Assignment #1: EdTech from a Learning Science Perspective
Summary: Take a new technology and analyze it through the lens of cognitive load theory or situated learning. Then conduct a thought experiment and imagine what the same tech would look like if designed with very different pedagogical sensibilities.
Preface:
Learning scientists often ask some version of the question: “How does this learning experience align with what we know about human cognitive architecture?”
The former dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, Ellen Lagerman, once wrote, “I have often argued to students, only in part to be perverse, that one cannot understand the history of education in the United States during the twentieth century unless one realizes that Edward L. Thorndike won and John Dewey lost.” Lagerman makes two related arguments in this short quotation.
Her first point is that, to a first approximation, there are two major models of how people learn, as old as Western civilization (and maybe other civilizations, I’ve never checked.) Plutarch wrote that “the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.”
The first model, championed by Thorndike, is a “banking” model of education, where people learn through the transmission of information from teacher to learner. For Thorndike, learning is the filling of a vessel, and we can measure the pail size, the pouring can size, the efficiencies of various flow rates, the leakiness of the pail, and so forth—and then use those measurements to optimize the transmission and storage of information. The second model, championed by John Dewey, is an “apprenticeship” model, where learners engage directly in challenges and experiences with just-in-time support, mentorship, and teaching from journeymen and masters.
Lagemann’s second point is that generally speaking, educators have adopted lessons, curriculum, school systems, and other educational structures more aligned with Thorndike’s model than Dewey’s.
In this class, rather than reading Dewey and Thorndike directly, we’ve read from cognitive scientists and learning scientists who have extended their ideas and models. For an updated banking view of education, we’ve read cognitive scientists like Sweller, Kirschner, Van Merrinboer, and others who have developed the ideas called cognitive load theory. We’ll also read social theorists on situated learning.
Assignment
This writing assignment has two parts: situating a learning technology along the “Dewey-Thorndike” spectrum, and then imagining what the same experience would look like if redesigned on the other end of the spectrum.
One useful way to start an analysis of any learning technology or system is to ask, “Where does this experience fit on the Dewey/Thorndike spectrum?” Identify some learning media or technology that you experienced personally, that we’ve read about in this class, or that you’ve taken an interest in. Then describe how an individual learner experiences that technology through the lens of cognitive load theory or situated learning. (Just as a physicist could narrate a ball rolling down a slide through the lens of Newtonian physics, try to narrate or describe a learning experience through the lens of cognitive or learning science).
Then, conduct a thought experiment—one of the most useful tools of both natural and social science. What would your learning technology look like if it had been designed by someone with very different pedagogical sensibilities than the actual designers? If your tech was developed by pail fillers, what would it look like as an apprenticeship experience? If your tech was developed by flame kindlers, what would it look like as an instructional experience?
Expectations
Your assignment should be about 4 pages long (1200 words), give or take a page, and written in a normal font, at a reasonable font size, with 1.5 spacing, and normal margins. Any effort to convince me that you’ve written a longer paper by fussing with any of these things will reflect poorly on your character. You should cite sources from the syllabus using any standard citation system (ACM, APA, Chicago, MLA, etc.), and you are free to read additional works and cite those as well. You may include an appendix with as many screenshots or illustrations as you like.
Bring a draft of your essay to session 8, and as an activity, we’ll discuss it in pairs or small groups. The final draft will be due on session 10.
Rubric Guidelines
High-quality essays will concisely describe the selected learning environment; articulate a learner’s experience through the lens of cognitive load theory, situated learning, or both; and use specific elements of these theories to explain how learners are learning and thinking when participating in the selected learning environment. Then, high-quality essays will creatively reinterpret the same technology through the lens of an alternate learning theory, by maintaining roughly the same learning goals but imagining a different cognitive pathway for learners.
Generative Pre-trained Transformers
Students are allowed to use generative pre-trained transformers in the preparation of the essay. If you choose to use ChatGPT or a similar GPT, please add a short note in an appendix that doesn’t count against the word limit for how you used the GPT. If you don’t use one, no note is necessary. If GPTs generate funny, weird, or wrong things, please do copy and paste any interesting output in the appendix for my amusement and edification.
I have two non-binding suggestions for using GPTs in the early/brainstorming phase. First, don’t use it. Figure out the basic problem of the essay yourself, so you know that you did the learning. Second, if you do use GPT in the early phase, use it a lot. Brainstorm with lots of questions, lots of technologies, lots of ideas, lots of connections. The main thing I would urge you to avoid is to have GPT write the core of your essay in one go without you thinking about it much–if you use GPTs, make sure it’s aiding your thinking, not doing your thinking.
Assignment #2: Implementation Memo
Summary: Write a memo to a school/university leader making a recommendation (for or against) about the adoption of a particular education technology.
Preface
On pages 74–76 of Failure to Disrupt, there is a “worked example"—a detailed walkthrough of a problem solution—for how one might consider a technology adoption decision. The author asks readers to consider a number of features of a technology: What’s new here? How does this technology fit into past trends, like the three genres of learning at scale? What does the research say about the efficacy of this technology, especially as it varies across subjects, populations, and contexts? What are the local contextual considerations that should be considered before adoption? What are faculty already doing or interested in? What is the capacity for innovation in the institution? How much pedagogical change would be required, and what is the pathway for supporting that change?
Assignment
To complete this paper, you’ll need to conjure up a specific context. That can be your home department at MIT, your high school, an educational program that you participate in, or any other real organization. You might have perfect information about that organization, which would be handy. If you don’t have perfect information (“I’m not sure how much the course 9 teaching faculty are amenable to innovation…”), you can either: 1) conduct some research to find out, 2) stipulate how your recommendation might be modified based on research one would conduct, 3) fabricate some stylized facts or assumptions, and be sure these are noted in text or footnotes or something.
Your memo should start with a one-paragraph executive summary of your recommendation, and then provide detailed, research-based justification for that recommendation. I would generally expect that you would both use the sources we’ve read in class and go beyond those sources with additional research.
Expectations
I think this assignment should also take about 4 pages (1200 words). It could be longer, so I’ll accept longer. The best essays might be 6- or 7-page drafts that are refined down to 4- or 5-page final submissions. It should be written in a normal font, at a reasonable font size, with 1.5 spacing, and normal margins. You should cite sources using any standard citation system (ACM, APA, Chicago, MLA, etc.).
Bring a draft of your essay to session 15, and we’ll discuss it in pairs or small groups. The final draft will be due session 17.
