[quoting Holt, 2 May 94] Who are we to "take tools away" and "give" them to learners? Please clarify your vision of the "take away" and "give to" role.
I am speaking metaphorically. The argument is that learners will learn more if they have access to the tools, although in fairness, we should give designers access to the tools as well. They can and do learn a lot from designing instruction. So can learners. They can learn a lot more by designing and constructing instruction than they can from responding to most instruction that is designed by someone else.
[quoting Nesbit, 2 May 94] How will task outcome (i.e., success or failure) and goal-setting figure in the constructivist learning environments propounded by Dave Jonassen?
Here is a list:
1. Authentic context: the evaluation should reflect the task and the context in which it is used (either replicas or analogous) consisting of a new, relevant problem (or case).
2. Should be learner-centered, allowing the learner to construct his/her own assessment activities in order to tailor the assessment activities to their individual learning goals or the task should itself be negotiated.
3. Evidence that students have constructed something new and original with the knowledge they have gained.
4. Assessment should be ongoing and assess the overall learning process as well as the final product, i.e., include both formative and summative assessment. Formative assessment activities may be an extension of coaching and scaffold tools/activities as suggested in the cognitive apprenticeship model.
5. Evaluation done by a panel of evaluators and based on a range of criteria that will allow for varying perspectives and a range of acceptable responses.
6. Provide both public and private assessment activities in which to test their current knowledge constructions and understanding before having to submit to public testing.
7. Evaluation methodology should provide for on-going self-assessment by the student through private testing which engages self-reflection.
8. The evaluation process should be a collaborative process between assessor and assessee.
9. Multiple sources of assessment information, i.e., multiple measures of learning that assess different types (declarative, structural, procedural) and level of knowledge acquisition.
10. Assessment should be integrated into the fabric of the constructivist learning environment.
11. Provide increasing degrees of complexity in the assessment. As cognitive load increases the effectiveness of applying poorly integrated knowledge or information decreases until the learner can no longer deal with the task.
12. Provide activities that assess near and far transfer of knowledge, which measure the ability of the learner to transfer or apply their knowledge constructions to similar cases and then far transfer tasks, such as new cases in new contexts.
13. Use self-assessment which makes evaluation an integral part of the learning experience rethinking and synthesizing their knowledge and to get what gestalt psychologists call "Insight" and also makes evaluation an relevant part of learning experience rather than an imposed, external, and unpleasant experience.
1. Complex, problem solving task requiring learners to argue and defend their positions/answers (articulation requires the learner to synthesize knowledge in the target and related domains).
2. Ask the learner to create a learning environment to teach a novice the content domain.
3. Add a case to the learning environment or a new theme or perspective to the learning environment.
4. Ask the learner to evaluate other students' interpretations of the content domain and assess their understanding of it.
5. Assess using a portfolio which reflects what learner have accomplished during the learning process.
[quoting Nesbitt, 2 May 94] If learning is optimal when it is a kind of play, then we should be interested in the evidence from research on academic, and other, risk-taking that people are most strongly attracted to games and learning activities presenting a moderate (35% to 50%) chance of success.
That is indeed what the research says. Read Elizabeth Loftus' book, Mind at Play.
But how do environment-chosen goals fit into the picture? Should we regard them as forbidden and alien to the contructivist way of life?
This is what radical objectivists fear most about radical constructivists. Constructivism is a useful design paradigm, but it is not the only paradigm. There is a lot of instruction in a lot of constructs that will benefit from objectivist methods. As a designer, you need to be able to select methods, models, and strategies from a variety of paradigm to meet the needs of learners in a particular context. I do not mean to represent constructivism as the only way.
It seems to me that effective "phenomenaria" (Perkins term) and learning tool designers will not shrink from similarly designing goals of moderate difficulty into the learning environment: External and internal goal-setting can be made compatible.
This is a good point. Environments that are too situated or too complex are likely to fail.
[quoting Sterk, 3 May 94] I've been thinking about doing an experiment: organize a sample of undergraduate students and divide them in two types of learners: reflective or impulsive...
The preferred test is Matching Familiar Figures Test. In fact, there is a computerized version in Dutch available from Jeroen van Merrienboer at Twente.