Essentials of Learning for Instruction

1. Essentials of Learning for Instruction Gagné and Driscoll Chapter 1 Introduction

2. The Role of the Instructor • Provides instruction • Set of events designed to initiate, activate, & support learning • Planned • Delivered

3. What is learning? • A process • Typically involves interaction with external environment • Inferred by a change or modification in behavior • Persistent over time

4. Knowledge about Learning • Through research that must be both valid and reliable • By observational studies that may lead to • Correlational studies show negative or positive effects • Experimental studies show variable effects

5. Knowledge about Learning(continued) • Experimental data yields inferences about non-observable process of learning. • These inferences give rise to generalized knowledge about learning (called learning principles). • These inferences are verified by predicting additional learning outcomes in a new situation.

6. Example of the Study of Learning .. 6 Map! What map??

7. Research Terminology • Reliability • addressed by repeated observations • leads to replicable data • Validity • measures or evaluates what it says it does • Controlling conditions

8. Research Terminology:Inferences about internal processes • Use many studies to validate premise For example: Research Conclusion: Facts are learned more readily when they can be meaningfully related by the learner, i.e. Generalized Inference: A story has framework / schema to “hang facts on”

9. Learning Theory Basics • Research on learning produces data • The data accumulates and allows the formulation of learning principles • As the knowledge grows, ways are suggested to organize disparate facts into a single conceptualization called a theory

10. Learning Theory(continued) • A learning theory is designed to explain several specific facts that have been independently observed by relating these facts to a conceptual model • Models are designed to generate predictions of behavior • when predictions are not verified the theory is either modified or rejected

11. Behaviorist Learning Theory • 1913 E.L. Thorndike • Law of Effect (stimulus, response, reinforcement) • Restated by B.F. Skinner in the 50s • Law of reinforcement • all conditions were “external” or observable

12. Modern Learning Theory & Its Model • Analogous to the workings of a computer • Information is transformed • These transformation are called learning processes • Model represents learning as we know it

13. Information Processing ModelLindsay & Norman, 1977 Executive Control Expectancies Effectors Response Generator Environment Sensory Register Short-Term Memory Long-Term Memory Receptors

14. Purpose of Learning Theories • Planning lessons • Discloses the limits of what is possible • Conducting lessons • Guides you in an appropriate course of action • Assessing lessons • Makes it possible to compare what students know and what they can demonstrate