On Educational psychology: A cognitive view.

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa University of Chicago Press, 2011 This book has much to say that is perceptive about today's undergraduate higher education in the United States. It will be valuable to review the authors' insights. At the same time, it will be as instructive to note the book's weaknesses, and especially what is omitted from the discussion. It is a discussion that is truncated intellectually by the authors' close adherence to the selective awareness that so greatly typifies the mindscape of the contemporary American "establishment" in academia and throughout the commanding heights of American society. That mindscape allows a recognition of many things, but not of others. The authors are both faculty members at major American universities. Richard Arum is a sociology professor at New York University with a tie to the university's school of education. He is the author of several books on education and director of the Education Research Program sponsored by the Social Science Research Council. His co-author, Josipa Roksa, is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. That the book is published by the University of Chicago Press attests to its presumptive merit. Academically Adrift furnishes an example of something that has long been common in social science writing: a rather thin empirical study serving as the work's own contribution, combined with considerable additional material coming out of the literature on whatever subject is being explored. The function of the authors' own research is thus often to serve more or less as scientistic windowdressing. The reason we say the empiricism for this book is "thin" is that the "longitudinal data of 2,322 students," while seemingly ample, involves students spread over "a diverse range of campuses," including "liberal arts colleges and large research institutions, as well as a number of historically black colleges and universities and Hispanic-serving institutions," all "dispersed nationally across all four regions of the country." This must necessarily mean that the "sample" from any given institution or program was quite small. We are told that the authors didn't concern themselves with the appropriateness of each sample, but left the recruitment and retention of the sample's students to each of the respective institutions. The authors acknowledge that the study included fewer men than women, and more good students than those of "lower scholastic ability." So far as this book is concerned, however, the thinness doesn't particularly hurt the content, since so much of what is said doesn't especially depend upon anything unique found by the authors' own research. A brief summary is provided when the authors say that "we will highlight four core 'important lessons' from our research." These are that the institutions and students are "academically adrift" (which is the basis for the book's title), that students gain surprisingly little from their college experience, that there is "persistent and growing inequality" in the students' learning, and that "there is notable variation both within and across institutions" so far as "measurable differences in students' educational experiences" is concerned. Following the lead of former president Derek Bok of Harvard and of the Council for Aid to Education, the authors' ideal for higher education is that it will enhance students' "capacity for critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing." These are the three ingredients measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), which the authors value most among the various assessment tools. The CLA results, they say, show that "growing numbers of students are sent to college at increasingly higher costs, but for a large proportion of them the gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication are either exceedingly small or empirically nonexistent. …

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses

Children are in the midst of a vast, unplanned experiment, surrounded by digital technologies that were not available but 5 years ago. At the apex of this boom is the introduction of applications ("apps") for tablets and smartphones. However, there is simply not the time, money, or resources available to evaluate each app as it enters the market. Thus, "educational" apps-the number of which, as of January 2015, stood at 80,000 in Apple's App Store (Apple, 2015)-are largely unregulated and untested. This article offers a way to define the potential educational impact of current and future apps. We build upon decades of work on the Science of Learning, which has examined how children learn best. From this work, we abstract a set of principles for two ultimate goals. First, we aim to guide researchers, educators, and designers in evidence-based app development. Second, by creating an evidence-based guide, we hope to set a new standard for evaluating and selecting the most effective existing children's apps. In short, we will show how the design and use of educational apps aligns with known processes of children's learning and development and offer a framework that can be used by parents and designers alike. Apps designed to promote active, engaged, meaningful, and socially interactive learning-four "pillars" of learning-within the context of a supported learning goal are considered educational.

Putting Education in “Educational” Apps Lessons From the Science of Learning

Technology is a critical part of undergraduate students’ experiences in higher education. This study explores technology ownership, use patterns, and expectations as they relate to the student experience. Colleges and universities can use the results of this study to better engage students in the learning process. Furthermore, institutions can use the data to improve information technology (IT) services, increase technology-enabled productivity, prioritize strategic contributions of IT to higher education, plan for technology shifts that impact students, and become more technologically competitive among peer institutions.

ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2014.

Meteorology today : An introduction to weather, Climate, and the environment

Laptops are commonplace in university classrooms. In light of cognitive psychology theory on costs associated with multitasking, we examined the effects of in-class laptop use on student learning in a simulated classroom. We found that participants who multitasked on a laptop during a lecture scored lower on a test compared to those who did not multitask, and participants who were in direct view of a multitasking peer scored lower on a test compared to those who were not. The results demonstrate that multitasking on a laptop poses a significant distraction to both users and fellow students and can be detrimental to comprehension of lecture content.

Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers

The sequence in which problems of different concepts are studied during instruction impacts concept learning. For example, several problems of a given concept can be studied together (blocking) or several problems of different concepts can be studied together (interleaving). In the current study, we demonstrate that the 2 sequences impact concept induction differently as they differ in the temporal spacing and the temporal juxtaposition of to-be-learned concept problems, and in the cognitive processes they recruit. Participants studied 6 problems of 3 different statistical concepts, and then were tested on their ability to correctly classify new problems on a final test. Interleaving problems of different to-be-learned concepts, rather than blocking problems by concept, enhanced classification performance, replicating the interleaving effect (Experiment 1). Introducing temporal spacing between successive problems decreased classification performance in the interleaved schedule—consistent with the discriminative-contrast hypothesis that interleaving fosters between-concept comparisons—and increased classification performance in the blocked schedule—consistent with the study-phase retrieval hypothesis that temporal spacing causes forgetting and subsequent retrieval enhances memory (Experiment 2). Temporally juxtaposing problems of concepts 3-at-a-time rather than 1-at-a-time improved overall classification performance, particularly in a blocked schedule—consistent with the commonality-abstraction hypothesis that blocking fosters within-concept comparisons (Experiment 3). All participants also completed a working memory capacity (WMC) task, findings of which suggest that the efficacy of the above study sequences may be related to individual differences in WMC.

Study sequence matters for the inductive learning of cognitive concepts

In recent years, research from cognitive science has provided a solid theoretical framework to develop evidence-based interventions in education. In particular, research into reading, writing, language, mathematics and multimedia learning has been guided by the application of Baddeley’s multicomponent model of working memory. However, an over-reliance on this single perspective has overlooked the theoretical diversity of contemporary research into working memory. We review the successes and shortcomings of applying Baddeley’s model in accounting for a range of evidence and draw attention to alternative models that have been largely ignored within educational research. Specifically, we evaluate frameworks of working memory provided by Kane, Engle and colleagues (attentional control model) and Cowan (embedded process model). We conclude that these alternative views can support a reconceptualization of the contributions of working memory to academic learning that may not be afforded by interpretations of the prevailing multicomponent model.

Reconceptualizing Working Memory in Educational Research.

In some educational contexts, such as during assessments, it is essential to avoid errors. In other contexts, however, generating an error can foster valuable learning opportunities. For instance, ...

Learning from errors: students' and instructors' practices, attitudes, and beliefs.

In this study, we examined students' natural studying behaviors in massive, open, online course (MOOC) on introductory psychology. We found that, overall, distributing study across multiple sessions-increasing spacing-was related to increased performance on end-of-unit quizzes, even when comparing the same student across different time-points in the course. Moreover, we found important variation on who is more likely to engage in spaced study and benefit from it. Students with higher ability and students who were more likely to complete course activities were more likely to space their study. Spacing benefits, however, were largest for the lower-ability students and for those students who were less likely to complete activities. These results suggest that spaced study might work as a buffer, improving performance for low ability students and those who do not engage in active practices. This study highlights the positive impact of spacing in real-world learning situations, but more importantly, the role of self-regulated learning decisions in shaping the impact of spaced practice.

/pdf/self-regulated-spacing-in-a-massive-open-online-course-is-1v4c25rcy2.pdf

Faria Sana

Papers

Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers

Study sequence matters for the inductive learning of cognitive concepts

Reconceptualizing Working Memory in Educational Research.

Learning from errors: students' and instructors' practices, attitudes, and beliefs.

Self-regulated spacing in a massive open online course is related to better learning.