Cognitive tools

based on cognitive tool in edutech

David Jonassen Gibson 1979, technology from ecological perspective

facilitate cognitive processing learners need in order to serve as cognitive apprenticeships scaffold process of articulation and reflection - foundations of knowledge construction

empower learners to assume ownership of knowledge

computer-based tools and learning environments that have been adapted or developed to function as intellectual partners with the learner in order to engage and facilitate critical thinking and higher-order learning

Pea (1985) cognitive technology as “… any medium that helps transcend the limitations of the mind, such as memory, in activities of thinking, learning, and problem solving”

Kim and Reeves 2007: designed to bring their expertise to the performance as part of the joint learning system.

Can support learners by (Lajoie 1993, Shim and Lee 2006):

  • support cognitive processes, memory and metacognitive processes
  • share cognitive load, support for lower level cognitive skills so resources are left over for higher order thinking skills (what are lower level and higher order?)
  • allow learners to engage in cognitive activities that would be out of reach otherwise (ZPD?)
  • allow learners to generate and test hypotheses in context of problem solving (CSAV?)

Reeves 1999: cognitive psychology. Computer-based cognitive tools as intellectual partners, enable and facilitate critical thinking. Learners function as designers, using software programs as tools to

  • analyze the world
  • access and interpret information
  • organize their personal knowledge
  • represent what they know to others

Basic principles guiding use of interactive software as cognitive tools for teaching and learning:

  • greatest effect when applied within constructivist learning environments
  • empower learners to design their own representations of knowledge, rather than absorbing representations preconceived by others
  • can support deep reflective thinking necessary for meaningful learning
  • 2 important cognitive effects: those with the technology in terms of intellectual partnershps, and those of the technology in terms of cognitive residue that remains after use of tool ?
  • source of tasks should be learners, guided by teachers and resources
  • ideally, tasks situated in realistic contexts, with results that are personally meaningful (why focus on tasks, not ideas?)

Problems

Assessment of what is learned often done in a different context, but tools should be thought of as professional tools, related to practice

Some tools, like simulations, result in learner only learning tool and not something transferable

Kim and Reeves: learner, tool and activity form a joint learning system. Cognitive activity usually reflects some aspects of all three cognitive distributions:

  • social
  • symbolic
  • physical

For example, brainstorming for ideas as a team exemplifies social distribution of cognition among people. Drawing diagram on board to visualize ideas reflect their dependence on symbolic and physical distribution.

Media debate - should symbol systems be conceptualized as part of distributed cognition? (Clark vs Kozma)

Rabardel - instrumentation: an artifact only becomes an instrument through the subject's activity. Instrument is mediator between subject and object, but is also made up of subject and artifact. (Beguin and Rabardel 2000)

Kim and Reeves: Theoretical assumptions about cognitive tools from distributed cognition view:

  • distributed between learner and cognitive tool
  • distribution first determined by intentions of tool designers, ie affordances
  • then by how learners decide to use tool in specific situations

Jonassen and Carr:

  • semantic organization tools (databases, concept mapping tools)
  • dynamic modeling tools (spreadsheeets, microworlds)
  • visualization tools
  • knowledge construction tools (multimedia authoring tool)
  • socially shared cognitive tools (computer supported collaborative argumentation)

Kim and Reeves: new forms of tools:

  • modelers, that model the student
  • supporting new forms of knowledge representations (DNA)

Robertson, Elliot, Robinson - 5 roles of tools

  • information seeking
  • information presentation
  • knowledge organization (relationships, restructuring, manipulating information)
  • knowledge integration (connect new information to prior knowledge)

Patel and Groen: tool specificity, level of expertise

  • general, domain independent expertise (such as creativity)
  • domain-dependent (precise knowledge and processing strategies of particular domain)
  • generic domain-dependent (applicable to various sub-domains)

specificity - structure of expertise

  • knowledge, facts or abstract rules
  • functions, rule execution, decision support
  • representations, concrete (isomorphic), abstract (symbolic)

many references in edutech