Learners don’t know what’s best for them
October 18, 2014 at 8:33 am 4 comments
Annie Murphy Paul has a nice article about autodidacts — yes, there are some, but most of us aren’t. MOOCs are mostly for autodidacts. The paper from Educational Psychologist is excellent, and I reading the original as well as Paul’s review.
In a paper published in Educational Psychologist last year, Jeroen J.G. van Merriënboer of Maastricht University and Paul A. Kirschner of the Open University of the Netherlands challenge the popular assumption “that it is the learner who knows best and that she or he should be the controlling force in her or his learning.”
There are three problems with this premise, van Merriënboer and Kirschner write. The first is that novices, by definition, don’t yet know much about the subject they’re learning, and so are ill equipped to make effective choices about what and how to learn next. The second problem is that learners “often choose what they prefer, but what they prefer is not always what is best for them;” that is, they practice tasks that they enjoy or are already proficient at, instead of tackling the more difficult tasks that would actually enhance their expertise. And third, although learners like having some options, unlimited choices quickly become frustrating—as well as mentally taxing, constraining the very learning such freedom was supposed to liberate.
via Ed tech promoters need to understand how most of us learn | The Hechinger Report.
Entry filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: educational psychology, MOOCs.
4 Comments Add your own
Leave a comment
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed
Computing Ed Research - Guzdial's Take 
1.
alanone1 | October 18, 2014 at 8:46 am
Hi Mark
Consider the ideas (a) it’s the autodidact who goes to college and exists in an intellectual community that covers the most ground, and (b) that to a large extent autodidactism can and should be taught.
I.e Imagine being born with Leonardo’s IQ but in 10,000BC.
I.e. Imagine being an “extensive reader” but never crossing paradigmatic thresholds
I.e. Imagine “doing well” on the “wrong” culture side of Cambridge in the last century
I.e. Imagine knowing so little about computing — though still willing to write about it — that one would assume Bill Gates actually knew a lot about it (and other things) and got that impressive knowledge from reading about it…….
And so forth.
Cheers,
Alan
2. מחשבים וטאבלטים זה כסף, לא פדגוגיה ולא חדשנית | שיחה מקומית | February 5, 2015 at 9:05 am
[…] הלומד" והעולם הדמוקרטי שבו הכול נגיש לכולם תמיד. גם אלה הן סיסמאות. עוד לפני עידן המחשב והרשת היה בידי האנושות יותר מידע […]
3. גם מחשב לכל ילד לא יעזור אם לא מחליפים שינון בלמידה | שיחה מקומית | February 5, 2015 at 1:05 pm
[…] והעולם הדמוקרטי שבו הכול נגיש לכולם תמיד. גם אלה הן סיסמאות. עוד לפני עידן המחשב והרשת היה בידי האנושות יותר מידע […]
4.
Making learning effective, efficient, and engaging: An Interview With an Educational Realist and Grumpy Old Man, Paul Kirschner | Computing Education Blog | September 28, 2016 at 8:00 am
[…] am a fan of Paul Kirschner‘s work. This interview is great with useful insights about education — deep and […]