Dave Reese: "people learn best when engrossed in the topic, motivated to seek out new knowledge and skills because they need them in order to solve the problem at hand" ----->
Will members of our society who have the most to learn (young children) ever be able to learn "core" knowledge in the "best" way?

Dave Reese: "ease of use alone is a foolish goal to strive for independently since useability must also exist to bring any value to new technologies" ----> the assertion is made that increasing the quality of education is of equal or greater importance than reducing cost. Just as it makes little sense to create an easy to use system which is not useful, increasing the quality of education without carefully considering the cost/benefit can lead to a superior educational system in which only a small minority can afford to take part.

Andy Gorman: "... that information technologies have been used to mechanize old ways of doing business--rather than fundamentally rethinking the underlying work process and promoting new ways to create artifacts and knowledge." ----> I'm not sure of the best way to design software that supports user's tasks and re-invent their tasks at the same time. The new tasks are not yet the user's tasks!

design = a dialectical process between tradition and transcendence

problems ----> specific formulations of problems ----> solutions

- every problem conceptualization and work process is conceptualized within some media and some context (Unix ---> Symbolics / Mac, McGuckin, Travel Agents)

- "You cannot use smoke signals to do philosophy. Its form excludes the content." ([Postman "Amusing Ourselves to Death1985], p 7)

Bob Gatewood:

Where does this intrinsic motivation to learn come from? What roles do teachers, parents, other adults, and peers play?

What that means is if we introduce a lot of new technology in the learning process, does the student's focus become mastery of the tool instead of understanding the world around her?

"The fact that societies have often overestimated change in the short run and underestimated it in the long run suggests that we should make every effort to understand the long-term societal impacts of learning and intelligent systems." ........ I don't think we can be expected to foresee such fundamental changes as the diminishing of the role of the Church that resulted from the development of the printing press.

This is only a problem because neither American business nor the state invests in worker training. ----> "American business have a major stake in fostering transfer of training, since they spend up to a $ 100 billion each year to train workers. Yet the estimate is that no more than 10% of training transfers to the job. So business wastes $90 billion each year because of lack of transfer."

Eric Scharff:

H2 (contextualized presentations) ----> Norman: "Mapping the Artifact to the Person" ----> "it may not be enough to provide alternative representations; the system must have some understanding when a specific representation is better than others.

Another shortcoming is the treatment of "motivation" throughout the paper. Motivation is a tricky problem in learning because while it plays a major role, it is not all that well understood.

We cannot simply hope to create tools that help motivate people without also understanding what motivates people on their own. Understanding the qualitative generalities and individual specificities of motivation does not seem to be a problem that can be answered just by building systems.

machine learning = subfield of AI concerned with programs that learn from experience

- applied learning systems - a practical necessity?

* to overcome the tedious work of programming

* the ultimate form of knowledge acquisition in knowledge-based systems

- machine learning as a science

* understand human learning well enough to reproduce aspects of that learning behavior in computer systems

* computer enforces a commitment to fine-structure process-level detail

* exploration of alternative learning mechanism complementing human learning methods

we (as a research center) have been interested in computational media and environments in support of human learning (specifically through constructionist design activities)

design time t0 use time t1

_______X______________________________X_____________________

incomplete knowledge at time t0 about what will be and what will happen at time t1

- learning on demand (problem of coverage and obsolescence)

- understanding the task at hand for a computational environment

acquisition of new declarative knowledge - example: learning physics (learning new symbolic information coupled with the ability to apply that information in an effective manner)

development of motor and cognitive skills through instruction and practice - example: riding a bicycle, playing the piano (occurs at a subconscious level by virtue of repeated practice)

organization of new knowledge into general effective representation

discovery of new facts and theories through observation and experimentation

Norman: three kinds of learning

- accretion = accumulation of facts (experiental)

- tuning = from the initial stages of novice performance to the skilled, smooth performance of the expert (experiental)

- restructuring = forming the right conceptual structure (reflective)

classification by the amount of inference:

- no inference (programmed, all effort on the side of the teacher)

- substantial amount (burden on the teacher decreases)

taxonomy:

- rote learning or direct implanting of new knowledge

- learning from instruction

- learning by analogy

- learning from examples

- learning from observation and discovery

example: learning from examples

- source of the example - the teacher, learner, or external environment

- examples available - positive, positive and negative

example: learning from observation and discovery

- passive observation

- active experimentation

learning is a process of knowledge construction, not of knowledge recording or absorption ----> constructivism, constructionism

learning is knowledge-dependent; people use their existing knowledge to construct new knowledge ----> differential descriptions, user models

learning is highly tuned to the situation in which it takes place ----> domain-orientation, human problem-domain communication

learning needs to account for distributed cognition requiring to combine knowledge in the head with knowledge in the world ----> learning on demand, using on demand, "basic" skills (example: hand-held calculator)

learning is affected as much by motivational issues as by cognitive issues

step 1: ignore the existence of the gadget

step 2: make people learn arithmetic, multiplication tables, long division, drawing square root by hands

---> and after they have it all mastered, they can use hand-held calculators

step 3: create / invent new calculators, which makes learning these skills more fun and creates a deeper understanding

step 4: find new ways to distribute responsibilities between humans and machines

- humans do the qualitative reasoning, use estimation skills

- machines do the detailed quantitative computations

ask the same questions: spelling checkers, grammar programs, assembly language, mathematica, training of pilots for today's aircrafts

learning

- is not only done is schools (life, museums, computer clubhouse, ...)

- learning can take place without being taught

learning on demand (reflection in action)

Norman - "Real Learning: The way we learn is trying something, doing it and getting stuck. In order to learn, we really have to be stuck, and when we're stuck we are ready for the critical piece of information. The same piece of information that made no impact at a lecture makes a dramatic impact when we're ready for it."

lifelong learning

collaborative learning

organizational learning

more than "adult education" - tries to cover and unify all phases: intuitive learner (home), scholastic learner (school and university), skilled domain worker (workplace)

integration of working and learning: learning is a new form of labor

engagement in self-directed, authentic problems: constructionism

learning on demand: coverage is impossible and obsolescence cannot be avoided

collaboration: the individual human mind is limited

---> organizational and collaborative learning

lifelong learning is hard (3000 Cobol programmers at NYNEX, teachers as lifelong learners)

industrial-age models of human resource development are inadequate to prepare students to compete in the knowledge-based workplace

instructionism fails to meet learning-on-demand needs on rapidly evolving topics

from problem solving to the integration of problem framing and problem solving

Drucker: "more and more knowledge, and especially advanced knowledge, will be acquired well past the age of formal schooling and increasingly, perhaps, through educational processes that do not center on the traditional school"

major argument driving current business reengineering efforts: disappointing results from investments in information technology ---> technologies used to mechanize old ways of doing business

major argument for reinventing and redesigning education: we use technology as an add-on to existing practices ("gift-wrapping")---> instead of fundamentally rethinking what education should be about in the next century

claim: "old" frameworks (such as instructionism, fixed curriculum, memorization, decontextualized learning, ..... ) do not get changed by technology itself (e.g., intelligent tutoring systems, multimedia, networks)

"new" frameworks: lifelong learning, integration of working and learning, learning on demand, authentic problems, self-directed learning, (intrinsic) motivation, collaborative learning, organizational learning, new content

computers by themselves will change education

information is a scarce resource (the "Nobel Prize" winner myth)

content / value / quality of information and knowledge is improved just because it is offered in multi-media or over the WWW

"ease of use" is the greatest challenge or the most desirable goal (instead of low threshold and high ceiling, engagement, affection, personal relevance)

the single or most important objective of computational media is

- reduce the cost of education

- increase the quality

- we need to resolve the paradox between economical realities and educational objectives

I hear and I forget,

I see and I remember,

I do and I understand.

the credo of the Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory, CU Boulder

claim:

- the chief impediments to learning are not cognitive but motivational

- people can learn many things if they want to

impact of our approach on motivation:

- make information relevant to the task at hand

- create interesting products

- provide multiple learning opportunities

- provide challenges matched to skill levels

- create communities (among peers, over the net)

- provide access to real practitioners and experts

provide a high intensity of interaction and feedback

have specific goals and established procedures (always? appeal of Simcity of a game without a well-specified goal?)

provide a continual feeling of challenge, one that is neither so difficult as to create a sense of hopelessness and frustation nor so easy as to produce boredom

provide a sense of direct engagement, producing the feeling of directly experiencing the environment, directly working on the task (domain-orientation, human problem-domain interaction, ready-to-hand versus present-to-hand)

avoid distractions and disruptions that intervene and destroy the subjective experience (intrusiveness of critics, mail messages)

low threshold and high ceiling

increasingly complex micro-world

co-adaptive systems

the pupil is thereby "schooled" to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new

we need research on the possible use of technologies to create institutions which serve personal, creative and autonomous interaction and the emergence of values which cannot be substantially controlled by technocrats

equal educational opportunity is, indeed, both a desirable and a feasible goal, but to equate this with obligatory schooling is to confuse salvation with the church

an illusion on which the school system rests: most learning is the result of teaching

educational webs = heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each momment on her or his linving into one of learning, sharing and caring.

information is scarce ---> plentiful

reproduction of documents expensive and restricted ---> cheap

specialization low (Renaissance Human) ---> high

change within a human life time relatively slow ---> fast

interaction in the physical realms ---> professional realm

(communities of practice; invisible college becomes the main affiliation)

from Eli Noam: "Electronics and the Dim Future of the University" , Science, Vol 270, 1995

from consumer to designers

- 500 TV channel (the CHI'95 story)

- Illich: "schools and universities = reproductive organ of a consumer society"

- technical challenges: end-user computing,

"basic" skills

- what is the critical background knowledge which makes learning on demand feasible?

- question: if most job-relevant knowledge must be learned on demand what is the role of "basic" education?

- question: do "basic skills" change their meaning under the influence of technology?

"school-to-work" transition:

- if the world of working and living relies on collaboration, creativity, definition and framing of problems, dealing with uncertainty, change, distributed cognition, symmetry of ignorance, ......-----> then the world of schools and universities need to prepare students to allow them to have a meaningful life in this world