Case Based Learning and Cognitive Flexibility Theory

The final unit for this semester in ECI 517 focused on two theories, case based learning and cognitive flexibility theory.  Along with readings on these two topics, we were introduced to the idea of learning objects. 

Case Based Learning

Case Based Learning Methods (CBL) is an umbrella under which ideas like problem based learning, goal based scenarios and anchored instruction can all fall.  The ideas shared by these theories are that learning should involve storytelling, and context centered instruction is superior to more traditional teaching methods.

Case-Based Reasoning Model (CBR) on the other hand is an improvement upon CBL methods that offer the learner a limited viewpoint.  CBR challenges learners to look at how learning can be recycled and improved upon in order to solve future problems of a similar but not exact nature.  This is accomplish by citing multiple cases instead of the narrower viewpoint offered by most CBL methods.

CBR also provides a concrete model with which to work like that of the Star Legacy Model from last unit.  In the case of CBR the steps are, the 4 RE's:  Retrieve, Reuse, Revise, and Retain. 

Cognitive Flexibility Theory

Cognitive Flexibility Theory (CFT) is a theory that seeks to provide learners with multiple viewpoints on a given topic and in doing so allows the learner to use their experiences plus the conflicting perspectives presented to develop their own opinions on a given topic.  Learning in Cognitive Flexibility Theory is ill structured meaning that not only will students get diverse viewpoints in a domain, they will also not get the entire story from just one source.  In fact one of the key points is to have students construct their own knowledge from partial sources.

Comparing and Contrasting the Theories

CBR and CFT have a great deal in common.  CBR and CFT both place emphasis on storytelling.  In CBR stories are the primary mode of instruction, learners use prior cases and seek to use the lessons learned to solve future problems.  CFT on the other hand, treats the learner to tidbits of information which they use to create their own stories to explain the situations presented to them.

Next, both CBR and CFT place a great deal of emphasis on learning in context.  The difference here being that CBR methods place an emphasis on solving problems.  On the other hand, CFT can sometimes lead to the solution of a problem.  However, CFT can just as easily teach learners to find answers to tough philosophical questions.  This is accomplished by having learners look at a situation from multiple perspectives and even from different areas of expertise. 

Also of note is that both of these theories are constructivist in nature.  The Cognitive Flexibility Theory strikes me as the most constructivist while CBR models can be more or less based on the number of cases presented to the learner.  CFT on the other hand seems to demand a huge amount of resources and viewpoints to remain true to the theory. 

Impressions of Case-Based Reasoning

Case Based Learning is a great way to teach students and I would love to include more case based learning in my classes.  Science is the place where this stands out to me.  I think teaching students scientific inquiry through case study in conjunction with experimentation would be an excellent way to model how scientists build upon the prior discoveries of other scientists. 

The major problem I see with the CBR method is planning and organizing lessons.  There are a number of tools that can help with this.  The most obvious are online case study databases.  Also of note are bookmarking tools like Diigo which will help organize cases by tagging.  Finally, course management systems, like Moodle, would be extremely useful in organizing units.

Impressions of Cognitive Flexibility Theory

I am very impressed by Cognitive Flexibility Theory primarily due to the Plantation Letters project.  I would love to involve this type of learning in my social studies classes.  I found the puzzle created by the letters intriguing and I think similar projects would appeal to many of my middle school students.  I do think the number of reading would have to be adjusted to maintain their attention though.  I also wish more examples of theories such as this were designed with middle grades curriculum in mind, but with the upcoming change to common core curriculum maybe this will happen since social studies will have more of a historical slant.

CFT suffers from the same problem as CBR in that these lessons seem to require a broad scope to create.  CFT truly needs a team of planners to orchestrate an effective lesson because it thrives on diversity of viewpoints.  A way to tag and organize documents is key when planning a CFT lesson, suggestion for this include tools like Diigo or developing a database.  I would also try to use community building tools and seek to form a panel of experts to help create lessons.  Another key component is a blogging tool to provide students with an outlet for reflection.  Blogging tools are plentiful and choices include Edublogs, Wordpress, or Blogger among others.

A Word about Learning Objects

Learning Objects an exciting idea in the world of instructional technology.  Learning Objects are resources that are created in a generic sense so that they are usable for a wide variety of learning theories.  A learning object seeks to reduce learning objectives to its essential building blocks.  This would allow these blocks to be reused any number of times and in any number of lessons.  These objects would use metadata tags in such a way to make them searchable in a catalog of resources. 

I am already using a version of learning objects in my classroom.  Discovery Education has sought to gather a database of articles, video clips and images.  These resources can be broken down in a number of ways and included in any number of lessons.  Discovery isn't the ultimate realization of learning objects but it is a step in this direction. 

Conclusions

Case Based Learning Method and Cognitive Flexibility Theory are grand attempts to teach students complex ideas through the use of stories.  These methods require a huge amount of planning and resources to pull off successfully but with today's advances in the area of instructional technology and the development of learning objects, these constructivist theories are easier to design and implement than ever before.  

Context-Based Instruction and Multimedia

The past few weeks have been filled with readings on "context-based" instruction methods.  These instruction methods include:  Goal Based Scenarios, Anchored Instruction Environments, the (Software Technology for Action and Reflection) STAR Legacy Model and (Multimedia Environments that Support and Organize Texts) MOST multimedia environments.

Comparing and Contrasting the Methods

Each of these instructional models have a huge emphasis on story-telling and the story is the driving factor to motivate students in each.  The way stories are used differs with each model however.  The MOST model is a tool to teach reading and uses multimedia to help tell stories.  Further, it has students retell stories, often to puppets as a way to motivate students and teach more advanced reading skills rather than simple decoding.  Meanwhile, GBS uses story as a way to set the learner up in a role-play scenario.  Then, Anchored Instruction uses story to provide the students with relevant data to problem solve.  Finally, the STAR legacy model uses story to show conflicting viewpoints which force the learner into deeper thinking.

There is also a huge focus with each of these forms of learning to provide students with learning that is relevant to the future and combines multiple skills.  These are very rigorous programs that require students to step out of their comfort zone and think about problems in ways that are relevant to real life situations.  There is also a huge emphasis on "doing" with each of these models.  The "doing" in each of these models is mostly done in acquiring the skills needed to carry out the overarching objective.

Assessment and feedback is another factor with each of these that is both similar and different at the same time.  Each of these programs gives multiple opportunities for feedback and three (MOST being the odd one out) seek to give students a "just in time" set of information that informs the student before major decisions are required.  The STAR Legacy model goes as far as incorporating actual formal assessment in form of tests and quizzes with their "Test Your Mettle" approach, which was most likely due to Vanderbilt's experience with Anchored Instruction and their feedback from teachers with the Jasper series.  GBS provides most of its feedback in the form of a coaching or matching your performance with a real world example.  MOST model students would primarily receive teacher feedback but there was a mention of possible community and family involvement that would also inform the students as to their performance.  It's also important to remember that MOST was targeted at young children.  While the other models were for middle school age students or even adults.

Reactions

Goal Based Scenarios

I believe GBS to be an excellent way to teach and I really feel like education is moving in this

direction.  Schank's assertion that experience is the best teacher is spot on and I've often found

myself wishing for apprenticeship situations for students as soon as middle school so that students could build an understanding of why school is relevant.  The primary benefit I see to this method lies in showing students that school is relevant and with the ever increasing dropout  rate this is a much needed answer.  This method also takes into account how people learn, reason and remember so it works with our natural learning styles rather than against.  The problem I see with this method is "scope" and development.  I think it would be difficult for a lone teacher to oversee the development of a solid GBS program.  There are so many possible solutions or consequences it really requires a team of experts and usually teachers are a far cry from being an expert even in their major field. 

There are a number of new tools that might help make this work.  First, there's research/bookmarking tools like Delicious and Diigo to help catalog case studies.  Second, Vimeo could be used to deliver the Cover Story.  Further, Moodle or other CMS software could help to catalog and track progress.  Finally, collaboration tools could enable teacher to plan such units with help of other teachers and even allow contact with experts in a field.

Would I use this in class?  Absolutely if these scenarios were provided by a third party.  I think the occasional GBS in my class might happen but the amount of work would prohibit its regular use, not to mention my lack of expertise across domains.  Maybe this is where professional learning communities can help in the future.

Anchored Instruction and STAR Legacy Model

I chose to cover these two together because I really feel STAR Legacy to be the successor to Anchored Instruction.  From my readings, I felt like the STAR Legacy model refined everything that went right with Anchored and took it a step further.  The benefits to Anchored Instruction and STAR both are they're group oriented, cross curricular, provides real world examples, works like PBL and they each help students develop a deep understanding of the source material. 

The primary barrier I see to use in these models lies in the amount of planning involved initially.  Both of these require a "problem" to be solved that isn't simple and can have multiple solutions.  The problems in the Jasper series required a 14step process to fully overcome and STAR has a spiral of deeper learning where you constantly spiral deeper into topics.  This planning clearly pays off in increased motivation from students and the type of learning experienced but it is a lot to ask of an individual teacher. 

I think the materials mentioned in both these models would be an awesome addition to my classroom and I would readily use them.  I think I could use the Jasper series to help teach science although it was primarily a math focused lesson.  The biggest problem I see with my current students lies in how to orient them to the group assignments.  My students are very social which helps them get along well with one another but keeping them on task is a problem.  The nature of these two models is one where my students might drift off task if left too much to their own devices.

I can see many new tools helping promote these models.  For instance, I could see Prezi or other presentation software helping students record their "legacy" projects.  YouTube would be an excellent way to store and playback video so that students could easily review clips.  Bookmarking tools could also be of use here to help students in their research.

MOST Environments

The MOST model is the one that I think might be the most needed of all these models.  I have noticed over the years that many students are very good at decoding but they have no comprehension skills.  This problem follows students the rest of their careers because it is often hard for teachers to identify the "weak" readers when decoding isn't the problem and then to help gain the necessary skills once identified.  This isn't just in at-risk schools either.  Teaching with the MOST model would help ensure students are able to comprehend what they read in addition to being able to call the words. 

The primary barrier I see to the MOST model is time.  In order to spread the MOST model across to more students it would require many more helpers in the classroom.  Teachers could not do this alone in a classroom and today in education teacher assistants are often being cut from budgets.  I think the barrier here would be solved by adding personnel. 

As for using the MOST model in my class, I could see a way to implement it although I'm a middle school teacher.  This might be a good way to teach history.  Students could learn historical factual stories and through retelling of the stories obtain a deeper understanding of the material.  The tools I think would be most useful here are things like Storybird or even a simple video recorder like the FLIP cam.  I would recommend other movie making programs like Windows Moviemaker or iMovie but I fear the primary audience of young students might find these difficult to master.

Conclusion

Goal Based Solutions, Anchored Instruction, STAR Legacy Model and MOST Environments are all constructivist theory based models.  Each have an emphasis on using stories to provide context for the information being taught.  The goal in each of these models is for students to be able to apply their learning to real life situations and therefore each of these models have a focus on "doing" activities to acquire knowledge rather than lecture.  These models emphasize rigor, meaning that each of these methods will force students to use acquire and apply numerous skills to demonstrate their mastery of material.  The differences mostly have to do with the structure of lessons, the way story telling is used, and the way feedback is given.

Increasing Perspiration for all... Group-Based Collaborative Learning in the 21st Century

After spending the past few weeks familiarizing myself with group-based collaborative learning techniques, I feel emboldened by the possibilities it brings to the classroom especially when combined with Web 2.0 tools. Entering into this research as a middle school teacher, I had an overall negative opinion of "group work." While I have had past successes, more often than not it seems the reasons often used to criticize group efforts appear in my class too. Those include: "free riding," cooperation between group members, the I hate group work crowd and the ever popular, "I can't cover as much material doing group assignments."

Web 2.0 tools help to alleviate these problems. Problems that routinely appear in group efforts such as, "Little Jimmy has all our stuff," are a thing of the past when using tools like Wikis or Google Docs. Further, problems like "Cassandra did all the work," are solved by looking at the revision history on documents. Best of all, when a student does miss a day, catching them up should be a breeze because they could always log in from home and never miss a beat. Even the worry of plagiarism should decrease if you instruct students how to properly link to their sources. All in all, I think using the Web will revolutionize collaboration based assignments.

The real question is: Will this revolution be of true benefit to the students? In schools across the country, 21st Century Skills are being promoted. These skills stress collaboration, creativity, communication, critical thinking, life/career skills, using information, media, and technology through the lens of learning core subject content. Many studies show group based collaborative pays huge dividends in developing these areas. Also of note, is how dropout prevention, differentiated instruction, and higher productivity/more time on task are addressed by both collaborative learning and implementing technology in the classroom.

The benefits are many but there are problems. The biggest problem is lack of one to one computing programs. Bottom line is: Students need a computer available to use in class. One common theme in group based instruction is the need for data to drive decisions. Students need to be able to conduct research and the most productive way to do this would be to use the web otherwise you have students being handed research by the teacher which decreased the acquisition of research skills.

The other hurdle I see is the time required to provide students with a solid foundation concerning the basic skills needed to be an effective group member. Students will need to learn to apply social skills to their work that many do not have. A great example of this is how rude students can sometimes be. Many students don't understand how blurting out, interrupting others, or calling someone's ideas stupid aren't the most effective way to gain support for your position. They don't understand how to offer constructive criticism and often resort to cruelty or insults to win people in a bandwagon fashion. I think getting the chance to practice these skills on a daily basis would make them much more empathetic.

Acquiring or at least refreshing computer skills would be paramount because despite the belief that digital natives speak the language, it's not always so. Further, students would have to work on developing as writers, however with a computer at their fingertips many of the pre-writing steps they find tedious would probably be less so.

Would I personally include more collaborative learning into my class? Short answer is, yes. I teach science and social studies so both of these subjects would provide great springboards for collaborative learning. For example in social studies, I'm already thinking about how to use guided design principles in creating a classroom geography wiki. Plus, upcoming science units dealing with human body might be great chances to include some problem based learning. I better get started training tomorrow's middle management because I'm going to need all the help I can get!

Unit 1 Blog: PSI and Audio Tutorial Methods

Hello World!

Now that's out of the way, the purpose of this week's entry is to reflect on two methods of individualized instruction, "The Keller Plan/PSI method" and "The Audio-Tutorial System." Both of these methods were pioneered in the 1960s, both were influenced by the work of B.F. Skinner, and both attempted to break out of the traditional lecture mold of college courses.

As soon as I heard the name "Skinner," I immediately thought both of these types of programs would be full of drill and reinforcement. As I would find out this isn't too far off base, but that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. Both methods resulted from a desire to help increase student achievement which was apparently not up to standards even in the good ole days of the 60's. This leaves me thinking everything MUST, have gone downhill since the 50's...

As noted before, both programs are methods that stress individualized instruction and from the readings they both seem to be very labor intensive from the teacher planning standpoint in classes. Although, both programs seemed to use proctors or graduate students to facilitate the programs so I suspect both methods would benefit largely from the use of Web 2.0 tools in education. Discussion forums, blogging/commenting etc in the case of PSI and online grading systems for both to analyze the completion of learning outcomes.

The thing that struck me most about these courses is that although they are both methods of individualizing instruction, they don't seem to differ much from student to student. For some reason, I have this idea that individualizing instruction means creating personalized courses based on student needs. Like you would give the student an inventory then craft lessons based on their strengths. I didn't see exactly where this happened in either of the methods. You did however get a variety of methods at least in the "AT" system with the laboratory activities.

As far as effectiveness, the PSI method was rated as being one of the most effective methods to support e-Learning and this didn't surprise me after reading about it. This method really struck me as being very "Big Brother-esq" as the students seemed to be highly supervised with frequent interaction between students and proctors. From my own experience, when you have someone giving you constant feedback you tend to do better work. Although, I suspect many people take online classes to lessen such contact.

As far as applying either of these models today, they both seem to go against much of the current philosophy of education, Constructivism. Both methods are big on crafting outcomes, then testing, teaching, testing, review weak objectives, test again ... but this a tried and true method of learning materials.

As mentioned above, technology could be of huge benefit to these styles of teaching. Today computers can do much of the grade work and even provide a lot of feedback. Building courses in this manner would be pretty easy since it's a lot like the drill and kill style tutorial systems already being used by many schools for review and additional practice to help raise standardized test scores. A basic flash quiz, with some positive reinforcement thrown in for correct answers and you'd be on your way.