive variables in learning environment."

Duffy also stated in his article, “Should we be reading each other’s literature? I am not sure. To the extent we have different goals, the literature for one group may remain largely irrelevant to the other.”

Then I asked: Is it really necessary to merge these two and is it really possible to merge them in future? It is highly likely that merging them does provide benefits to designers from both parts, but the efforts that spent on merging or acquiring the essense of both may greatly overweight the efforts that designers or technologists can afford to really work out something with expertise in only one field. What is worse, if as duffy mention that they don't go into each other's literature, if a designer or scientist in each field just grap a very small piece from the other that meets their specific needs when they encounter a particular problem, I think it is not a systematic approach to learn and not a good way for the two to merge or benefit from each other.

My another confusion is that: is the difference between LS and IS just the difference between Science and Technology applied to learning? Every science endeavors to generalize theories or principles from cohesive facts and every technology tries to define principles for riching specifi contexts. The distinctions between LS and IS stated in the paper do not seem to give much information or hints to identify their speciality in learning or teaching. (I hope my opinion doesn't go to the extremes) When we studied IS last month, we mentioned that IS focuses on "how to teach", which centers on "instruction"; on the contrary, LS should be concerned more with "learning". It seems to me IS and LS demonstrate the same process but from different perspectives. The former is from the instructor's perspective while the latter from the learners'.
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David Merrill in his paper mentioned that "Theoretical gournding is not a distinction between two disciplines." ("The Science of Instruction andn the Technology of Instructional Design") and he doesn't think these two disciplines share the same but with different philosophies, theories, and methods. Haha, this is a good news to me. Is there significant distinction between these two? :-) Furthermore, he said "Design is not just application of science but is in fact a means to creating its own knowledge base." Is this claim against his previous statement? If design has and is trying to build its own knowledge base, we should say that the design and LS are from different goal and theories. Then why David Merrill still said "There are some issues that have been suggested that I don't believe distinguish these two fields"? Maybe I can ask him tomorrow.

more thoughts about HPT

2004-10-12T19:39:00.000-07:00

There is an equally tremendous need for greatly improved productivity but it is the productivity of complex, social-technical, financial-political, human-machine work systems, not simply the productivity of individual workers. The task of engineering these total work systems will address all the aforementioned factors, not just the conventional "socio-technical" ones. And, make no mistake about it, Democracy is on its way into the workplace.

"The reigning paradigm of human performance technology holds that performance can be engineered. This means that the conditions of performance can be arranged to ensure results. In this scheme of things, the conditions of performance are arranged by management, typically with the aid of a performance technologist, and the performance is accomplished by a person known as "the performer.""-----From Fred Nickols 2000

Reflection on Performance Technology

2004-10-05T17:58:00.000-07:00

Some thoughts in class:
1. Good performance doesn't necessarily lead to good outcome. I think this happes a lot in our life. Sometimes, people don't make mistake, they act or beheve just similar as what they did in the past, but the outcome is different. As mentioned in Rosenberg's paper, this is because there are changes. "People knew what they were supposed to do and what they did didn’t change much over time." Dr. Graham said people don't get good outcome just because they don't perform well enough to achieve the satisfied goal. Then my question is: what is a good performace? How to evaluate performance? Can performance be evaluted quantitative or can we evalute it at all? If a person is making significant progress in his performance, but what he does is still far from what he is supposed to accomplish, how do we appraise this performance? Do we say he perform well or not simply based our determination on the outcome?

2. Another question is: sometimes, it is not impossible that people who do not perform well can still get a good outcome. E.g., in the stock exchange process, a person mistakenly treated a price if 9.3$ as 6.3$ and sold the stock. Then the stock price began to go down. His mistake by chance saved him money and risk. How to use performance technology to explain this kind of situation?

3. After I read "Human Performance Technology" paper by Rosenberg, I was really attracted by the "Examples of HPT in Action" Section on how HPT can help companies to improve and save time and cost. How to apply and implement HPT to realistic problems seems facinating to me. I hope we can discuss it further in our class soon. Maybe Dr. Graham can combine this problem with the IP&T job hunting and show us what we can do with a degree from IP&T.

4. It seems to me that the HPT focuses more on the business part(e.g. organization, bottom line) and more instant or immediate turnout. When doing instructional design, my understanding about it, is that even though both of theories do care about the results, the instructional design and learning theory aim at a relatively long period of time so that they can perceive a full picture on how people learn, while HPT is more technology part, which means that whatever techonology you used, as long as you finish what you are supposed to do, it is OK. Traning is just part of it(I could be wrong).

5. How to bridge the gap between what we are capabale of doing and what we are supposed to do? How to reduce the gap between what we are trained to do and what we really do? As we learned from our previous class, there is a gap from the knowledge itself and what resides in the learners' knowledge base and how the learner applies this knowledge to solve the particular specific problem. Similarly, how to make the training be reflected the right way in the learner's performance is a problem that needs my further attention.

Reflection on Seatler's paper and 1994 definition

2004-09-29T21:03:00.000-07:00

On Seatler's paper:

One question I have for this paper is: what is the role of machines or tools in the concept of Educational Technology? It seems to me that its role is kind of up and down, on and off as times go by.

Another interesting thing is to notice the change of the concept with the trends in the world development. The concept adjusts itself when wars take place, when technology revolutions came, etc.

Reflection on the “1994 Definitoin of the Field”

It talks about the definitions: rather than technically based on special knowledge in a context of research, the general definitions explain how a term is to be understood in the context where it is used.

To define, parameters/assumptions should be clarified. Consider scope, purpose, viewpoint, audience and essential characteristics. 1994 definition treated Instructional Technology more as a field of study as well as practice compared to that in 1977.

It made some assumptions: 1.research and practice in the field are carried out in conformity with the ethical norms of the profession. 2. Understanding yield more effective results. 3. Use the most cost-beneficial way and make best use of human and material resources to achieve effectiveness.

Discussion on Educational/Instructional Technology.

One most comprehensive system-oriented definition was given by Robert Gagne: IT is concerned with studying and establishing conditions for effective learning.

Whether to assume that establishing conditions for learning includes establishing learning environment?

Instructional Technology:
1. Theory and practice: knowledge base to support practice. Practices benefits KB through information gained from experience.
2. of design, development, utilization, management and evalution;
3. of processes and resources.
4. for learning: instruction is a means to learning. Its purpose is to affect and effect learning.

1963 Definition is more of a working definition.

Educational Technology vs Instructional Technology

2004-09-29T19:31:00.000-07:00

The "1994 Definition of the Field" talks about the definitions: rather than technically based on special knowledge in a context of research, the general definitions explain how a term is to be understood in the context where it is used.

To define, parameters/assumptions should be clarified. Consider scope, purpose, viewpoint, audience and essential characteristics. 1994 definition treated Instructional Technology(IT) more as a field of study as well as practice compared to that in 1977. I think this is a very good trend to move the definition from practioner's role to a field of study. In my opinion, the Instructional Technology is not only a technology to help people develop practical skill, but also an art that focuses on how to teach, how to design the theory so that the learners can benefit most from it. As the assumptions made in the "1994" paper, research and practice in the field are carried out in conformity with the ethical norms of the profession, and make best use of human and material resources to achieve effectiveness.

Discussion on Educational/Instructional Technology.

One most comprehensive sys-oriented definition was given by Robert Gagne: Instructional Technology is concerned with studying and establishing conditions for effective learning. One argument about it is
whether to assume that establishing conditions for learning includes establishing learning environment? My personal view point is: it should include establishing learning environment. If from a wider perspective, learning not only happens between the instructors-learners, learners-learners, but takes place between the learner-environments as well. For example, we learn it is going to rain from the environment that there are heavy clouds in the sky. Instructros in listening class will try to avoid any distracting noise from the classroom so that the students can concentrate. Usually people learn fast and effective when a suitable learning environment is established. In this sense, if the purpose of learning is to achieve efficiency, learners do learn by getting stimulus and hints from the learning environment, why should establishing learning environment not be included in establishing conditions for learning?

One thing I found interesting in the paper is that the 1994 definition is closer to the 1963 and 1971 ones than the later definitions. The paper explains that it is because they share the similar stated goal and the 1963 one was based more on theory and practice thanon the functions emphasized in later definitions. My question is : why later definitions do not emphasized on function? What kind of factors give rise to this change? Is it possible that in the future, the focus will shift back to functions?
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From the paper: Component of the Definition:
1. Theory and practice: knowledge base to support practice. Practices benefits KB through information gained from experience.
2. of design, development, utilization, management and evalution;
3. of processes and resources.
4. for learning: instruction is a means to learning. It is purpose is to affect and effect learning.
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Reflection on Reigeluth's paper

2004-09-24T19:23:00.000-07:00

I use some of his ideas in my projects. So I write little on my understanding on the paper from reflections. If my understanding is right, I think it will show up in my project.

Reflection on Gibbson's paper

2004-09-24T18:24:00.000-07:00

Emmm....really impressed by the wide reading horizion of Dr. Gibbson

His paper makes a distinction between scientific and technological purpose of human activities. Before I read this paper, I seldom have a careful thought about how to distinguish and combine the two.

I think any argument that try to answer which profession is better or higher is like the argument of “which is easier between theory and practice”, though scientists do not just deal with the theory and technologists do not only involve in practice. The thinking models are different. Science deals with "understanding" in nature world while technology deals with "doing" with the man-made world. This doesn’t mean they are unrelated. Actually they are mutually independent and sustaining. Scientists do take part in experiment practice and technologists need to understand the foundations and principles of their practice as well. Technology should not be regarded as an auxiliary or supporting aspect of science or simply taken as “applied science. It is the study of ways people develop and use technical means tools and machines. It tells us how to control the natural and human-made world and how to utilize technical means to transport, manufacture, construct, and communicate.

QUE: When a technologist is working on something but has not succeeded, we usually call him a technologist, but when he managed to create something influential, we call him a scientist.
Is it that whether a person is a technologist or scientist also depends on the result of their work, that is,how their research influences the life of people?

I also have an impression on this paper that the difference between a scientist and a technologist can be compared as the distinction between figuring out how to make a key and finding a key to open the door. The problems or unknow knowledge is like the door. Scientists try to find out the shape of a key that can match the door hole while technologist try to find out a key the shape of which may already exist to open the door. (Hehe, I could be wrong)

The following is a citation I found about "good science" and "good technology".

Good Science - usually involves the development of an hypothesis, the testing of that hypothesis by controlled experimentation or observation, the collection and analysis of data to produce results and the drawing of valid conclusions based on those results.

Good Technology - usually involves the design and development of a solution to a problem and yields a product, process or environment that serves a real need.

Scientist vs Technologist

2004-09-20T11:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/sciencefair/difference.htm

Currently, I think I would view myself more as a technologist rather than a scientist though I wish I could be more like a scientist.

The way to distinguish these relies not in professions or people, but the distinct model they use to think about and solve problems. Generally, technologist is more application-oriented, that is, given some specific data sets and aims, they have to solve the problem under constraints, using most of their current knowledge and learn something new according to the problem that needs solving. In this sense, I was thinking myself as a technologist because most of my study or work deals with solving some specific problems. Concerning my research, I kind of feel I become more scientist-like coz I have to think out new algorithm which has not been done by others or improve sth. based on other's previous work.

2004-09-18T21:55:00.000-07:00

Comparison table between the three theories

2004-09-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

Figure 1: Reinforcement occurance vs level of learning

2004-09-18T21:19:00.000-07:00

Like a hungry girl eating the noodles, I really enjoy this cool class!!

Reflections on the Three Learning Theories

2004-09-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

Some ideas on class:

1. Dr. Graham gave us an approach to determine if a computer can think. The computer seems like a expert system than can analyze and react to the people's question. If the person before it can't tell if it is from a real human being or a computer, then the computer could probably be called "has the capability to think". One thing be noted here is that, the reason computer can react promptly is due to its huge memory or large database. If it has little data stored in the memory, we won't believe it can think.

My question is: given a 4 year old child, he has little experience or prior knowledge structure, though his reaction to our quetion is slow or he could not even answer the question, we take it for granted that he is able to think because he is a human. In this way, why a computer react slowly can or can not be called "able to think?

Question 2: When we say people think, usually we mean that they will analyze the input, using their prior experience to process the input and output the idea whth more or less their personal brand. On the contrary, what computers do is just to follow exactly the instructions or pre-designed programs to deal with data. Those processed data do not have any of the computers' characteristics, that is, the information run on Windows XP Word doesn't have any difference from that on Windows 2000 Word. If we call this process a kind of thinking, then how about the scanning machine in the grocery store? They can act properly as a sales assistant. Can we call them capable of thinking because they can process our checking out data on money?

Que 3: About reinforcement. When behavorism talked about reinforcement, did they mention if there is different level resulting from different occurance of reinforcement? Is it like the picture displayed(Figure 1)? When the reinforcement occurs again and again, the knowledge in a learner's mind graduately approach and slowly asymptote some specific level? One example that I can think is that after students from non-native English countries stay in America for a couple of years, no matter how many more years they will go on staying in the US., their English is kind of stagnant and makes little difference in the language skill even though they are still exposed to new words and expression. I am not sure if this example is clear enough to explain the condition that I want to present. Hope the picture can help a bit.

For easy comparison's sake, I put some important things I feel in a table about the three theories. Most of the contents are from Etmer's paper.

Que 4: there is a theory in networking called "Queuing Theory", talking about how to process information using queue and make the best of the server. I wonder if the three theories ever mention how to deal with the order of input knowledge just as Queuing Theory does? Do they follow First Come First Serve? Last Come First Serve? Assign different priority to different input? Or else?

Reflection on Cognitive Theory and Constructivism

2004-09-12T18:41:00.000-07:00

I think the explanation of cognitive theory is easy for readers to catch their idea, but it is kind of ridiculous to conceive the learning and memory relationship of human as that of computer. Computers are created to simulate the process on how human brain deals with the information. That is why there are courses on artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural network, pattern recognition, etc. to find out the secrets of information processing with human. It is the order that we have human brain first and then we develop computers to imitate human’s functions. The successful invention of computer doesn’t mean that human brain really works in that way. It seems to me that cognitism reverses the order and does so not just for simplicity’s sake to describe the process. It is true that computers do have RAM, ROM, CATCHE to store information for different time periods, but that doesn’t mean human’s brain has the same kind of setting. Cognitism separates memory system as sensory, short-term and long term. Why separate memory into different space? Are there really any specific called short-term memory and long term memory in our brain? Why isn’t it possible that short-term memory and long-term memory share the same location and we acquire something just because we repeat the same thing for so many times that it takes deeper physical or chemical or biological effect in the brain?

Though the process of learning from cognitism is similar to the information processing of computer, it is different. For computers, as long as the hardware is all right, as long as you save it and don’t change it, information will stay unchangeable in the drive forever. On the other hand, even though human put the information in the long term memory, it is still possible that we forget them. But we still can pick them up really quickly when we review the material. An old saying from Confucius: “Know new things and review the old ones, you can be a teacher.”(In Chinese is “温故而知新”)

Like behaviorism, Conginitism also tries to find out environment's influence on human behavior, but they focus more on the idea that a information processing system of the learner intervening between the environment and the behavior.

Two things I agree with cognitism is their statement on the prior knowledge relating to input new knowledge and the self-regulatory strategies in helping students to learn effectively.

"Implication of CIP for Instruction:
*Provide organized instruction
*Arrange extensive and variable practice
*Enhance learners’ self-control of information processing "

Constructivism assumes knowledge is constructed rather than exist already and is simply conveyed into the brain. It conceives learning process as a reconstruction to make sense of the knowledge to the human himself. No man looks at the world with pristine eyes. All the knowledge they learn is rendered with their personal color. As it mentioned in Chapter 11, “knowledge constructions don’t necessarily bear any correspondence to external reality” and “reflect the world as it really is to be useful and viable”. We understand in our own ways and relate knowledge with what we already have in mind. One example of me is remembering new English words. Some English pronunciations are sounded funny from the perspective of Chinese, which remind me every time I encounter them of funny things and thus help remember. Those funny things were not a reflection of the word’s real meaning, but the reconstruction process does work in reciting.

One resemblance between Constructivism and Cognism is that they are both interested in the role of self-regulation from learners. Both support self-control through the promotion of skills and attitudes and the former further think that it can help the learner get increasing responsibility for developmental restructuring process and strengthen their tendency to engage in intentional learning process.

On the other side, prerequisite skills or entry learning goals are not the main focus of Constructivism. This is a difference between Constructivism and Cognism. The former prefer to emphasize on higher-order goals and make sure the necessary scaffolding is there for support when learners want it. They largely weigh the process of learning instead of the “products of learning”. Collaboration is encouraged as a critical feature in the learning environment, which make me feel that the way we learn in class is more of a constructivism way.

More thinking on learning

2004-09-12T18:37:00.000-07:00

I saw an example from my Statistics class this week on the topic of “Do rewards and praise stimulate children to learn?” Randomly chosen students were divided into “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” groups respectively, to complete a questionnaire and then were asked to write a poem. The former group was concerned with the intrinsic motivation—doing something because it brings satisfaction and the latter—doing something because a reward is associated with its completion. The poem quality of the intrinsic group is significantly higher than that of the extrinsic one.

This randomized experiment makes me think that learning is really affected by the type of motivation. Rewards could kind of urge students to learn, but possibly not much. A question is that, for those working on something out of intrinsic motivation, e.g, for pleasure, joy of self-expression, get new insights, derivation satisfaction, relaxation, rather than extrinsic purpose in terms of public recognition, finding a good job, get materialized stuff, etc., are the pleasure, self-expression kind of like spiritual or emotional rewards? Most of us do something to achieve our goal. To learn is not just to learn, but to gain skills or prepare for our goal.

Give a person the skill of fishing is better than give his a fish.(”授之以鱼不如授之以渔“) We should convey the methods on how to learn rather than just the knowledge.
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first reading reflection on learing and behaviorism

2004-09-02T13:38:00.000-07:00

I think the process of learning is like a river and the water is like the knowledge in our mind: small and narrowly at first contained within its banks. When we get to know new things, it is like new branch of water flowing into the main river. Then we can think more wisely just as the water flows more smoothly. An outcoming stimulus acts as a stone jumping into the river, resulting in splash, whirlpool or even change of the river’s direction. Similarly, human being will be touched on the happen of events, be driven to ponder the on the new material and apply what they learn to redirect their further behavior and increase the probability of the behavior recurrance.

One thing be noted here is that not everything we meet becomes part of learning or result in learing. To learn something means a process that a being (Animals can also learn, so learning should not be limited to human, right?) forms its own ideas,cultivate reflection, gain skills or refine the original understanding upon new arrivals(it could be a lesson from a mistake, new things from multimedias, old story handed on by elders and etc.), and can further utilize the knowledge abtained to solve problems or benefit their further study.

One context is the way I learn coding. Professor just threw a couple of definitions to students and gave them the projects. But that doesn’t mean I have already acquired the coding skill. I had to follow the examples, read through tutorials and documents, wrote my own code, ran and kept on debugging, looked up information from online forum. (Teachers and teaching assistants may be a good resource when I encounter difficulty.) After that I gain some experience on coding and debugging. Based on this experience, I write more programs, reduce the error rate and be more confident. By doing this iteratively, the coding skill is honed.

(Questions: How to judge the quality of learning? If people do form ideas and are able to apply the skills, but the ideas or skills are wrong or misunderstanding, is it still a kind of learning? Moreover, stimuli often interwavingly come, how to determine which stimulus produce the corresponding response? "It is hard to figure out precisely what consequence is responsible for maintaining some behavior." ) The process of learnig could be pretty easy or effort-taking. A creature may easily pick up something from trivials while spend 10 hours daily to pratise some skill(e.g., coding). (Question: Is memorizing something kind of learning? But what if we don’t even know how to use those thing we try to remember? Is it true that until people actually apply or utilize those knowledge can we call it a process of learning?)

Some pieces of thinking:

Things that facilite learning come from both the external and internal of the being.

Encourage, love, excitement, curiosity, ambition, confidence will accelerate learing while bad news, depression, disappointment might slow it down. Feeling,motivation and goals all take effect in learning. Humor and sacarstism may work better in learning than a barely critic and usually reminds people in a more acceptable way.

Praise and penalty also facilitate“learning” to some extend. They are auxilary tools to stimulate learning, but it does not necessariliy result in learning. It depends on the degree and how long it lasts. A student who gets used to praise might be too proud of himself to learn well. Long time exposure to server penalty may result in aversive feeling or even make the person to escape.

hello test

2004-08-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

692 test