Cognitivism – Lisa's Blog

Theory Informed Learning Design and Evaluating Digital Learning Resources

I realize that I’m a little late to this party – life has been rather large the past few weeks.

I’ve appreciated the time to really dig into one particular Problem of Practice (PoP) and to dig a little deeper in this course. My particular PoP is:

Students lose access to online resources at the completion of online courses.

This has been an ongoing problem expressed by students over time in our department. I teach in a first-year certificate program, and many students are returning from other careers, not having attended school in (sometimes) decades. They are simply not equipped with the executive functioning organizational skills needed to identify, evaluate, organize and develop an index space for the online resources they will want to have continued access to. Part of the solution to this is the explicit teaching of skills and the building of a customizable framework by introducing students to this in the first few weeks of their school experience.

I worked through the Bates (2015) chapter The nature of knowledge and the implications for teaching and, as good readings tend to do, it changed my thinking about what I’m doing. Originally I expected to come into this using Merrill’s (2002) Principles of Instruction. Working though the chapter reminded me that really, we aren’t using any one of these lenses exclusively, but combinations of them most of the time. It makes sense in my context with these students to do the explicit skill teaching in a more objectivist (Ertmer & Newby, 2013) manner. This will give the students the raw skills to build and expand on as they create their own resources. They’ll be placed in triads as peer support/accountability partners, which will have both the benefit of creating initial social bonds within the student groups, and setting the stage for some of the social constructivist (Ertmer & Newby, 2013) learning that will come later.

Once the students are acquainted with the basic skill set they will need, they’ll be supported to use and expand on those skills in different contexts and courses. I’ve been working with colleagues to design what this can look like.

And, although it didn’t make it into the diagram, Cognitive Load Theory is one of the lenses that I’ll be building this through, as well. Getting them started with discrete, targeted videos allows them to jump in at their knowledge level and not be overwhelmed by both learning how to use the utilities they will need AND using those utilities at the same time.

I was drawn to the CASOCOIME model (Patsula, 2002) of guidelines for selecting media as it includes some pieces that are more targeted towards international and cultural suitability. There are often international and indigenous students in our cohorts, and paying attention to what will work for them will be an important contributor to the success of this Digital Learning Resource.

References:

Bates, A. W. (2015). Chapter 2: The nature of knowledge and the implications for teaching. In Teaching in a Digital Age. Tony Bates Associates Ltd. https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/chapter-2-the-nature-of-knowledge-and-the-implications-for-teaching/

Ertmer, P. A., and Newby, T. J. (2013). “Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing Critical Features From an Instructional Design Perspective.” Performance Improvement Quarterly 26(2):43–71.

Merrill, M. D. (2002). First principles of instruction. Educational Technology Research and Development, 50(3), 43–59. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02505024

Patsula, P. (2002). “Practical Guidelines for Selecting Media: An International Perspective.” Useableword Monitor. Retrieved from http://www.patsulamedia.com/usefo/usableword/report20020201_mediaselection_criteria.shtm).

Explorations in Paneer and a web of life-long learning

By Lisa Gates and Sandra Kuipers

At first blush, looking up a recipe for paneer (a soft cottage cheese) seems like a simple task, yielding straightforward results. While finding a good paneer recipe is easy, the task is more complex and involving than simply learning how it is made. The internet is abundantly full of information: recipes, regionality, commonality with other cuisines’ soft cheeses, and the history and etymology of paneer, making it a great example of a topic for life-long learning.

To explore the idea of abundant content online, we picked the topic of “how to make paneer”. We’re both passionate cooks, and paneer is something neither of us had made before and were both interested to learn more about. I (Sandra) love to make curries, but living in Asia it’s difficult to buy dairy products. Paneer is a “rich source of high quality animal protein, fat, minerals and vitamins” (Khan & Pal, 2011), so learning to make paneer would be a great way to add a healthy source of protein to my vegetarian curries. Paneer is delicious on its own and is often used as an ingredient in other dishes. Many of the initial recipes revealed have similar ingredients and methods, and a quick look at Wikipedia (“Paneer,” 2019) will show that there are many kinds of fresh cheeses that would be similar, if not the same as, paneer but from different places throughout the world.

Inspired by the availability of recipes, I (Lisa) decided to gather the ingredients and make a batch of paneer for dinner. Making paneer ended up taking much less time than looking for information about it did. Exploring paneer had me looking at a map of India to better understand parts of the country that my students are from, to find regionally specific recipes. I chose a recipe from Punjab that I may bring to a class potluck. Taking the learning and making it relevant to my life, with real world application and emphasis on learner construction (taking information and making one’s own meaning), including the shift from theoretical to practical experience (Ertmer & Newby, 1993) plants this exercise firmly as Constructivist in nature.

In the case of making paneer, online instructional content appears particularly well suited for short procedural tasks, such as a cooking recipe. Paneer can be made in 30 mins to 1 hour, something we didn’t know before starting this activity. The short duration of the learning process, as well as relatively few steps involved, suggests that using an online source of instruction would likely have a high degree of success. We wondered if longer more involved learning process may not see the same level of success, given the possibility of missing a step, or misunderstanding an instruction.

Our research into how to make paneer suggests that the availability of content online is a boon for life-long learning. Weller (2011) emphasizes that “learners need to be able to learn throughout their lives and to be able to learn about very niche subjects” (p. 228). In the case of learning how to make paneer, the abundance of content online makes it easy for someone interested in expanding their culinary repertoire to learn a new cooking process. They could be a professional looking to continuously improve their craft, or an individual interested in replicating their favourite dish. In each case, the availability of content outside of a formal learning setting enables individuals to engage in “innovative explorations, experimentations, and purposeful tinkerings” (Seely-Brown & Adler, 2008, as cited in Weller, 2011). These opportunities for informal exploration support the pursuit of life-long learning by providing just-in-time instructional content.

The knowledge of how to make paneer could be thought of as human knowledge, rather than academic knowledge or corporate knowledge. It is thought to originate in the Kusana and Saka Satavahana periods AD 75-300 (Khan & Pal, 2011), and may have begun as an oral body of knowledge, passed from family to family. The wide availability of recipes for how to make paneer online reflect this human origin: there is no copyright or patent that could be applied to this knowledge. We would confidently label this as “abundant content” based on Weller’s (2011) characteristics of a “pedagogy of abundance” (p. 229): content is free, abundant, and varied; sharing is easy and socially based; and content is user-generated. However, and abundance of content doesn’t guarantee success in learning.

Abundant content online can also be overwhelming. Weller (2011) expresses that an “excessive abundance constitutes a challenge” (p. 234), and requires different teaching and learning strategies. Learners facing an abundance of content need the skills to search and evaluate the material they find, such as general digital literacy skills and the ability to gauge the relevance of information found in searches. Basic digital literacy skills involve navigating the online environment, including the generation of relevant keywords for searches. Information evaluation, while not particularly challenging in the search of paneer recipes, can prove extremely important in other realms such as learning about science, geopolitical issues, or other life-long learning topics. The ability to discern real, well researched, peer-reviewed information can be paramount to one’s ability to navigate and understand the real world recognizing and avoiding the rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and junk science. Anderson and Dron (2014) emphasize that “there is a concern that ‘popular’ is not necessarily equal to ‘useful’”. They state:

Content is often curated, mashed-up, re-presented, and constructed or assembled by those in the network. This is a wonderful resource when seen as a co-constructed and emergent pattern of knowledge-building, but without the editorial control that a teacher or guide in a group provides, it can lead to network-think, a filter bubble in which social capital rather than pedagogy becomes the guiding principle. (p.140)

In our exploration of abundant content, we were easily able to find recipes for how to make paneer, and were even successful in creating a batch of paneer from scratch. However, throughout this exploration, we remain conscious of the different types of knowledge available online, and the possible pitfalls of abundant content. Some learning, such as short recipes and step-by-step instructions, may be better suited to online instruction than other types of learning. Our findings in this activity suggest that it’s important to understand Weller’s (2011) “pedagogy of abundance” (p. 229) when approaching learning online, and not make the assumption that abundant content automatically leads to successful learning.

References:

Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2014). Teaching Crowds: Learning and Social Media. https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781927356807.01

Ertmer, P., & Newby, T. (2013). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43-71.

Khan, S. U., & Pal, M. A. (2011). Paneer production: A review. Journal of Food Science and Technology, 48(6), 645–660. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13197-011-0247-x

Weller, M. (2011). A pedagogy of abundance. Spanish Journal of Pedagogy, 249, 223–236.

Additional Information Sources:

Step-by-step Videos

How To Make Paneer At Home – YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbYRKRZIVV8

Personal recipes

How to Make Paneer (Easy Step-By-Step Guide) | Healthy Nibbles – https://healthynibblesandbits.com/how-to-make-paneer/

Professional recipes

How to make and use paneer | Jamie Oliver – https://www.jamieoliver.com/features/how-to-make-and-use-paneer/

Discussion forums

Indian paneer – English Forum Switzerland – https://www.englishforum.ch/food-drink/114063-indian-paneer.html

Social media hashtags

#paneer hashtag on Twitter – https://twitter.com/hashtag/paneer?lang=en

#paneer hashtag on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/paneer/?hl=en

Peer-reviewed Articles

Khan, S. U., & Pal, M. A. (2011). Paneer production: A review. Journal of Food Science and Technology, 48(6), 645–660. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13197-011-0247-x

Paneer Wikibook

Cookbook:Paneer – Wikibooks, open books for an open world – https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Paneer

Historical articles

Paneer and the origin of cheese in India – The Hindu – https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/Paneer-and-the-origin-of-cheese-in-India/article14516958.ece

Activity 4 – Reflections on my theoretical and pedagogical stance

Through reading Ertmer & Newby’s article Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective, it became clear that I am working primarily from Cognitivism as my theoretical centre when teaching online and more from a Constructivism centre when teaching in the classroom.

Declaring an alignment with a particular theoretical stance for all of my work is not really possible because my work occurs in a variety of different contexts, for a variety of reasons.

I instruct and facilitate in Human Services programs, teaching primarily support strategies courses in the classroom and interpersonal communication online. The classroom work is dynamic, students have full access to each other and are encouraged to bring their own wisdom and experience to bear on the activities we do. Human Services is messy, unpredictable work, and students are given many opportunities to research, understand, discover and practice the skills that will be required in a variety of real-world scenarios (Ertmer & Newby, 2013, p. 57). The work is relational, so teaching a cut-and-dried set of procedures will not help students once they are in the work force. In order for them to be best equipped, I give them messy, ill-structured problems and as that they work individually and in groups to understand their relationship to the problem, their possible solutions, and how others might solve the problem differently, but with equal validity. Students are regularly asked to reflect on how they came to the conclusions they did, to examine personal experiences and biases that brought them to those conclusions, and the cultural context in which it all occurred (Ertmer & Newby, p. 56). Students complete their credential with practicum placements, which firmly places the learning in the realm of Constructivism.

The interpersonal communication course that I teach online has very different parameters. This is somewhat due to the constraints of the LMS (Learning Management System) we are working within, somewhat because of the constraints of working within a standardized course. There are several different instructors teaching this particular course and we endeavour to have some consistency (standardization) across all the classes and delivery methods. The constraints of the LMS make it difficult to have students practice their interpersonal skills with each other (curricular things such as eye contact, and open body language), and the institutional constraints make it difficult to introduce other applications for this practice (video conferencing software) as we are cognizant of privacy laws and student use of 3^rd party applications. Within this course, I structure the environment of the course to have explanations, demonstrations and examples to guide students. We talk about how learners encode information, and work with a variety of study skills that are designed to support their learning through activating their prior information, connecting the new information to it, practicing or demonstrating this new information, and ongoing rehearsal of the information as a way of ensuring that it is encoded in memory (Ertmer & Newby, 2013, p. 52). Students are expected to demonstrate that they can apply the new information in a variety of contexts (transfer) through different assignments and class discussions in the forums. Coaching the students to use appropriate learning strategies is in line with a Cognitivism theoretical base (Ertmer & Newby, p. 52).

Due partly to the different contexts of the courses I teach and the different expectations of the courses, my role in the classroom is much more of facilitator (which I see as in line with Constructivism) and of instructor online (more in line with both Behaviourism and Cognitivism). Students in my online courses will all come away with the same set of skills and information, but the students in my face-to-face classes will come away from the course with learning that is meaningful to them.

Resources

Ertmer, P., & Newby, T. (2013). Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43-71.