Rick West

To continue reviewing some of the literature about cognitive aspects of technology-enhanced distance learning environments (TEDLEs), I will write briefly about some of the things I have learned about metacognition in TEDLEs. Once again, this builds off of some of my contributions to an upcoming chapter with Drs. Hannafin, Hill, and Song in the next edition of the Handbook of Distance Education.
Metacognition, of course, is our ability to be aware of what we are thinking and learning and to regulate this learning and processing. This is perhaps one of the most empowering ideas to be developed in learning cognition theories. I love the focus on learner agency—the idea that we can control our processing, our cognition, and our learning!
So is this metacognition easier or more challenging in TEDLEs? In computer-based learning, which is similar to some degree, some researchers believe the use of hyperlinking and repetition that is common in these environments provides cognitive cueing and supports metacognitive awareness “by prompting learners to reflect on their learning progress and allowing them to repeat material at critical junctures if needed” (Workman, 2004, p. 520).
Likewise, some researchers believe that TEDLEs can also provide more natural cognitive cueing, promoting more metacognition. To quote from our chapter, I reviewed one study by Zion, Michalsky, and Mevarech (2005) where they argue that:

“asynchronous learning networks (ALNs) allow students to review digital records of the learning that was constructed, enabling students to better monitor their learning and making cognition more visible while they develop metacognitive skills. The authors conducted a 2×2 experiment involving 407 Israeli 10th-grade microbiology students, and found that ALNmetacognitive scaffolding performed significantly better than those in the face-to-face group with no scaffolding. No significant differences were found between the ALN students with students without metacognition help and the face-to-face group with the scaffolding.”

I think this finding was interesting, because it may indicate that metacognition could be easier to achieve in TEDLEs, because the F2F group needed metacognitive support to achieve the same level as the online group who received no support, assumedly because with or without support, the students found it easier to perform metacognition online, and thus they performed better. However, I think that there are probably other variables at work here and other possible explanations, so this study would need to be replicated a few more times and in different contexts.

This is good news for online learning, except that the research is not conclusive. Other researchers have arged that developing good metacognition abilities may be difficult while learning online. For example, Schwartz, Anderson, Hong, Howard, and McGee (2004) suggested that because nonlinear online learning can be, well, nonlinear, that

“Individuals often fail to regulate meta-comprehension during online hypermedia learning because some mental resources must be used to interpret the organization of the material. In their study, they recruited 28 students between the ages of 9 and 17 to freely explore a science website in one of two formats: a conventional, linear outline format or a nonlinear format. Using the Junior Metacognitive Awareness Inventory and How I Study Questionnaire, they found that metacognitive skill was not a good predictor of retention for students using an outline structure, but it was for students using the nonlinear websites. So what do we learn from this? The authors concluded that metacognitive skills are necessary but not sufficient for learning from hypermedia, and that well-designed TEDLEs need to provide familiar structures and conventions to reduce metacognitive demands.”

That makes sense. If the learning is going to nonlinear and thus unfamiliar from “normal” linear learning, then we need to provide some structures for people to navigate the new learning landscapes.
A couple of other things we learned from some published studies, is that prompting learners to think about their learning periodically as they study can significantly improve learning online (Kaufman, 2004; Bannert, 2003); and that metacognitive knowledge in online learning can even make up some domain or system knowledge deficiency (Land & Greene, 2000).
So what are some possible overall takeaways from this? One, I think, for designers of online learning is that we should understand the importance of metacognition in online learning, particularly because online learning can be disorienting without metacognitive scaffolds. And then we should take advantage of the affordances of online learning to support metacognition, perhaps by emphasizing the ability to retrace one’s steps, see where one has been and is going in the learning, and being able to stop the explicit studying to reflect or repeat, and then return to where one was originally. Building in more reflective processes into online learning, making history and future apparent (through concepts such as “bread crumbs” or progress bars) can probably help.
As far as what questions still remain, I am not sure about what new questions we might need to ask (I’m open to ideas), but I think we could investigate further whether, and in what ways, students are more or less prone to use metacognitive strategies in an information-overload, nonlinear and nonorganized Internet. The learning landscape online is very different from traditional school-based learning, and I wonder whether that supports or challenges metacognition. I have quoted a few studies that talked about this, but there does not seem to be consensus on this issue yet.

References

Bannert, M. (2003). Effekete metakognitiver Lernhilfen auf den Wissenserwerb in vernetzten Lernumgebungen. German Journal of Educational Psychology, 17(1), 13-25. [English translation]

Kaufman, D. F. (2004). Self-regulated learning in web-based environments: Instructional tools designed to facilitate cognitive strategy use, metacognitive processing, and motivational beliefs. Journal of Educational Computing Research. 30(1 & 2): 139-161.

Land, S. M., & Greene, B. A. (2000). Project-based learning with the World Wide Web: A qualitative study of resource integration. Educational Technology Research and Development, 48(1), 45-67.

Schwartz, N. H., Andersen, C., Hong, N., Howard, B., & McGee, S. (2004). The influence of metacognitive skills on learners’ memory information in a hypermedia environment. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 31, 77-93.

Workman, M. (2004). Performance and perceived effectiveness in computer-based and computer-aided education: do cognitive styles make a difference? Computers in Human Behavior, 20(4), 517.

Zion, M., Michalsky, T., & Mevarech, Z. (2005). The effects of metacognitive instruction embedded within an asynchronous learning network on scientific inquiry skills. International Journal of Science Education, 27(8), 957-983.

technorati tags:AECT2006, AECT, metacognition, online, learning, distance, TEDLE

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I speak Spanish after having spent a couple of years on an LDS mission in Ecuador, and I was talking to a colleague of mine a couple of years ago who also spoke Spanish. He is more of a quiet, private type of person, but he commented that he noticed he was much more outgoing in Spanish, almost like he was a different person. I have noticed this with other people who speak a different language, who seem to be louder, quieter, more reserved or more flamboyant, depending on which language they are speaking.

I’ve never been able to figure out why that is the case.

I was reminded of this strange linguistic phenomenon today after reading a Wired article by Tony Long. In the article, Long discusses how relationships have changed because of technology. Ironically, coming from a Wired writer, he doesn’t think this change is good. He argues that while we might communicate more because of modern technologies, the strength or depth of our interaction is less. He believes:

It’s a paradox of the technology that even as the world shrinks, our actual communication skills are eroding. Instant communication encourages superficiality in the way we talk to each other. That’s because we really aren’t talking to each other. You have to look a person in the eye and speak in order to be doing that.

He goes on to explain how face-to-face apologies seem more heart-felt that rapidly sent emails, which he feels “trivializes the act of contrition.” He also discusses some studies indicating that we spend most of our days using technology for many tasks, including to communicate.

At the end of the article, he refers to a study, which quotes a Yahoo executive reporting that mothers (yes, I know, this is WAY too far removed from the primary source) said that they communicates better with their teenagers through IM because that’s the only way they WILL communicate with their parents.

It’s almost like these mothers describe their teens as being different people when communicating through technology. Face-to-face, he won’t talk. But on IM they will.

Do we, like these teenagers, have different personalities when we are communicating with technology, rather than F2F? Like when my friend who acts differently when speaking Spanish, I act differently when I communicate online. I think I am bolder, more confident, wittier (I hope), but more critical (unfortunately). My wife and I love to IM and have our funniest, laugh-out-loud kinds of discussions through IM (she also is wittier online!). In fact, a friend of mine teased me when I said that my wife and I do a lot of our communicating through IM. We talk F2F too, of course, but some of our most enjoyable conversations have been through instant messaging.

And the best part is those wonderful conversations can be archived!

I’ve heard similar things happen when people participate in Second Life or MMOG online games—they take on a different personality from their “real” one. Why do we act differently online? I don’t know, but I think it’d be an interesting research agenda to try and find out!

Along a similar vein, Robert Putnam of Harvard recently spoke at BYU and discussed how social connections are in decline. But there’s a ray of hope: He said this has happened before, after the Industrial Revolution, and people found new ways of forming connections. He encouraged the BYU students to create new methods for connecting to others in our modern society.

And what better way to do THAT than through technology?

The BBC has a fun little timeline showing the development of the Internet since it was “founded” 15 years ago. You can’t talk about web-based distance learning without talking about the development of web technology, of course, so I thought posting this link would be appropriate.

Looking back, I can’t believe it’s been 15 years. The Internet is so ubiquitous now that it is hard to believe. Was Bill Clinton really the first president to create whitehouse.gov? Is Amazon really only 10 years old? It’s still in its infancy as a company! A shocker for me was that the term “weblog” or blog is older than Google, and has been around for 9 of the Internet’s 15 years. So, technically, all of this blog chatter about blogs being a “new technology” is not really true.

Or maybe it is. Nine years is not much. Neither is 15 years. Technically the Internet is still a new technology.

On a personal note, I remember as an intern at the Idaho Falls Post Register trying to access text-only Internet pages back in 1996. It was slow as tar, and all I wanted was a few misely baseball scores, but it was still worth waiting those long minutes for those scores to come up, rather than wait for the AP to send the scores.

Then, I remember getting back from my LDS mission in 1998 and found out the Internet had exploded in two years. Everyone was using something called “email” and I needed help to set up my first Yahoo! email account … an account I still use today (can’t wait for Yahoo!’s new email service to be refined a little more, looks great).

Wow! I can’t believe that was 8 years ago.

Turning the attention towards web-based learning, that means we’re still in our infancy in teaching people online. We know there’s been a lot of discouraging online instruction that has been happening, but a lot of good models too. Hopefully we can now begin to refine the pedagogical methods and models, develop some standards, and create online instruction that truly provides quality education anytime, anywhere.

technorati tags:AECT2006, AECT, BlogTracks

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When we originally read the CFP for the BlogTracks style of presentation, it appeared that the point was to blog about the AECT conference itself, during or after sessions we attend, so that there was an online component to the conference. This way, interesting discussions could be continued online after the 30-minute bell rings to close a face-to-face session. Also, it would allow AECT members not attending the conference to still learn what was being presented, and be able to participate and offer feedback. We would then present the last day of the week, to kind of “wrap-up” the online discussions and have a conclusion.

This really is a great idea, one that I believe could work. It would make the face-to-face sessions more of a discussion rather than a “sit, hear, and go away” kind of routine. It also removes the restriction that you can only participate in the convention by being “on campus.”

Because the BlogTracks was meant to happen during AECT’s convention, it was not a requirement to begin blogging early. We started blogging early just because we felt it would be good to get some momentum moving into the conference, and because we had been working on some writing projects that gave us something to start talking about.

Because the BlogTracks presentation was meant to primarily be an AECT convention thing, we were dismayed, then, to find out that we are scheduled to do our presentation on Thursday morning, barely into the second day of the conference. This must have been a simple mistake, and granted, the BlogTracks presentations are in their first year and no doubt will have growing pains. It’s still disappointing, however!

Now we really don’t know what to present about. We won’t have the opportunity to blog about much of the conference, so now we will need to present about what we blogged pre-conference. But that is awkward because we had felt that blogging before the conference was optional, not necessary. So we don’t have a whole lot written yet on some of our blogs.

So, if anyone is out there reading along, what should we do? This is as much your presentation (as an AECT community) as ours. What would you like us to present on? We could summarize some of our own research about distance learning, which seems too self-centered. We could try to summarize what we might learn that first day of the conference, but I doubt there will be much conversation going on by that point. We could talk about the experience of doing a BlogTracks presentation, but so far that experience has not been the best, and I don’t want to cast a dark shadow on what could possibly be a successful presentation medium.

So what do y’all think? What should we present on?

If someone IS out there reading, what would be the best idea, I think, is if some of you could join the conversation by responding to some of the posts that we have put up, even if they are from a few weeks back in the archives. If we could get some kind of discussion going now, then we could present about this online discussion. And that was really the point of this BlogTracks all along: To generate discussion among the AECT members, if possible, and report on how well that worked. So far, the blogs have been pretty self-centered, reporting only about the research we have done, simply because there’s nobody else to talk to yet.

Anyway, I’ll continue posting regardless of who does or does not pick up the discussion thread. Up next time, some thoughts about what the literature says about metacognition in distance education. It’d be great to have you along for the discussion!

technorati tags:BlogTracks, AECt, AECT2006

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I have been remembering lately about a research methodology I learned about once called social network analysis (SNA), which is a popular form of analysis in sociology, organizational development, and other fields. This type of analysis involves using statistical methods, matrices, and graphs to show how “connected” different folks are and how strong those connections are.

To learn a little bit about this type of research, I would either check out the Wikipedia article, or this website from management consultant Valdis Krebs.

It doesn’t seem like I have read very much about social network analysis in the study of distance learning, which seems a little odd because it seems like it could be appropriate for answering SOME questions (not the panacea research method, of course, but useful for what it can do and maybe in conjunction with other methods). Has anyone read about or have any experience with SNA in distance learning? I’m particularly interested in whether Janette or Frankie have heard about this method being used in your unique areas of expertise, since it seems it would be more applicable there.

technorati tags:blogtracks, AECT, AECT2006, social, network, analysis, distance, learning

Blogged with Flock

Occasionally, Fox Trot by Bill Amend is just great. Today’s comic shows the braniac young man trying to score extra credit by building the best school website. He spends all his effort using every cool script, style, and computer code, without giving any thought to the actual design of what the website will do or be like.

http://www.gocomics.com/foxtrot/2006/09/19/

Sounds like a lot of distance learning technologies, doesn’t it? All about bells and whistles and what sells, and no thought about what people will actually learn. We can do better! Hire me when I graduate an instructional designer!

technorati tags:Fox, Trot, instructional, design, usability, distance, learning

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I referred in an earlier post about some research I have done on course management systems in higher education. I just received word that an article I wrote with some colleagues about this research that is being published by Educational Technology Research and Development is now available online in preparation for its release in print. To read it, go to:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/a11483w303084771/

The following is the abstract:

In this study, we used qualitative methods to help us better understand the experiences of instructors as they are persuaded to adopt a course management system and integrate it into their teaching. We discuss several patterns explaining how instructors implemented Blackboard, a CMS, by experimenting with individual features, facing both technical and integration challenges, and attempting to adapt Blackboard features to match their goals and practices.We also give explanations for why instructors either (a) embraced the tool and grew more dependent on it, (b) reduced their use of the tool to only some features, or (c) discontinued the tool and actively sought replacement options. In this paper we explain why instructors fell into any one of these three areas and what implications this may have for training and support needs.

technorati tags:BlogTracks, AECt, AECT2006, CMS, course, management, systems, Blackboard, WebCT, distance, learning

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To continue my theme of late in looking at the research about cognitive demands in distance education, I will conclude with my assessment that there is a decent amount of research done about extraneous cognitive load in DE (the CL related to instructional style, design, or method), and a small but growing bit of research about germane cognitive load in DE (the CL related to schema making–the “good” CL). However, there is almost nothing about intrinsic cognitive load in DE. Intrinsic cognitive load is the cognitive load inherent in the material to be learned. For example, no matter how effective your teaching methods, there will be some cognitive load involved in learning Quantum Physics, because there is cognitive load related to that subject matter, regardless of the instructional design.

In our chapter for the upcoming new edition of the Handbook of Distance Education, we (Hannafin, Hill, Song and myself) discuss this lack of research related to intrinsic cognitive load in DE. In preparing for that chapter, I found that information literacy research has a few studies that could be relevant. For example, Jones, Ravid, and Rafaeli (2004) reported a trend towards high intrinsic load in informal online spaces. They based this finding on an analysis of more than 2.65 million postings in over 600 Usenet newsgroups over a six month period. They found that the higher the intrinsic load in this online material, the less the users participated. I know this finding seems kind of obvious, but still interesting because if true, then this could be one reason why DE has such a high attrition rate. Maybe there is some material that has too high of an intrinsic load to even be appropriate for DE. This could raise some questions:

1. Is intrinsic cognitive load more of a predictor of attrition in DE than in traditional education?

2. How much can good design compensate for high intrinsic cognitive load in DE?

3. How can you measure the intrinsic load presented by a particular set of material to be learned?

4. Does the community influence the ability of folks to handle higher intrinsic cognitive load? Can a well-supported online community keep participation high in these tougher subjects? Is promoting community learning perhaps, then, more critical for difficult subjects to be learned?

5. How do varying levels of expertise impact intrinsic load in DE? Could this have potential for adaptive learning in DE? (Federico, 1999).

As always, interested in your thoughts!

References

Federico, P.-A. (1999). Hypermedia environments and adaptive instruction. Computers in Human Behavior, 15(6), 65392-65392.

Hannafin, M. J., Hill, J. R., Song, L., & West, R. E. (in press). Cognitive Perspectives on Technology-Enhanced Distance Learning Environments. To be included in the next edition of the Handbook of Distance Education, edited by Michael Moore.

Jones, Q., Ravid, G., & Rafaeli, S. (2004). Information overload and the message dynamics of online interaction spaces: A theoretical model and empirical exploration. Information Systems Research, 15(2), 194-210.

To be fair, I should mention that there is very little research done

technorati tags:BlogTracks, AECT2006, AECT, distance, education, handbook, cognitive, demands, intrinsic

Blogged with Flock

Sheesh! Another reason to dissuade you from blogging is when you have to try 17 times to get your post to show up, and then find out that it had been posting all along! I’ll never trust Flock’s “unable to connect to server” baloney again!

Sorry if anybody got all 17 copies of the last insignificant post in their news readers before I got a chance to delete them!

I like blogging, and I think it can be a useful thing for educators,
professionals, and students. However, I must admit I got a few chuckles
from this WikiHow article on “How to Dissuade Yourself from Becoming a Blogger.”

Enjoy!

technorati tags:blogs, blog, blogging

Blogged with Flock