Failure Of Discovery Based Learning And Benefits Of Guided Training Methods-Clark
#notesFromPaper Year : 2008 Tags : #killerPaper pedagogy idealized class structure Authors: Clark Yates Early Moulton
Makes some strong claims, that media does not influence learning, motivation, or work performance. Popular design models and problem based learning is mostly ineffective. There are few, specific training methods that work, and they work because they support the mental processes by which people learn complex knowledge.
Media delivers learning but does not influence it. e.g. distance learning doesn’t change anything if the actual instruction doesn’t change. (Sitzmann 2006)
Often studies that show a difference in the outcome of media accidentally insert different information or support.
Bernard (2004) & Sitzmann (2006) say that people are not more motivated from learning by new technologies.
Americans and Israelis each had different “usual” modes of learning. When they swapped modes of learning it didn’t really effect the learning. People did put more effort into the mode they thought was harder (rise to the challenge)
This paper really shits on GBL. Methods used in games could be cheaper in other contexts. It does feel a bit weird because they keep saying “only poorly designed studies find benefits to games” which makes me wonder how ad hoc their reasoning is…
Many papers ask players to self report motivation, which may be uncorrelated with actual motivation.
Mayer 2004 found that guided solutions in a demonstration based on task analysis and accompanied by practice and feedback is pretty much always better than discovery based learning. DBL takes significant mental effort when “the hard work” has already been done for us.
Mayer's Multimedia Design Principles
learning designs suffer from design system fragmentation
Merill's Five Star System draws from various fragmented design systems.
When developing lesson plans remember to use cognitive task analysis which has been useful in stuff like teaching radar debugging or surgery.
Media affects accessibility, cost, and efficiency. Method affects efficiency and motivation.
pg 26 has a guide on selecting learning platforms
My Thoughts
So this paper makes the reasonable case that media doesn’t influence the education. A lecture is a lecture whether in the classroom or recorded.
My thought is that some media does allow for flexibility. A recorded lecture allows me to go back, watch at double speed, or watch while doing something else.
And I wonder how this paper feels about flexibility. Is flexibility outside the scope, and potentially useful (even if other aspects of media aren’t useful) or does it think that flexibility is nice, but ultimately doesn’t change how educational goals.
