Other Peoples' Summaries

1. Mastery Learning
2. Computer-mediated instruction
3. Pedagogical Approaches
4. Personally tutored instruction results in better education than classroom instruction.
5. Domain knowledge is not a significant predictor of student success.
6. Economic feasibility- where is the line for resources to produce such outcomes become infeasible?
7. How much does consistency and customization have to do with the mentoring experience?
8. Focus on feedback. If feedback can be automated, then we may be closer.
9. The impact of tutoring on the tutor and what that tells us about the mentoring process.
10. Learner motivation. ("satisficing")
11. Operations are within learner's ZPD
12. Cycles of performance, assessment, adn feedback (Gusky)
13. Learner self-regulates
    

IP&T 682 Course Summary

"Make sure you all bring with you a summary of the 3-4 things you would say you now know about the 2-sigma problem (or, more broadly, about how to most effectively help people learn)."

From discussing the 2-Sigma problem, I have come to a few conclusions about how to most effectively help people learn.

1. Learning requires feedback. Students need feedback--from teachers, parents, peers, and mentors. Only feedback will tell them how to improve from their original efforts. Students need detailed feedback so they can know specifically in which areas they are understanding and which areas need a little more work.
2. Testing is not the only feedback. The school systems have been trying to use tests to provide students with the feedback they think students need for learning. However, test creation is too flawed to tell whether or not a student actually knows the subject material. Teachers use tests to assess student learning. Mentors are attentive to a student's daily work. As a result, learning management systems that rely on testing as a method of assessing student learning cannot be the only tools given a student in order to learn from a mentoring system. Also, standardized tests do not allow for a mentoring system. They are the anti-mentor. Having standardized tests constrains teachers--and students--to a deadline and a limit for learning.
   
3. Technology can provide students with more opportunities to receive and provide feedback. Twitter, Blackboard, Learning Management Systems, Personal Learning Environments, etc. allow students the opportunity to articulate the things they are learning and thinking to a mentor figure for feedback. Digitized articles are more accessible.
   
4. The value of higher education is in certification and a community of practice. Students no longer need higher education for bits of information; those are already accessible via the internet. Certification may also be offered via the internet. However, a community of practice is developed as a person works among other people also interested in that academic area. Within this community of practice, students may select their own mentors.
   

Class Notes

Apple Conference Update

• Abeline Christian University - gave out iPhones and iPods to the entire student body
• iBYU app?
• Technology Life Cycle - Ruben Puentedura

BYU: 30,000 students, 1,500 full-time faculty. 1:20

Elementary School: 800 students, 25 full-time faculty. 1:32

InvestTools: 40,000 active students, 100 full-time faculty: 1:400

Open High School : 130 students, 4 teachers: 1:22

1:1 ratio found in informal learning contexts: families, marriages, tutoring, learning by the Spirit...

Sooooo...

• We need to teach people how to seek out the necessary resources to LEARN.
  
• Ideas: Teams, Peer Groups, "crowd sourcing," Teams + Instructor

Part of mentoring is helping students recognize when they're in the zone of proximal development.

ZPD --> Metacognition --> Efficacy/Responsibility

Key Ideas, Commenting on the idea of the 2-Sigma Problem:

• Performance - Did the student acquire new knowledge, skills, abilities to solve new problems?
• Context
  
• Mastery Learning
• Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
• Ratios
• Feedback (frequency)
  
• Customized Learning
• Computer-Aided Instruction
• Characteristics of tutors/mentors, whether that matters
• Learning Efficacy/Responsibility
• Love
  

How can we make sure each student has mastery instead of group mastery approach? --> Using computers to do that. --> Limitations of using computers. --> What can we do, using computer frameworks, to achieve mastery learning?

*Between now and next week, come prepared with 3 or 4 sentences that summarize all of these concepts. What are the 3 or 4 things you can say about the most effective way to help people learn? Let's see if they're similar.

Maybe in the future we can turn this into a thought piece about these things.