Serendipity35

"The Cognitive Science Behind Learning" is an article that discusses the idea of viewing different levels as a way to approach the study of cognitive science and learning.

It views cognitive science as an "umbrella term to incorporate all levels of human behavior from neural to social, and it includes contributions from many disciplines including philosophy, anthropology, neuroscience, psychology, sociology and more."

It is widely accepted that at the most basic level we have the neural level. That is looking at learning as something that is about forming and strengthening the connections between neurons in our brains. There is not a lot that an educator can do about that level in the classroom.

As educators, we are more concerned about what we might see at the next two levels. The main one we always discuss is the cognitive level, where "learning and instruction is about designed action and guided reflection."

For me, the importance at this level is that human learning is very connected to pattern-matching and meaning-making. Though some of those abilities are formed through some ability to perform by rote repeatedly and accurately, that is not the key to learning. Of course, it is the main thing we do in classrooms and it is generally what we assess in our grading. There are certainly courses that require learning a lot of information, but I agree with the author, Clark Quinn, that "Too often learning leaders make courses when the information doesn’t have to be in the head, it just needs to be on hand."

Quinn spends much less time on a higher level that I believe we should spend more time examining - social learning. Social learning theory is something I associate with Albert Bandura. It considers that learning is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context. It can occur purely through observation or direct instruction, even in the absence of motor reproduction or direct reinforcement.

In the early 1960s, Albert Bandura conducted what is known as the Bobo doll experiment. In the experiment, he had children observe a video of an adult aggressively playing with toys, including a Bobo doll. The large blow-up Bobo doll looks like a clown, and the adult hit the doll, knocked it down and even jumped on it while yelling words like 'pow!' and 'kick him!' When the children were subsequently allowed to play with a variety of toys, including the Bobo doll, more than half of the children modeled the adult and engaged in the same aggressive behaviors with the Bobo doll. This modeling was called Bandura's social learning theory.

Some of social learning occurs naturally in social classroom settings. Some of this theory has also been adopted by advertisers and marketers in social media settings. Social learning theory is most effective when four processes occur. Let me end here by just suggesting that every educator should consider their use of these processes intentionally and unintentionally in their teaching. The four processes are attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation.

I keep getting emails from course and training providers (most are what we can call MOOCs) like edX and Coursera, and also from job sites like Glassdoor telling me about the most popular courses and skills on their sites.

Without comment, here is a partial list of ones that have been sent to me. I leave it up to you to draw conclusions about what this says about current learning trends.

The Science of Happiness

Conversational English Skills

Introduction to Project Management

Introduction to Linux

Introduction to Java Programming

The Science of Everyday Thinking

Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python

TOEFL® Test Preparation: The Insider’s Guide

Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Excel

Introduction to Computer Science

Python for Everybody

Python Programming  

Data Science

R Programming

Introduction to Project Management

Project Management

Analytics Management

TESOL Certificate: Teach English Now!

English Instruction

Business Analytics

Software Product Management

Product Management

Big Data

Hadoop

Digital Marketing

SEO Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Social Media

Social Marketing

Data Warehousing for Business Intelligence   

Business Foundations

Pre- and post-election last fall, there were many stories in all types of media about "fake news." An article in The Chronicle asks "How Can Students Be Taught to Detect Fake News and Dubious Claims?" but I would say that non-students need even more education in this area. Of course, the real question is whether or not this is a teachable skill.

If you had asked me last January to define "fake news" I would have said it was a kind of satire or parody of mainstream journalism. The Onion online, or Saturday Night Live's news segment would fit that definition. Satire always has a bit of truth in it or it doesn't really work.

The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and other shows and sites have blurred the line. They use real news and sometimes parody it, but sometimes they are closer to investigative journalism. They can edit together clips of a persons inconsistencies in views over the years and create a montage that shows someone who either has a terrible memory or is a liar. It may frighten some to hear it, but many young people and adults list shows like these as their main source for news.

The fake news that is really the focus of attention now are ones (almost exclusively online) that produce wholly fictionalized news stories. Those non-journalistic entities have a very powerful delivery system via social media like Facebook and twitter.

A Stanford University report published last year concluded that many students could not detect fake or misleading information online. They gave students from middle school to college tasks to see how well they could tell a native advertisement from a news article or identify a partisan website as biased or separate a verified social-media account from an unauthenticated one

A larger conclusion I see here is that faculty often assume that young people are fluent in or savvy about n social media in the same way that it is assumed that digital natives know how to use smartphones, websites, photos, video and other digital technology. Bad assumption or expectation.

I remember teaching lessons on determining the veracity of research sources before there was an Internet and after. That has been a part of literacy education since the time when books became more common. I'm sure it was a teachable moment pre-print when a parent told a child to ignore gossip and stories from certain people/courses.

The Stanford researchers said that we need to teach "civic online reasoning" which is something that goes beyond its need in academic settings.

In whose purview is this teaching? English teachers? Librarians? I would say it would only be effective if, like writing in the disciplines, it is taught by all teachers with a concentration on how it occurs in their field.

The science instructor needs to teach how to determine when science is not science. An easy task? No. Look at teaching the truth of climate science or evolution. It is controversial even if the science seems clear.

Napoleon Bonaparte is credited with saying that "History is a set of lies agreed upon." If that is true, how do we teach the truth about history past and the history that is unfolding before our eyes?

But we can't just say it's impossible to teach or assume someone else will take care of it. Information literacy is still a critical, difficult and overlooked set of skills to teach.

I am a proponent of the concept of teaching in a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, math) framework that goes across disciplines. I have seen many attempts to use science and math in teaching art - some successful, some not.

A new project that does this in an engaging way is a collaboration between Pixar Animation Studios and Khan Academy that is sponsored by Disney. Called "Pixar in a Box," it gives a look behind-the-scenes at how artists at Pixar need to use STEM to make art.

To make balls bounce, leaves in trees move in the wind, fireworks explode or realistic rippling water takes more than drawing skills. It requires computer skills and considerations of math, science such as physics and digital humanities.



In this learning series of videos on simulations, the Pixar artists use hair as an example of an animation problem that needed to be solved. Using examples from their films, such as the character Merida in Brave with her bouncy and curly hair, you learn how millions of hairs can be simulated if you think of them as being a huge system of springs.

As the lessons progress, you can learn about animation roles and will discover what a technical director does in the animation process.

The lessons are appropriate for grades 5 and up - though I can see many adults and younger kids interested in animation from a technical or artistic side enjoying the free series.