Learning scientists changing the world: Challenges and opportunities

keynote by Janet L. Kolodner

(notes by Beat Schwendimann)

Learning deeply, a process of mental model building, takes sustained and long-term effort and often requires a lot of help.

(the Italic text is partly controversial)

• Promoting and sustaining active engagement is somewhere between 50% and 80% of promoting learning
• Learning is a process of iteratively constructing, revising and connecting together mental models - models of what we know and models of how to do things
• Becoming fluid at reasoning skills is an iterative process of composing and debugging sequences of how-to's (Schank and Abelson; Anderson; Newell, Rosenbloom Laird)
• We know we need to learn something when a mental model or how-to sequence doesn't do the work we want it to do - either we can't do something we want to or or something turns out different than we expected or something happens that we weren't expecting and can't explain
• Great deal of reflection and inteerpretation needed to recognize the need to learn and to troubleshoot and revise ones mental models

• framing first, details later (Collins)
• help learners experience the results of their decisions, help learners interpret those results and use them to debug their reasoning and understanding; repeat over and over again, repeated deliberative practice
• includes reflection on, articulation of debugging of reasoning (interperstation)
• recurring opportunities to try out, troubleshoot and revise understanding
• lead students to wonder by asking questions (book, teacher and peers can play this role)
• allow learners to notice, to identify what they do and don't understand
• promote identifying holes in one's mental models and generating questions
• help learners care enough (so they have learning goals) to put in the mental energy to construct and revise mental models
• help learners connect their mental models by helping them recognize and revisit what they already know and the implications of that on what they are learning (knowledge integration, Linn)

• Personal and epistemological connections promote engagement and learning (Papert, Resnick)
  • connect with prior knowledge
  • when they are interested
  • when what they are learning connects to the real world and they are helped make that connection
  • with a goal in mind, learners will themselves become curious and want to learn
• Communities of practice work together to help each other achieve goals
  • community (of many kinds) encourages engagement
  • can be created in formal and informal learning environments, with engineered early activities to promote shared values and ways of doing, continued work together to sustain the community (Kolodner)
  • community engagement gives learners opportunities to imagine what they might be, and mentors can help learners align themselves to their imaginations
• Thick authenticity for maintaining integrity (Shaffer and Resnick)
  • keep it real to keep people engaged - thickly athentic in the mind of the learners
  • personal, disciplinary, real world, assessment authenticity
  • solving problems relevant to the world learners live in, having available the same kinds of tools and resources professionals would have
  • a big question or challenge promotes personal connection (Krajcik, Edelson, Reiser, Kolodner)
  • assessment is embedded, relevant to learners' goals, and meaningful to learners
• Turning over agency to learners allow learners to decide for themselves to participate (Holland)
  • encouraging agency encourages engagement, and disposition
• Providing scaffolding that promotes success and self-assessment keeps it challenging but not out of reach

• lessons will be de-emphasized
• challenges will be emphasized
  • not the same as projects
  • projects are about doing something, challenges about achieving something
• activities will be in the context of challenges, and lessons in the context of activities
• lectures will be for purposes identified by learners, and they will often be short and impromptu, recorded and available as needed, or interactive (to be watched as a group, stopped and started as needed, watched and then discussed)
• reading, like lectures, will be for purposes identifed by learners to answer questions they have raised or to provide details on what they have already experienced or contextualized

• places for addressing challenges together
• learning will be purposeful
• assessment will be purposeful