Day: November 15, 2005

Innovate Online offers a James Gee article on the ideal educational game (Note – you will have to enroll to gain access). Gee offers the concept of “authentic professionalism” as the key to the ideal learning game.

Authentic professionals have special knowledge and distinct values tied to specific skills gained through a good deal of effort and experience. Authentic professionals do what they do, not for money, but because they are committed to an identity in which their skills and the knowledge that generates them are seen as valuable and significant.

I am starting to have the same reaction to the “game advocates” as I have to those educational researchers who do research in the lab rather than in the field. I understand what they are saying. The fact that they keep saying it achieves a diminishing return. I am convinced commercial games involve complex learning, higher order thinking, cooperation, etc. and motivate players in the way we could only hope to motivate classroom learners. It is time to spend less time on the commercial game environment from which such ideas are derived and spend more time creating and evaluating prototypes that bring such principles into the classroom. The core of this perspective is hardly unique. Classroom projects that attempt to involve students in a scaled version of practice have been the focus of many “project based activities (e.g., student as practicing biologist in contrast to student as recipient of what biologists know). Creating a technology-based version of scaled authentic practice is what those who develop simulations or exploratory environments attempt to create. It is true that there are far too few of these activities.

See previous post.

I received an email last night asking for my reaction to a couple of issues involving the use of technology on campus. One question concerned the opportunity for on-campus students to make use of distance courses and the other concerned the use of a book will completing assessment assignments.

The writers contacted me today with the link to the article that was generated.

Article in Paper

Here are the comments attributed to me:

Open-book tests don’t necessarily lead to inferior learning, said Mark Grabe, professor of psychology at the University of North Dakota and author of the books, “Integrating Technology for Meaningful Learning” and “Integrating the Internet for Meaningful Learning.”

Memorization should not be the primary goal of learning, Grabe said, and it is possible to test a student’s knowledge through practical application of the subject.

“If you assume that learning translates as the ability to ‘apply’ knowledge and that assessment will involve tasks that are extensions of information or examples provided in the textbook, performance on such tasks should still differentiate students who have access to the textbook,” Grabe said.

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In my department (Psychology), we get a lot of calls from the media for comments on one issue or another. I tend to duck such calls. Some of my colleagues do not. Part of my issue is the inability to control how comments I make are used and what the reader might infer about my position from what appears in print or is heard on the radio. I am not shy and I am willing to take positions on many issues – I just like controlling how my ideas will be presented to others.

When I read the news article I was not surprised to see what I said. The focus of the question gave me some cues to the issues that the reporters were attempting to address. The permanence of email allows me to provide the complete record. I do this not as a complaint, but as an object lesson concerning the many literacy issues we should be considering (I cannot help thinking about the present political issue regarding the misrepresentation of intelligence information before the beginning of the Iraq war). Despite the concerns associated with personal journalism, participatory media, etc., placing complete trust in what appears in formal sources (in this case a newspaper) also requires some critical thinking.

For the record (from my sent mail file), here is my response to the original question. One of the interesting qualities of online communication is that it is permanent. So – do not put something in an email that you are unwilling to share because your words do not disappear once the email is sent.

> 2 – Do you feel students learn less when they are allowed to use their book for exams?

It depends on what you mean by learn. If you mean “retain” as in have the information available at a later point in time, I would think if the method of assessment does not require retention as a basic component, long term retention would be less likely. In other words, memorization is not the primary goal of learning. However, if the student is not expected to prepare for retention, I assume many will not and thus would seem less likely to have knowledge available at a later time as a consequence.

If you assume that learning translates as the ability to “apply” knowledge and that assessment will involve tasks that are extensions of information or examples provided in the textbook, performance on such tasks should still differentiate students who have access to the textbook.

I have somewhat the same reaction to this question as to your first question. My preference would probably be to use some application questions without access to the book. I would assume students hope to acquire knowledge and skills they will eventually be able to apply without access to the book.

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Now, you may agree or disagree with my position on open book assessment. This is not the issue here and depending on my mood my off the cuff comments might be a little different if you asked me the same question at a different time. My question is whether or not you would understand the position I took in responding to the reporter from the comments included in the article.