Confident learners: the cognitive challenges

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Confident learnersthe cognitive challenges

• John Kirkland

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Quintet

• The curriculum whats to be taught/assessed
• The platform means to offer curriculum
• The pedagogy how its offered, teaching
• The culture institutional ethos, branding
• The grunt cognitive loading

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Proliferation

• Every two-bit player is an instant expert on
  distance learning
• Basic ingredients
• - marketable content (curriculum)
• - fast, reliable internet connectivity
  (platform)
• - somebody willing (teacher)
• - institutional push (culture)

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Unlimited technical potential

• Mantra more, faster, better, cheaper
• Bigger bells and shriller whistles wont do it
• So --
• What can we do that other providers cannot?
• What might give us a market edge?
• Why bother with a Massey course when the same
  is offered cheaper elsewhere?

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My reply

• Revisit what it means to learn
• Bring back thinking
• Many students are learning all right parroting
  answers, plagiarising, cheating, etc.
• Lets ask why? Not only these activities becoming
  viable short-cuts, they signal alls not well
  with design matters

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A massive handicap

• Few experts remember what it is like to not know.
  Most are unable to savour their own histories to
  re-experience the not-known
• They have lost touch with their intellectual
  roots
• So, lets get our heads around what matters from
  a cognitive approach

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An analogy

• Think back to the last time you took on a new
  undertaking a night-school class for ham radio,
  wood-turning, second language, musical
  instrument, sport, appreciation of opera or wine
  whatever
• One writer suggests at the beginning of any new
  venture we always begin with a bush having many
  branches and plenty of choices

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One in the hand

• As we become more proficient, irrelevant
  side-track branches get pruned away
• Further, with more experience and acquisition of
  associated skills, the bush becomes more like a
  tree
• Eventually, trees become as ladders

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Discoveries

• The entire process begins with curiosity and/or
  doubt
• This leads to exploration within a
  semi-structured environment (the curriculum)
• And, with effort, theres a discovered outcome,
  a ladder
• Technically, we say whats been acquired has been
  constructed a process that begins with what
  goes on between persons and is later personalised

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Iterative process

• This cycle of engagement is mediated by another
  and is natural
• Thus given the right conditions, learning is
  inevitable
• What this means for design carefully nurture
  curiosity through exploration, ease this into
  play, continue messing around until insight
  clicks and thus a new skill is acquired for
  generalising

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So What?

• The easiest way to eliminate thinking is to
  provide ladders at the outset and then check
  regularly on climbing rates
• Hence those short cuts mentioned earlier have
  become part of an massive bored game the
  complement is snakes (getting caught)

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Ing words

• Heres the DIY aspect
• Think of any object or concept. Then, from a
  cognitive perspective, what are you doing with it
  in your mind?
• Once you catch on this task it is relatively easy
  
• Theres possibly attending, describing, and
  so on

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More-ings

• Then continue expanding these thoughts and
  include a second object, then another
• So, maybe add in recognising, matching

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Expand

• Continue this mindful process until youve
  assembled a small cognitive lexicon of, say, 30
  terms
• To help orient to the next task, jot a home-grown
  definition against each one
• Attending focusing upon the task at hand
• Analogising linking non-apparent but relevant
  abstract features to familiar objects

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Mapping

• Then what?
• Fortunately, tools are available (weve been
  messing around in the realm of mapping things
  for a couple of decades)
• Briefly, items are presented in random sets of
  three (trilemmas) and items are rank-ordered
  according to cognitive complexity

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Results

• By way of results Id anticipated a single
  dimension, with items spread from least to most
  complex
• What emerged was an expanding sphere with five
  nested shells
• This can be displayed pictorially

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Theres more

• My current hypothesis is that each of these
  shells has its own organised structure, organised
  around that branch-to-ladder sequence outlined
  earlier. Ladders are thus worm-holes giving
  access to the next shells cognitive demands.
  When the going gets tough expect regression
  shrinkage, back to the refuge of an inner shell
  where competency has already been displayed, as
  previously acquired skills

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So

• When designing a course it may be helpful to pay
  attention to anticipated cognitive loading,
  organised by level
• If you throw learners into the cognitive deep end
  theyll survive by searching for escape ladders
• A frame such as the one offered here offers a way
  to design appropriate cognitive challenges

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• Cognition Think about it

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Supplementary examples
Shell 1 attending focusing upon the task at
hand reacting giving a spontaneous, immediate,
response
Shell 2 differentiating indicating ways various
items may be distinguished from one
another recognising identifying an items place
within a familial array, often by labelling
Shell 3 identifying verbalising why an item is
a member of a recognised class paralleling
nominating a few direct similarities between
pairs of objects
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Shell 4 organising distinguishing groups
according to feature specification patterning
articulating common and inter-related explicit or
implicit features within a multi-dimensional
array
Shell 5 strategising an active plan intended
for achieving a goal generalising extending
feature mapping skills to another topic domain