Cognitive Load Theory: Failure?

The title of this post is meant to be a joke (not a troll).  The inventor of cognitive load theory (Sweller) and others labeled problem-based learning and other constructivist and inquiry-based instructional techniques a ‘failure’ in an oft-discussed 2006 paper I posted about earlier (no joke).

Recently the journal Instructional Science published some reflections by Ton de Jong on cognitive load theory itself, identifying some conceptual and methodological problems.  Roxana Moreno, who has an edited book on Cognitive Load Theory coming out next year, also published a nice summary of de Jong’s paper in the same journal.  So, below is a summary of the summary, plus a few extra things.

What is cognitive load theory?

Cognitive load theory is the idea, first published by Sweller in 1988, that instructional design should focus on not overloading a learner’s mental effort when designing instruction.  “Learning is hampered when working memory capacity is exceeded in a learning task” (de Jong, 2009).

The first version of cognitive load theory (1988-1998) had 2 elements, intrinsic and extraneous cognitive load.  The latter is “bad” and needs to be reduced because it hurts performance, and the former is out of our control – the intrinsic difficulty of the subject matter being learned:

1. Intrinsic cognitive load – This is driven by element interactivity of the material to be learned.  Memorizing something like independent commands has low/no element interactivity, whereas learning how to edit a photo in photoshop is something with high element interactivity (Paas, Renkl, Sweller, 2003).  We as instructional designers can’t control the intrinsic difficulty of the subject being learned.

2. Extraneous or ineffective cognitive load – This is the unnecessary information presented during instruction, or making learners do extra work that only delays or detracts from their learning.  Such as having to search for information rather than telling them where to find it.  Extraneous cognitive load is sometimes just a necessary constraint (like having to turn a page in a book rather than watching a video), but where it really hurts learning is when the element interactivity and instrinsic cognitive load are already high and pushing at one’s working memory limitations.  “As a consequence, instructional designs intended to reduce cognitive load are primarily effective when element interactivity is high” (Paas, Renkl, Sweller, 2003).

In 1998, Sweller published a paper that introduced a 3rd element, germane cognitive load.  Because of course if you take the first two types to the extreme, it suggests that we as instructional designers should do nothing but spoon feed content to learners, and make learners exert as little mental effort as possible.  Of course we know that that higher mental effort is sometimes necessary for learning, and not a bad thing at all – more like ‘hard fun’ and ’serious play’.  An example is learning how to do math calculations by hand before using a calculator or computer to do them.  There are plenty of examples where higher cognitive load actually leads to much better learning, which would contradict the original cognitive load theory.

3. Germane cognitive load – This is the on-task mental ‘load’ or activity during learning.  This can and should be influenced by the instructional designer.  If one defines learning as schema acquisition and building, the ‘germane’ cognitive load is that which contributes to such schema acquisition, and the ‘extraneous’ cognitive load is that which does not.

Conceptual Problems with Cognitive Load Theory

1. Post-hoc explanation.  As soon as I first read about germane cognitive load (good) in 1998 vs. extraneous cognitive load (bad), cognitive load theory became unfalsifiable in my opinion.  You can justify any experimental result after the fact by labeling stuff that hurts performance as extraneous and the stuff that didn’t as germane.  Numerous contradictions of cognitive load theory’s predictions have been found, but with germane cognitive load, they can still be explained away.  de Jong does not use this term (unfalsifiable) but instead states that germane cognitive load is a post-hoc explanation with no theoretical basis: “there seems to be no grounds for asserting that processes that lead to (correct) schema acquisition will impose a higher cognitive load than learning processes that do not lead to (correct) schemas” (2009).

2. Can’t distinguish between germane and extraneous cognitive load.  Related to the above – one can’t objectively and before the fact tell whether something will be germane or not.  Sometimes something that induces extraneous load may also induce germane load and vice versa.  The type of load is highly dependent on learner characteristics and learning objectives (Moreno, 2009).

2. Lack of clarity about the cognitive load construct itself. Moreno (2009) describes a lack of clarity about terms such as cognitive load, mental load, and mental effort.  Mental load is a subjective rating or experience – it’s not ‘intrinsic’ to the material.

3. Lack of additivity. The assumption of cognitive load theory is that intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load all add up, and cannot exceed our working memory resources if learning is to occur.  As in point 2 above, de Jong thinks that intrinsic cognitive load is different ontologically from the other two types, and “we cannot add apples and oranges” (Moreno, 2009), and Moreno also describes recent studies that refute the additivity hypothesis.

Methodological Problems with Cognitive Load Theory Research

1. No reliable, valid measure of cognitive load.  Most people have used a one-item scale of perceived mental effort to measure cognitive load.  A one item measure can’t even be analyzed for reliability and validity properly.

2. Poor external validity of lab-based studies.  Moreno doesn’t touch on something in the de Jong article – the fact that most cognitive load (and multimedia learning) studies are conducted in labs that “includes participants who have no specific interest in learning the domain involved and who are also given a very short study time” (de Jong, 2009), often only a few minutes.  Quite a number of findings from these studies have not held up as strongly when tested in classrooms or real-world scenarios, or have even reversed (such as the modality effect, but see this refutation and this other example of a reverse effect).

3. Ignores, or selectively ignores, other educational and cognitive research.  Cognitive load theorists vehemently argue for the basis for their model in cognitive research, and yet ignore quite a huge swath of it.  It accepts the information processing view of cognition (most popular in the 1980s) and Baddeley’s model of working memory from the 1970s.

Conclusion

So is cognitive load theory a failure or wrong?  Is that important?  Like I said, the question is a joke. From one perspective Newton’s laws are wrong and were superseded by Einstein’s theories, but of course Newton’s laws are still quite useful and correct enough for everyday scenarios.  The more important question is whether a theory is useful, or is there a better, more useful theory.

Moreno (2009) concludes that cognitive load theory is at an impasse, and dissatisfaction with it is growing.  She cites Labaree’s (1998) paper about the learning sciences having to “live with a lesser form of knowledge” than the hard sciences.  Lesser because it doesn’t build on existing research, it isn’t subject to direct, reliable and valid measurements across different studies, and is more subject to bias.

I believe an area of future interest should be in exploring how post-cognitive theories may provide more useful explanations for some of the phenomena uncovered by cognitive load theory research.  Kaptelinin and Nardi describe some post-cognitive theories in chapter 9 of their book Acting with Technology. Unfortunately, chapter 9 was taken down from the First Monday site for some reason.  But the four theories they compare include activity theory, phenomenology, distributed cognition, and actor network theory.  They (and I) lean heavily toward activity theory and (embodied) phenomenology, both of which have significant overlap.  This is part of a larger phenomenon of researchers exploring post-cognitive models in education, human-computer interaction, and numerous other areas.  As the very short cognitive psychology page states on Wikipedia: “The information processing approach to cognitive functioning is currently being questioned by new approaches in psychology, such as dynamical systems, and the embodiment perspective.”

Further Reading

• Wolfgang Schnotz also published an article identifying conceptual problems with cognitive load theory in 2007, I just didn’t have time to re-review it in depth here.  Some quotes from the abstract:  “Various generalizations of empirical findings become questionable because the theory allows different and contradicting possibilities to explain some empirical results” and: “reduction of cognitive load can sometimes impair learning rather than enhancing it.”  Another 2005 article by Schnotz described why reduction of cognitive load can have negative results on learning.
• Moreno also wrote that cognitive load theory might be at an impasse in another article in 2006.
• Given that cognitive load theorists have at times hung some of their work on top of schema theory, evolutionary theory, ACT-R and so forth, one might be interested in the work connecting those theories with embodied cognition and/or activity theory (Vygotsky).  The McVee et al. (2005) article Schema Theory Revisited made this connection in the context of reading and literacy instruction.  Interestingly, Paivio, inventor of dual-coding theory which many multimedia learning theorists cite, writes a strong rejoinder against this article and all schema theory.  McVee responded to that and other critiques.
• Some of the terms cognitive load and multimedia learning researchers use such as “active” and “interactive” can be a bit vague, as well as other terms such as “constructive” and “passive” learning.  Chi (2009) recently proposed more operational and precise definitions of these terms in an article titled Active-Constructive-Interactive: A Conceptual Framework for Differentiating Learning Activities.

Some Android Applications

Just a run down on some android apps in case I lose my phone and have to re-install.  These are all free.  I can’t find many educational apps unfortunately:

News

• NYTimes – more up to date
• USA Today – more graphical
• 1Cast News – video news stories
• Sports Tap

Social Networking Tools

• Twidroid – there are too many twitter apps out there
• Facebook – comes with Android 2.0 on the droid
• WpToGo – wordpress client
• NewsRob – google reader client

Utilities

• Barcode Scanner – to read QR codes
• DockRunner – for the droid if you don’t have a multimedia dock – activates the multimedia interface
• Advanced Task Killer – android apps don’t have a quit/exit button
• Astro – file manager – read your SD card, etc. – very nice
• Digital Clock – smaller clock widget
• Gmote – run the gmote server app on your computer and you can remotely control it
• Locale – change android settings based on location or other triggers
• The Weather Channel – there are some other weather apps & widgets too
• Teradesk – store files on the cloud – DropBox app in the works too

Productivity

• AK Notepad – there are numerous sticky note / notepad apps
• Astrid – there are also numerous todo list apps
• Documents To Go – read word, ppt etc.
• Evernote has a web-accessible site, too, with a forthcoming android client app
• Voice Recorder – app & widget for quick voice notes

Google Apps

• Voice – essential – use for voicemail, forwarding calls, etc.
• Listen – podcasts
• GDocs
• Maps – navigation in android 2.0
• Market – of course to find other software
• Talk – built-in for instant messaging

Educational

• Aldiko – incredibly nice e-book reader application
• Google Sky Map – incredible app, point it at sky and it shows the stars & planets

Games

• Labyrinth Lite – tilt game to get ball through maze
• AirAttack – click on planes and helicopters flying overhead to shoot at them
• Air Hockey Demo
• Craigs Race – tilt to race a little car on a track
• Speed Forge 3D – very nice 3D tilt racing game, see this video
• PapiJump – tilt game to bounce a ball upwards
• Robo Defense
• Bubbles – blow on microphone to create bubbles

Music / Video / Photos

• Music – built-in app, plays videos too
• Youtube – built-in app, plays youtube videos embedded on webpages too.
• Qik, Ustream – broadcast live video, and record it
• TV.com – app for watching CBS and related videos.  NBC has a mobile-accessible website: m.nbc.com
• Pandora – listen to music online
• Photoshop has an android app now, see also PicSay and others
• Picasa photo album support is built-in to android now

Development

• ConnectBot – ssh

Miscellaneous

• Amazon, Amazon MP3
• Bubble – bubble level app
• Compass
• ShopSavvy

I’m also keeping an eye out for note taking / handwriting recognition apps for a research project:

• MyScript – not out yet, but see the videos
• Whiteboard – 99 cent app
• JotNot and ShareYourBoard – takes a picture of your paper/whiteboard notes and enhances them
• other related note taking apps

Free Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Education books

The National Academies (of science, engineering…) have produced a number of educational books over the past decades, and it has been harder to keep track of them all, so I’m copying descriptions of some recent ones below. The nice thing is that you can read the full text of any of these books online for free. These are very useful for better understanding the problems of STEM education, especially when preparing grant proposals.

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How People Learn (1999) examines these findings and their implications for what we teach, how we teach it, and how we assess what our children learn. The book uses exemplary teaching to illustrate how approaches based on what we now know result in in-depth learning. This new knowledge calls into question concepts and practices firmly entrenched in our current education system. How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom (2005) builds on the discoveries detailed in the bestselling How People Learn.

Engineering in K-12 Education (2009) reviews the scope and impact of engineering education today and makes several recommendations to address curriculum, policy, and funding issues. The book also analyzes a number of K-12 engineering curricula in depth and discusses what is known from the cognitive sciences about how children learn engineering-related concepts and skills.

Tech Tally: Approaches to Assessing Technological Literacy (2006) determines the most viable approaches to assessing technological literacy for students, teachers, and out-of-school adults. The book examines opportunities and obstacles to developing scientifically valid and broadly applicable assessment instruments for technological literacy in the three target populations. The book offers findings and 12 related recommendations that address five critical areas: instrument development; research on learning; computer-based assessment methods, framework development, and public perceptions of technology.

Educating the Engineer of 2020 (2005) is grounded by the observations, questions, and conclusions presented in the best-selling book The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century. This new book offers recommendations on how to enrich and broaden engineering education so graduates are better prepared to work in a constantly changing global economy. It notes the importance of improving recruitment and retention of students and making the learning experience more meaningful to them. It also discusses the value of considering changes in engineering education in the broader context of enhancing the status of the engineering profession and improving the public understanding of engineering. Although certain basics of engineering will not change in the future, the explosion of knowledge, the global economy, and the way engineers work will reflect an ongoing evolution. If the United States is to maintain its economic leadership and be able to sustain its share of high-technology jobs, it must prepare for this wave of change.

What is science for a child? How do children learn about science and how to do science? Drawing on a vast array of work from neuroscience to classroom observation, Taking Science to School (2007) provides a comprehensive picture of what we know about teaching and learning science from kindergarten through eighth grade. By looking at a broad range of questions, this book provides a basic foundation for guiding science teaching and supporting students in their learning.

Learning Science in Informal Environments (2009) draws together disparate literatures, synthesizes the state of knowledge, and articulates a common framework for the next generation of research on learning science in informal environments across a life span. Contributors include recognized experts in a range of disciplines–research and evaluation, exhibit designers, program developers, and educators. They also have experience in a range of settings–museums, after-school programs, science and technology centers, media enterprises, aquariums, zoos, state parks, and botanical gardens.

Learning to Think Spatially: GIS as a Support System in the K-12 Curriculum (2006). Spatial thinking is a cognitive skill that can be used in everyday life, the workplace, and science to structure problems, find answers, and express solutions using the properties of space. It can be learned and taught formally to students using appropriately designed tools, technologies, and curricula. This report explains the nature and functions of spatial thinking and shows how spatial thinking can be supported across the K-12 curriculum through the development of appropriate support systems.

Knowing What Students Know (2001) essentially explains how expanding knowledge in the scientific fields of human learning and educational measurement can form the foundations of an improved approach to assessment. These advances suggest ways that the targets of assessment-what students know and how well they know it-as well as the methods used to make inferences about student learning can be made more valid and instructionally useful. Principles for designing and using these new kinds of assessments are presented, and examples are used to illustrate the principles. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also explored.

Technically Speaking (2002) provides a blueprint for bringing us all up to speed on the role of technology in our society, including understanding such distinctions as technology versus science and technological literacy versus technical competence. It clearly and decisively explains what it means to be a technologically-literate citizen. The book goes on to explore the context of technological literacy the social, historical, political, and educational environments.

Relying on a comprehensive review of the research, Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood (2009) lays out the critical areas that should be the focus of young children’s early mathematics education, explores the extent to which they are currently being incorporated in early childhood settings, and identifies the changes needed to improve the quality of mathematics experiences for young children. This book serves as a call to action to improve the state of early childhood mathematics. It will be especially useful for policy makers and practitioners-those who work directly with children and their families in shaping the policies that affect the education of young children.

America’s Lab Report: Investigations in High School Science (2005). Laboratory experiences as a part of most U.S. high science curricula have been taken for granted for decades, but they have rarely been carefully examined. What do they contribute to science learning? What can they contribute to science learning? What is the current status of labs in our nation s high schools as a context for learning science? This book looks at a range of questions about how laboratory experiences fit into U.S. high schools.

They also published the national science education standards in 1996 and a 2003 follow-up report on their influence.

Recent Sightings

• Some recent educational books – posted to the Learning Sciences & Educational Technology group
• GameMaker 8 and Wonderland 0.5 have released preview versions
• Learn 4 Life wrote a great summary of educators using the OpenSim virtual world and ReactionGrid (opensim hosting). Linden Lab has been upsetting some educators recently.
• The National Research Council’s Committee for Learning Science held a recent workshop on Computer Games, Simulations, and Education, with a few commissioned papers posted.
• This computerworld article summarizes Sony’s new Library Finder site that lets you find e-books that you can check out from your local library for free. See also this pcworld comparison of Amazon Kindle and Sony E-Reader
• WizBang is an open source drag and drop procedure builder – that exports to Java, C++, Python, etc.
• Some interesting articles:
  • Nice post-mortem article on the development of Wolfquest, an educational 3d game that lets you live the life of a wolf. Another more general article discusses the challenges of online game development for education.
  • The Art of Writing Proposals
  • Real Lives and White Lies in the Funding of Scientific Research
  • Keith Taber wrote a nice review and history of constructivism (pdf)
  • Some papers on reality-based interaction – HCI in the post-WIMP world (window-icon-menu-pointer), such as tangible interfaces, gestural input devices, etc.
  • An overview of conceptual change theories (pdf) – published in an open access journal
  • Insidious pedagogy: How course management systems affect teaching
• LMS evaluation reports by universities: Moodle vs. Blackboard vs. Sakai, etc.
• Some new wikis: New Media Literacies Wiki, Perceptual learning wiki
• Some new kids’ sites (mostly via kids-software.com): Kideos – videos for children from Youtube, KidZui – child-friendly Firefox add-on, Site with many physics games, kids online paint and draw activity, description of Scribblenauts, a new interesting Nintendo DS game

Category/Tag Feeds for Blogger/Blogspot blogs

One thing I’ve been waiting 6 years for is for blogger to allow rss/atom feeds for particular categories (tags) for their blogs. So for example you could subscribe to just the drupal-related posts or java-related posts or so forth.

Well apparently it is possible in blogger now and it has been for 2 years. It just isn’t documented or supported with an interface. You have to go to your blog settings, edit the layout, then click ‘edit HTML’ then check the ‘Expand Widget Templates’ checkbox.

Now search for “data:labels” to find the relevant code (this assumes you have the categories widget enabled on your blog layout). It is in 2 sections, one if you have your categories displayed as a list and one if displayed as a cloud.

Now somewhere after this loop part in each section:

<b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>

Add this line for Atom category feeds: (double-click to select whole line)

<link expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl + "feeds/posts/default/-/" + data:label.name'
expr:title='data:label.name + " Atom Feed"' rel='alternate' type='application/atom+xml'/>

and/or this line for RSS category feeds:

<link expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl + "feeds/posts/default/-/" + data:label.name + "?alt=rss"'
expr:title='data:label.name + " RSS Feed"' rel='alternate' type='application/rss+xml'/>

Now if you click the RSS icon in Firefox, it shows the main feed followed by feeds for any category.

You can also add an <a href… tag after each item to display a link to the RSS or atom feed in the categories widget box.
(adapted from the instructions here and here)

Here are some category feeds for my blog:

• drupal
• java
• scala (hope to post more there in coming months)
• programming
• ubuntu
• education
• research
• technology

Comparing 4 Android Phones

Well this has little to do with education, other than Android is the only smart phone platform that you can quickly and for no cost develop educational software for I suppose. The other platforms such as iPhone and Palm Pre are either not free and open source, and/or take forever to make your app available for others to use and cost money to develop for. There is still the J2ME platform too, but I’m limiting this to newer generation smart phones.

There are now (in the U.S.) 4 Android phones to choose from. Well, 2 of them are not yet released but will be soon. All are basically identical under the hood: processor speed, touchscreen, camera, bluetooth, wireless, GPS, etc. This engadget post compares the technical features of the different Android phones, but I wanted to mention a bit more about these 4 options:

• T-Mobile G1 (or “Dream”, $97 at walmart/amazon + 2 year contract) – This has been out a year now. Features slide out keyboard, 3.2MP camera. No headphone jack, only USB. A little bigger than the newer Android phones below.
• T-Mobile MyTouch (or “Magic”, $99 with Oprah coupon code + 2 year contract) – Released last month, this is the second generation of the G1 but still basically the same software-wise. It is smaller partly because it has no hardware slide out keyboard. Slightly bigger battery. Also no headphone jack, only USB.
• Sprint Hero ($279 at bestbuy or sprint + 2 year contract – $100 rebate) – To be released October 11th (see announcement). Has more tailored and polished software (HTC Sense). Has a 5MP camera, but no keyboard. Supports Sprint features like Sprint TV. Sprint supposedly has 20x the high speed 3G network coverage as T-Mobile but may add roaming charges.
• T-Mobile Cliq (?? + 2 year contract) – Due out later this fall. Smaller form factor, has a slide out keyboard and enhanced MOTOBLUR software tailored for folks who use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. See this demo.

For all the phones you have to get a voice plan + a data plan. Starts around $65/month at T-mobile ($85 for family plan) and $69/month or so at Sprint ($129 for family plan).

Some popular third party Android software includes ShopSavvy (scan barcodes to compare prices), Pandora (listen to music online like the Pandora website), and Repligo (read pdfs).

50 Examples of the Need to Improve College Teaching

Three years ago when I started to look for a faculty position I began paying closer attention to research on college teaching. The picture is not so good. I kept a folder filled mostly with negative examples of college teaching and learning. Below is what I have in roughly chronological order, starting with the negative examples (some aren’t specifically about college) and followed by some examples of approaches aimed at improving college teaching. This is an expansion of a previous post about the state of college teaching.

Some illustrations of the problem:

1. Minds of Our Own and the A Private Universe video below are great demonstrations of the nature of how students learn and how difficult teaching for understanding is, but also it was a shocking commentary on the quality of college teaching and learning. When a Harvard engineering grad given a bulb, battery and wire cannot make the bulb light (opening example), it makes you rethink how we are teaching our students. Many recommend that every teacher and college instructor watch this video – especially the first 5-10 minutes.
2. A Private Universe – older video from the same folks who made the one above
3. Despite a Doctorate and Top Students, Unqualified to Teach – NY Times article
4. Top Ten No Sympathy Lines – student ‘excuses’ from a college instructor’s point of view
5. Five Minute University – video by Father Guido Sarducci, who explains how he can teach in 5 minutes what you remember 5 years after you graduate from college. Supply & demand, como esta, etc.
6. Change Blindness – even when you see something right in front of your eyes you may not perceive it. And novices just don’t notice the same fine grained details experts do.
7. The Math Wars – 1 (pdf), 2, 3 – more a K-12 issue than higher education one, but still relevant
8. Heroic Computer Dies To Save World From Master’s Thesis – The Onion
9. Declining by Degrees: Higher Education at Risk – a PBS documentary
10. Why Johnny librarian can’t read code – “the worst-taught courses are the so-called “core” courses”
11. Just Scoring Points – (Chronicle article no longer available online) “Professors and students are laboring under very different metaphors for education, and neither group is particularly conscious of that fact.”
12. 
13. My Students Think I’m a Teacher…The Fools – “This is so wrong it makes you want to laugh and cry. College professors receive no training whatsoever in teaching. We are given no idea at all about the interior workings of our students minds and what would be the best way to present material. We are given poverty wages in graduate school and assigned as teaching assistants to professors who also have no background in teaching.”
14. Transforming Course Management Systems into Effective Learning Environments – a 2002 EDUCAUSE article that I don’t think has borne out
15. Empowering Engineering College Staff to Adopt Active Learning Methods – “Despite research-based evidence of the success of these methods, they are often met by the resistance of the academic staff.”
16. Talking to ourselves – “This absence of curiosity about other points of view is the essence of anti-intellectualism and represents a major departure from the nation’s best cultural traditions.”
17. On the reluctance to visualize in mathematics – Great article – unfortunately not publicly accessible
18. Sustaining educational reforms in introductory physics – “faculty involved in, or informed by physics education research, consistently post higher student learning gains than less-informed faculty”
19. For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time – This is an article from a conservative think tank, be forewarned
20. Teaching Engineering: Problems & Possibilities (pdf) “College teaching may be the only skilled profession for which systematic training is neither required nor provided–pizza delivery jobs come with more instruction.”
21. Optimizing Science Education And The Myth Of A Necessary ‘Super Teacher’ – “Just as there is little or no attention to training faculty for teaching – because there has long been the implicit, though now thoroughly discredited, assumption that if one masters the content, one can teach it effectively – a similar assumption has been made about teaching assistants.”
22. 6 Researchers Take On Science Education – “when college students abandon science as a major, 90 percent of them do so because of what they perceive as poor teaching; and, among those who remain in the sciences, 74 percent lament the poor quality of teaching”
23. A framework for understanding physics instruction in secondary and college courses – “The continued downward spiral of enrolment in physical sciences in the USA and Europe has science educators concerned on both sides of the Atlantic. Physics has been particularly hard-hit, with the percentage of students choosing to major in the subject at the lowest level in decades. University physics has a reputation as a difficult, abstract subject with little application to the real world and introductory physics has little impact on students’ conception of the discipline.”
24. Student Course Evaluations: Research, Models and Trends (pdf) – “there are a variety of issues that persist around the use of student evaluation and prevent their more effective use: myths and misconception about results; unclear definitions of quality teaching; poor user education; poor presentation of results; and inconsistent policies for use”
25. Improving Educational Research (pdf) – “the U.S. spends approximately $300 billion a year on education and less than $30 million, 0.01 percent of the overall education budget, on education research . . . This minuscule investment suggests a feeble longterm commitment to improving our educational system” & “Just about everybody, having gone to school, thinks he or she is an expert on education”
26. Ice Machines, Steamboats and Technology in Education – and other writings by Bob Tinker, who directed the Concord Consortium
27. Education Outrage – column by Roger Schank
28. Research is Teaching, Learning is Theory – “we put so much emphasis on publishing scholarship as the road to tenure, that junior faculty are often shocked to find that teaching counts”
29. The Objective of Education Is Learning, Not Teaching – “Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. It incorrectly assumes that for every ounce of teaching there is an ounce of learning by those who are taught.”
30. Spreading great ideas in teaching: How does change happen? – “changes adopted by an individual spread more rapidly than those that require an entire institution to sign on”
31. Charles Henderson has done quite a bit of work on the relationship between physics faculty and educational researchers. “the majority of physics teaching is not consistent with many results supported by educational research, such as the use of instruction that promotes active learning.” & “we believe that they are all related to a single underlying issue: the typical dissemination model is to disseminate curricular innovations and have faculty adopt them with minimal changes, while faculty expect researchers to work with them to incorporate research-based knowledge and materials into their unique instructional situations.”
32. La plus ca change: It’s the goals not the data – “None of the teachers I have heard from are saying that our studies are wrong. Media Computation, across multiple schools, does lead to improved success rates and broader participation in computing — women and members of under-represented groups succeed as well as white or Asian males. These teachers are simply deciding that success rates and broadening participation is not their most important priority. “

Some solution-oriented approaches:

1. National Center for Academic Transformation – techniques for improving the effectiveness of large enrollment courses, by Carol Twigg and others. “Successful course redesign that improves student learning while reducing instructional costs is heavily dependent upon high-quality, interactive learning materials.” Therein lies the rub, how to develop all those interactive learning materials, which is why NCAT workshops focus primarily on the core classes where there already is some pre-made software available.
2. Utilizing Instructional Consultations to Enhance the Teaching Performance of Engineering Faculty – recommended. See also the book below they recommend for training instructional consultants (who work in a real Center for Teaching & Learning and have PhDs in the area they are consulting).
3. Face to Face: A Source Book of Individual Consultation Techniques for Faculty Instructional Developers
4. A Way to Enhance Teaching – Instructional consultants can help, especially if they elicit student feedback. – another article on same instructional consultants project
5. Instructional Consulting Overview
6. Resources on Instructional Consultation – journal article, not publicly accessible
7. Using Instructional Consultations in Academic Staff Development (pdf slides)
8. Task force proposes ‘compact’ for excellent teaching
9. Harvard Task Force Calls for New Focus on Teaching and Not Just Research – same as above
10. A Transactional Model of College Teaching (pdf)
11. Peer Instruction: Engaging Students One-on-One, All at Once – Eric Mazur and others
12. The Student-Centered Activities for Large Enrollment Undergraduate Programs (SCALE-UP) Project
13. Using Midterm Evaluations and Other Sources of Student Feedback on Teaching
14. Taking Teaching Seriously: Meeting the Challenge of Instructional Improvement
15. Project Promote – an online mentoring program to new faculty and links to many resources in research, teaching and other academic interests
16. A Plan to Develop and Spread Better College Teaching Practices
17. One Class Increases the Odds of College Graduation for Struggling Students – Bruce Tuckman uses a very tightly structured technique with hundreds of micro-activities for students to complete at their own pace. See his AERA 2009 paper (.doc).
18. Center on Continuous Instructional Improvement – summarize educational research findings

Some useful Drupal modules you may not have heard about

We’re using many of these modules on our newly upgraded to drupal 6 department website at http://itls.usu.edu/.

Even if you’re experienced with Drupal, you may not have heard of some of these modules. I encourage you to check them out to see if they are of use to your site(s). I’ve marked the ones I consider essential.

If you’d like to know how we did some of the features on our site just contact me, or wait a few weeks and I’ll be releasing a generic version of our site (called “Department 2.0″). For example there is a job board, upcoming calendar events block, slideshow, customized listing of people, and our groups have numerous custom views and blocks and features (see my Foundations of Educational Technology class group page for example).

• FriendFeed – Show other social networking activity via the FriendFeed.com site. I had to make a few patches to this one
• activity – Show all activity on the site on one page, including comments and profiles edits (stuff that views still can’t show together in one view unless you use nodecomment and content_profile which convert comments and profiles to nodes)
• admin_menu – we’re using simplemenu instead actually
• admin_theme – so you have a clean built-in theme when doing administration work
• advanced_help
• ajax – works with logintoboggan and numerous other modules to make forms submit without a page reload
• alt_login – not using now, but we needed this for ldap support before
• auto_nodetitle – we use this to auto-title our course nodes and other things
• autologout – in case many of your users are using shared computers and forget to log out
• backup_migrate – ESSENTIAL
• better_formats – ESSENTIAL if you have multiple input formats/filters – so that you don’t default to plain text for example
• block_edit
• calendar – works with the date module. See alternatively the event module.
• cck – ESSENTIAL
• comment_notify
• commentrss – ESSENTIAL if you want to track all site activity including comments without having to visit administration every time. Alternatively you can create a view of recent comments yourself with an rss feed.
• contemplate – important if you want site administrators to be able to make changes to the site without shell access
• context – not using yet
• creativecommons – not using, but we may switch from the next one
• creativecommons_lite – a bit buggy but we were using it before in drupal 5
• custom_pagers – alternative to book
• date – ESSENTIAL for cck types with date/time info like our job board (expiration date), calendar and so forth
• devel – useful for debugging issues
• diff – useful for our wiki and for tracking edits
• draft – lets users have a ’save as draft’ button, plus features autosave
• drush – ESSENTIAL for easier module/theme installation and upgrading. Also works with features module. This is the only module you’ll have to install by hand.
• ed_readmore – Improve the ‘read more’ teaser link that nobody clicks.
• email – for email cck fields
• extlink – distinguish internal from external links
• fckeditor – ESSENTIAL for wysiwyg editing. See also the TinyMCE module.
• filefield – I think this is ESSENTIAL but we aren’t using it yet. It puts uploaded files in separate folders rather than having a huge mess of files like we do now.
• freelinking – for [[wiki links]].
• globalredirect – ESSENTIAL for making sure you don’t have 2 or more paths with identical content. ‘node/1234′ will redirect to the nicer path for example if you use pathauto.
• google_analytics – ESSENTIAL for tracking statistics on your site, but piwik is a recommended open source alternative.
• image – ESSENTIAL unless you are using imagecache instead
• imce – ESSENTIAL for making it easier for users to insert images in fckeditor. Also gives each user their own personal file space.
• interwiki – if using a wiki
• invisimail – obscure any email addresses users might type in a comment or node
• javascript_aggregator – this is now mostly built-in to drupal 6, but has a few extra features
• job_queue
• jq
• jquery_ui
• ldap_integration
• ldap_provisioning
• link – cck field type
• linkchecker – haven’t tried, but checks for broken links on your site
• live – live preview of posts/comments – used on the drupal.org site
• location – cck field type
• logintoboggan – ESSENTIAL to me anyway – lets people login with email address instead of username among other nice features.
• menu_block – see also nodehierarchy, submenutree and other related modules
• messaging – ESSENTIAL along with notifications if using organic groups (og) especially
• mimemail – we were using this, but now we are using HTMLMail with messaging/notifications instead
• moduleinfo – ESSENTIAL – gives more info about modules on module list page
• mollom – ESSENTIAL or else find another spam prevention solution if your site is open to any public contributions such as comments (or for example our job board)
• nice_menus – not using, but provides suckerfish menus if not provided by your theme directly
• node_import – importing content
• nodecomment – turns comments into nodes – I tried this to I could show comments and node updates together in a view block, but I had to make comments og-enabled, too, which wouldn’t work for anonymous commenting, so I’m not using it now.
• nodehierarchy – Integrates the organization of your content with the menu system
• notifications – works with messaging – overly complicated interface though for end-users to customize their preferences
• og – organic groups
• og_forum – makes it easier to set up per group forums
• og_mandatory_group – nice to force end-users to be in a group before they can contribute stuff
• path_redirect
• pathauto – ESSENTIAL for nicer looking, automatically generated URLs
• permissions_api – easier administration of permissions
• poormanscron – if you don’t have cron or it is unreliable (like on Mac OS X)
• prepopulate – if you want to use bookmarklets for things like shared links and so forth
• print – ESSENTIAL for printable versions of your pages
• quicktabs – we ended up using views_slideshow instead
• quiz – not using, but nice module
• realname – we just have people use their real name (First Last) as their regular username, so we didn’t require this module.
• revision_deletion – ESSENTIAL if you are using a wiki or a site with many people editing, so you can occasionally clean up stuff.
• rules – Much nicer, easier to use alternative to workflow. We use it to do numerous things on our site, for example notifying someone when a job is posted, promoting items in certain groups to the front page, etc. Formerly called workflow_ng in drupal 5 (not upgradeable though)
• scanner – ESSENTIAL find/replace text on your site. Regex support.
• scheduler – set your node to be published at a future date
• securepages – ESSENTIAL if using an SSL server (which you should)
• similarterms
• simplemenu – this is our end-users’ toolbar for creating content, visiting groups, etc.
• site_map
• site_tour
• smtp – ESSENTIAL if sendmail doesn’t work or is restricted from your server. I label it essential because stuff like this is already included in other tools like moodle even though most won’t need it (moodle includes built-in ldap support and other things too).
• submenutree – alternative to book module – displaying child items below a node
• tagadelic
• talk – if wanted for wiki pages
• theme_editor – ESSENTIAL if you want administrators to be able to edit theme files without having shell access
• token – ESSENTIAL – required by many other modules including pathauto
• trash – essential but broken? We need a way for end-users to delete stuff like wiki pages in a way that administrators can undo it if they deleted something important. At least drupal 6 finally separated the edit and delete permissions.
• twitter – if you want to have a site-wide twitter account that announces stuff on twitter
• upload_replace – ESSENTIAL – should be built-in to drupal. Right now if you upload a new version of a file, it gets a new name, rather than moving the old file.
• user_import – import users from a spreadsheet – warning, backup everything first – this module created duplicate entries in our profile tables a year ago
• userplus
• userprotect – prevent users from changing certain things in their accounts
• video
• video_filter – easy linking and displaying of videos from external sites
• views – ESSENTIAL – works with cck
• views_bulk_operations – lets you do batch operations on nodes and other things
• views_calc
• views_slideshow – see other alternatives for doing slideshows like slider
• webform – ESSENTIAL if you want to do things like surveys and so forth on your site – 1000x better than the built-in poll module
• wikitools – for wikis – move protection, etc.
• I also posted a comparison of drupal modules for uploading large files recently, including swfupload, image_fupload, and others

Bash Script to Quickly Create Drupal Sub-sites

I haven’t tried this for real yet, only tested it with a local xampp-based drupal site, but here’s a shell script that quickly creates drupal sub-sites, say, for students. The sub-sites use the same database as your main drupal site, but each has its own table prefix.

So basically if you already have drupal installed, say at http://your.drupal.host/ , the script below makes it easy to create sub-sites like http://your.drupal.host/student1 and http://your.drupal.host/student2 . This uses drupal’s multi-site feature.

You just copy the below script to a file and make it executable (chmod 700 makesite.sh), edit some of the settings in it (like change “nobody” to “www-data” if using debian/ubuntu, and “localhost” to “your.drupal.host” or whatever),
and then on the command line change (cd) to your drupal root folder and run:

sudo /path/to/makesite.sh student1

Of course replacing ’student1′ with whatever site name you want to use, and then you or your student/user can visit http://your.drupal.host/student1/install.php
to finish the drupal installation.

Of course, backup your main site’s database before using this (see the backup and migrate module).

For other related options see aegir, densite (both of which use separate databases per site), and domain (in which multi-sites not only share the same database but the same tables as well).

This script doesn’t handle sub-sites with their own domain names (see densite or aegir instead), and it doesn’t create cron jobs for each drupal site (see densite or just enable poormanscron on each site). Of course any modules or themes installed under sites/all/modules or sites/all/themes can be shared by all the sub-sites, so you only need to install them once. If you want a module or theme just for one particular subsite, install it under sites/your.drupal.host.student1/modules or sites/your.drupal.host.student1/themes or whatever the names are. Those sub-folders and the files folder are already created for you with the right permissions by the script.

I’ll also probably be using modules like theme_editor and zenophile so that students won’t need command line or ftp access to edit the look of their sites.

#makesite.sh

##About this script:
##This script will create a drupal sub-site using table prefixes.
##It assumes you already have a main drupal site running,
##and can be used to create sub-sites, such as:
##   http://yoursite/subsite
##The database tables will have prefix: subsite__
##The script also assumes that your main drupal site has
##no prefix ''.  If that's not the case, edit the sed line below

##To run it:
## -First change the options below (apache user, site host)
## -cd into your root drupal folder (cd /var/www, etc)
## -run: sudo /path/to/makesite.sh subsitename
##    'subsitename' should have only have letters/numbers
##    also it should not duplicate an existing sub-folder
## -then visit http://yoursite/subsitename/install.php
##    to finish the drupal install

##### CHANGE THESE 2 or 3 TO MATCH YOUR CONFIG: #####

#what user does apache2/httpd run under:
APACHEUSER="nobody"  #www-data on debian/ubuntu

#what is the root hostname/url of your main drupal site:
SITEHOST="localhost"  #root hostname for main drupal site

#where to find the settings.php we'll base sub-sites on:
DEFAULTFOLDER="default" #main sites/default/settings.php file

#########Stuff below shouldn't need editing:########

if [ $# -ne 1 ]
then
  echo "Usage: sudo $0 directoryname"
  exit 1
fi

if [ $(whoami) != "root" ]; then
  echo "You need to run this script as root."
  echo "Use sudo $0 directoryname"
  exit 1
fi

if [ -d $1 ]
then
  echo "$1 already exists, please use a different name"
  exit 1
fi

echo "Creating symlink from $1 to ."
ln -s . $1

NEWSITEDIR="sites/$SITEHOST.$1"

echo "Creating sub-site folders at $NEWSITEDIR"
mkdir $NEWSITEDIR
mkdir $NEWSITEDIR/files
mkdir $NEWSITEDIR/themes
mkdir $NEWSITEDIR/modules
chown -R $APACHEUSER $NEWSITEDIR

echo "Copying settings.php"
OLDSETTINGS="sites/$DEFAULTFOLDER/settings.php";
if [ ! -f $OLDSETTINGS ]
then
  echo "Cannot find default settings.php file: $OLDSETTINGS"
  exit 1
fi

NEWSETTINGS="$NEWSITEDIR/settings.php"
cp $OLDSETTINGS $NEWSETTINGS
chown $APACHEUSER $NEWSETTINGS

PREFIX="$1__"
echo "Using table prefix: $PREFIX"
sed -i "s/\$db_prefix = '';/\$db_prefix = '$PREFIX';/" $NEWSETTINGS

echo "FINISHED: Visit http://$SITEHOST/$1/install.php to finish"

Recent Books on Conceptual Change, Engineering Education, Embodied Cognition…

I was emailing our library about purchasing some recent books and thought I’d cc the list here, along with some other recent books our library does have but you may not be aware of.

Education, Conceptual Change, Constructivism

• Creative Model Construction in Scientists and Students (Paperback)
  by John J. Clement (Author)
  [amazon]
• Creating Scientific Concepts (Bradford Books) (Hardcover)
  by Nancy Nersessian (Author)
  [amazon]

• Constructivist Instructional Design (C-ID) Foundations, Models, and Examples (HC) (Research in the Epistemologies of Practice: Theories That Guide Practice) – Jerry W Willis
  [amazon]

• Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics (Bradford Books) (Hardcover)
  by Gary L. Drescher
  [amazon]

• Optimizing Teaching and Learning: Practicing Pedagogical Research (Hardcover)
  by Regan A. R. Gurung
  [amazon]

• Model Based Learning and Instruction in Science (Models and Modeling in Science Education) (Hardcover)
  by John J. Clement (Editor), Mary Anne Rea-Ramirez (Editor)
  [amazon]

• Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age: Designing and Delivering E-Learning (Hardcover)
  by Helen Beetham (Author), Rhona Sharpe (Author)
  [amazon]

• Digital Simulations for Improving Education: Learning Through Artificial Teaching Environments (Hardcover)
  by David Gibson (Author, Editor), Youngkyun Baek (Editor)
  [amazon]
• International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change (Educational Psychology Handbook) (Paperback)
  by S. Vosniadou (Author)
  [amazon]
• Handbook of International Research in Mathematics Education (Paperback)
  by English (Author)
  [amazon]

Engineering & Technology Education

• Designing Better Engineering Education Through Assessment: A Practical Resource for Faculty and Department Chairs on Using Assessment and ABET Criteria to Improve Student Learning (Paperback)
  by Joni Spurlin (Editor), Sarah A. Rajala (Editor), Jerome P. Lavelle (Editor)
  [amazon]
• Defining Technological Literacy: Towards an Epistemological Framework (Hardcover)
  by John R. Dakers (Editor)
  [amazon]
• Educating Engineers: Designing for the Future of the Field (Hardcover)
  [amazon]

Embodied Cognition, Perception

• Handbook of Cognitive Science: An Embodied Approach (Perspectives on Cognitive Science) (Hardcover)
  by Paco Calvo (Editor), Toni Gomila (Editor)
  [amazon]
• Beyond the Brain: Embodied, Situated and Distributed Cognition (Hardcover)
  by Nicolas Payette
  [amazon]

• Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness (Hardcover)
  by Alva Noe (Author)
  [amazon]

• Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (Philosophy of the Mind) (Hardcover)
  by Andy Clark
  [amazon]
• Symbols and Embodiment: Debates on meaning and cognition (Hardcover)
  by Manuel de Vega (Editor), Arthur Glenberg (Editor), Arthur Graesser (Editor)
  [amazon]
• Understanding Events: From Perception to Action (Oxford Series in Visual Congnition) (Hardcover)
  by Thomas F. Shipley (Editor), Jeffrey M. Zacks (Editor)
  [amazon]