nation.time.com/…lege-is-dead-long-live-college
Big issue on what we like to read about… I still have an extra copy or two of this issue from back in fall 2012.
Has a nice graphic re online course providers, and a nice anecdote that reminded me of Kris’s recent Mobimooc adventures, where a more or less instant worldwide cadre is created on the fly… and some very interesting stuff about “how the brain learns”… The author explains she gave up on a lot of online courses because dull and uninteresting, but found some that were done “ground up” differently to appeal and involve, and keep students/ learners involved and wanting more while online.
Which is very much what we want to do with PSA stuff…and what we want to link to and embed etc….
Time issue in paper version comes out tomorrow, and I will be looking for a copy. Their online version leaves something to be desired…can’t get articles as a Single Page, so can’t save them as PDF…for one….because usually I will be happy to read the online version, but not so much in this case. Won’t be able to do that with Newsweek as of the end of 2012… Maybe I should get a iPad to read digital magazines more comfortably?
Here’s a quote from the cover story that sounds very very much like our PSA model…
“””
Minute 4: Professor Brown asked me a question. “What did the Greeks know?” The video stopped, patiently waiting for me to choose one of the answers, a task that actually required some thought. This happened every three minutes or so, making it difficult for me to check my e-mail or otherwise disengage – even for a minute.
“You got it right!” The satisfaction of correctly answering these questions was surprising. (One MOOC student I met called it “gold-star methadone.”) The questions weren’t easy, either. I got many of them wrong, but I was allowed to keep trying until I got the gold-star fix.
Humans like immediate feedback, which is one reason we like games. Researchers know a lot about how the brain learns, and it’s shocking how rarely that knowledge influences our education system. Studies of physics classes in particular have shown that after completing a traditional class, students can recite Newton’s laws and maybe even do some calculations, but they cannot apply the laws to problems they haven’t seen before. They’ve memorized the information, but they haven’t learned it – much to their teachers’ surprise.“”””
nmkris on 18 Oct 12
Immediate feedback and repetition are necessary for grasping basic content, lower level thinking skills (remembering and understanding).
From there, the content can be applied in context using higher level thinking skills (application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation). In the Mobimooc course, I applied what I learned to designing a real world mobile learning project. With the Steve Blank Mooc course, I’m applying what I learn to the real world business model canvas.
Now, could you make a game that included all of the above? Maybe that is where adaptive learning comes in.