Week 11 Response

The Corbett readings this week really gave me a sense of what it means to pay attention to the social contexts of environments for which one designs or implements learning technologies. In many of our readings, the authors have made mention of the importance of doing so, but these readings for today go into explicit detail about what this really means. For instance, Corbett & Koedinger discuss the theories of human cognition on which cognitive tutors are based, and they describe the ways in which the application is designed to mimic human tutoring and instruction as best as they are able. Because of this, this technology seems unique among some of the other learning technologies we have considered. Though many of technologies that we have looked at are indeed based on theories about learning or instruction – which are both important, of course – this article seems to be the first of what we’ve read that really hones in on what it is that people and brains do well, and then designs a technology to behave in the same way. In other words, this seems to be the starting point for developing the cognitive tutor, rather than a mere consideration or adaptation along the way in designing. By using theories of human cognition as a starting point, the designers were able to look carefully at underlying assumptions about how students learn math (e.g., students learn decimal and fraction problems well in problem situations, but learn factors and multiples well in abstract problems [Corbett & Koedinger, 72]). This seems key to me not only in designing a learning technology, but for educators in selecting them for use in schools as well; it is crucial that we make choices about learning technologies based on facts and evidence, rather than what we assume to be true regarding how students learn best. While I was convinced throughout these chapters that the designers based both their design and assessment of the cognitive tutoring software and curriculum on understandings of how students think and learn and how human tutors behave, I was not as convinced in their assessment of increased student motivation in the classroom. Their conclusion that students who use the cognitive tutor not only demonstrate achievement gains (though it seems to remain to be seen if such gains are sustainable) but are also more engaged in general just seemed to be fluffy – an observation made in passing, rather than one bases on empirical data. This made me think it would be helpful to have in depth knowledge about what students enjoy and what motivates individuals (perhaps this is how economics might fit, but . . . ugh!) in order to design even better and more effective technologies.