The apprentice observes the expert demonstrate the different parts of the task. The various parts of the task are made visible to the novice by the expert. The issue of observation is critical here. The expert is providing the conduct of the activity but also providing the learner with a task overview that serves as an advanced organizer for future observation sessions with the expert or with others (expert or not) where much of the learning occurs.
The support provided by the expert as the novice attempts the task. This support is in the form needed by the novice in the conduct of the task and is sensitive to the issues of novice learning. There may be differing types of scaffolding, i.e., scaffolding that is dependent on the task type. Guzdial, et. al. discuss scaffolding for problem solving and scaffolding for collaboration. In a team setting such difference need the appropriate consideration.
The level of support changes from high to moderate to low as the expert withdraws level and type of support.
Choosing tasks, providing hints and scaffolding, evaluating the activities, an diagnosing the kinds of problems, challenging and offering encouragement.
The visibility issue is complex. Talking aloud is a potential. The case study may also be valid, if it includes the necessary process elaboration. In the spirit of apprenticeship, the issues of roles again may facilitate the learning activities. If, in one instance, the learner is the doer, and the next time is the reviewer, the student is put in the position of enacting a process and seeing how others conduct the same activity. This can only be accomplished when explicit attention is given to assisting the reviewer with what issues and activities to attend (perhaps in the form of a checklist or assessment that must be completed).
These appear to be two main types of processes that need explicit elaboration or modeling:
There should be some decomposition of the larger task into component sub-skills. It is important that the students see the process steps as integrated in a larger context but still focus on the performance of an individual activity. This, in combination with item above, implies the use of process model and process roles. The roles may help identify the processes on which to focus. This also goes for the modeling activity. In some of the apprenticeship work the expert models the process in a "shared" problem context. This provides the student with the opportunity to "see" the context and the expert's approaches and/or process in an identified situation (situated cognition).
Students require assistance in seeing and identifying similarities between problem contexts and the application of approaches. This may be particularly true of those "rules of thumb" that may be applied in various settings. One can only recall the issue of problem isomorphs and the difficulty problem solvers have in realizing that problem isomorphs have similar solution structures. Novices are more likely to focus on surface features than on other characteristics.
Domain Knowledge - subject matter specific concepts, facts, and procedures
Heuristic Strategies - generally applicable techniques
Control Strategies - approaches that guide one's direction during the solution process
Learning Strategies - knowledge about how to learn new concepts, facts and procedures
Articulation - encouraging the learner to verbalize knowledge and thinking
Reflection - learners are encouraged to review their performance critically and non-punitively
Exploration - learners pose and solve problems of their own creation
Sequencing - deliberate decisions regarding the order of learning activities.
global before local skills (conceptualize whole first)
Increasing complexity
Increasing Diversity
Sociology - social characteristics of learning environments
Situated Learning - assumes students learn when working on realistic tasks.
Community of practice - communication of different ways to accomplish tasks
Intrinsic Motivation - students set personal goals
Cooperation - students work together towards accomplishing "their" goals
Collins, Brown, and Holum (1991) Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Thinking Visible. American Educator. p. 6-11, 38-46.
Collins, Brown, & Newman (1989) Cognitive Apprenticeship: Teaching the Craft of reading, writing, and mathematics. In L. Resnick (ed.), Knowing, Learning, and Instruction: Essays in Honor of Robert Glaser. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Kolodner, J. and M. Guzdial Effects with and of CSCL: Tracking Learning in a New Paradigm.(HTML)
Guzdial, M., J. Vanegas, F. Mistree, D. Rosen, J. Allen, J. Turns, and D. Carlson Supporting Collaboration and Reflection on Problem-Solving in a Project-Based Classroom. (HTML)
Guzdial, M., D. Carlson, & J. Turns (1995) Facilitating Learning Design with Software-Realized Scaffolding for Collaboration. In D. Budny (ed.) Frontiers in Education 1995.
Narayanan, N. & J. Kolodner (1995) Case Libraries in Support of Design Education: The DesignMuse Experiences. In D. Budny (ed.) Frontiers in Education 1995.
From Effects with and of CSCL: Tracking Learning in a New Paradigm.
1. Promoting inquiry and sense-making, thereby promoting conversation. Pea's and Goldman's Dynagrams and Roschelle's Envisioning Machine support local synchronous collaboration by giving students something to discuss and promoting inquiry. Both pieces of software are designed to illustrate those aspects of concepts that students have trouble understanding. Its illustrations often violate students' expectations, focusing students on discussing those things that lead to deep understanding. It helps that the software's illustrations are intriguing and that students can easily manipulate concepts to see how effects change in different situations. This both fulfills their needs and engages their curiosity, leading them to want to struggle with it, and collaboratively, to comprehend what the software is representing. Students use this software by congregating around a shared computer.
2. Facilitating knowledge building. Scardamalia & Bereiter's CSILE supports asynchronous knowledge building (between local groups or remote sites), while the support for problem-based learning being developed by Koschmann, Feltovich supports local synchronous knowledge building. The point in both is to provide a forum for collaboratively presenting arguments, raising learning issues, and reaching a kind of consensus on new knowledge. Students are engaged by the culture of knowledge building, their sense of ownership of their own contributions, and the sense of accomplishment in seeing how they contribute toward the group's learning.
3. Providing important record-keeping and/or external memory functions. Such support could aid individuals working together or groups collaborating over space or time. Koschmann et al.'s support for PBL provides record-keeping facilities for students working together at the same time. Neuwirth's and Wojahn's support tools for writing allow students and teachers to collaborate asynchronously.
4. Enabling communication with distant communities. Scardamalia and Bereiter's CSILE can be used for this purpose; Reil's chapter reports on student and teacher collaborations that go across city, state, and national boundaries. Collaborations across space can add to the authenticity and value of the collaboration.
5. Promoting the kinds of reflection that are facilitated by collaboration. The software described by Feltovich, Spiro, et al. fits here. Collaborative experiences are uniquely suited for encouraging reflection of alternatives - alternative perspectives, alternative solutions, alternative critiques. Software that fits with the criteria set out in Cognitive Flexibility Theory uses the computer to encourage this kind of reflection on alternatives, even without the physical presence of a group.
6. Supporting teacher planning and implementation of collaborative activities. The project-based learning supports described by Soloway et al. point out the range of support that teachers need as they are developing new kinds of classroom activities and several kinds of support that software can provide. The supports they identify include project visualization and planning, descriptions of successful cases, a multimedia journal for recording personal successful practices, and a forum for communicating with other innovators.
Schön, D. A. (1987) Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
From Supporting Collaboration and Reflection on Problem-Solving in a Project-Based Classroom.
Engineering design education based on constructivist theories of cognitive science suggests that effective learning occurs in a project-based situation that is at once (that is, in an integrated manner) authentic, supportive of the learning process, and scaffolded. Authenticity is a factor in increasing student motivation and to increase the likelihood of transfer between the classroom situations and real world situations [Koschman, Myers, Feltovich, & Barrows 1994] . Students should be asked to solve problems that are similar in complexity and in components to problems that they will be facing in their post-graduation experience as designers.
In order to support the learning process, students need opportunities to identify and articulate problems, reflect on these problems until they reach a solution, and then articulate their solution and what they learned. In engineering design classrooms, articulation opportunities are usually limited to essay testing or interpretation of homework assignments. In the ME course, students are encouraged to learn about learning and design through additional activities such as written "What I learned" essays and classroom reflection exercises. Articulation and reflection occur frequently in collaborative environments in which knowledge sharing is occurring. The audience in such environments can provide feedback, offer contrasting views, ask for clarification, or extend ideas - all of which improves student understanding and learning through increased reflection and often additional articulation. In most classroom situations, the instructor is the only audience for the students' work, so there is limited opportunity for this interaction with an audience.
The third implication of a constructivist view of design education is that learning opportunities should be scaffolded [Collins, Brown, & Newman 1989; Guzdial 1994] .
Scaffolding is generally defined as support for (1) doing an activity and (2) learning through and about that activity. We can envision providing scaffolding for the many activities going on in a project-based learning environment:
* Scaffolding for the activity of design itself which can include modeling the process of design through introduction of case studies; providing tools which communicate and facilitate good design process; creating opportunities for students to interact with one another and thus elicit articulation and reflection about their designs and design process; facilitating or guiding design activities.
* Scaffolding for collaboration which is an activity that students are often weak at. Scaffolding for collaboration can include facilitating interaction (e.g., encouraging use of productive phrases, discouraging use of unproductive comments); suggesting useful ways to collaborate; and pointing out opportunities for collaboration.
* Scaffolding for case interpretation may play an important role in gaining transfer of design learning. By learning to interpret a case abstractly, students may be able to recognize more easily how two different design problems are related, which will facilitate reuse of knowledge from one problem in another. Scaffolding for case interpretation may include prompting a student to describe a design problem; coaching them about how to abstractly interpret a design problem; and modeling the process through example interpretations of design problems.
From Facilitating Learning Design with Software-Realized Scaffolding for Collaboration.
Skills which lead to good collaboration include remaining conscious of the roles that participants are playing in the collaboration, providing information that allows others to perform their roles, and synchronizing tasks.
When students collaborate, they articulate their goals and plans which encourages a kind of reflection which can lead to learning. When other students read the goals and plans, a cycle of critiquing, revision, and review is set up which can lead to improved understanding.
This paper reports the authors' work with software support for collaborative activity. Importantly they report that efforts toward issue-centered discussions were not as successful as expected. When the context was shifted to artifact-centered attitudes and behavior changed dramatically. Clearly, situating the activity in the correct context pays dividends.
The importance of this line of research is that it demonstrates convincingly the role self-explanations play in supporting learning (both for procedural and declarative knowledge). Furthermore, the effect is similar for all subjects (if does not differentially empower high ability versus low ability students). It provides a type of generic strategy for all types of subjects, and it helps.
The Bielaczyc, et. al. study is especially helpful in its discussion of training regimes for both self-explanation and self-regulation. The importance of strategies for both self-explanation and self-regulation comes from the finding that the acquisition of cognitive skill is affected "not only by the quantity but the quality of self-explanations produced by learners.". Learners need strategies that guide the exploration of the material at hand and assist in the assessment of concept or skill acquisition - do I understand this to the correct degree? This foundation may be essential for proper development of code reading and inspection/review materials.
not only did instructional participants show a significantly greater increase than control participants in their overall application of this strategy of elaborating the main ideas while studying the text, but they were also applying the strategy to a greater number of the main ideas introduced in the texts.
gain for the instructional group compared with the control group for this strategy falls short of a reliable difference.
Not only did the instructional group show a greater increase in the use of strategies connecting text concepts and example feature found within the lesson materials than the control group, but they also showed a greater increases in the strategy of connecting lesson concepts to topics external to the lesson materials.
the significant gain of the instructional group relative to the control group for general monitoring of text suggests that the content of the self-explanations that are being monitored may play a role in the effectiveness of the strategy.
the instructional group showed significant increases compared with the control group in their application of self-regulation strategies for clarifying understanding and addressing comprehension failures.
Bielaczyc, K., P. L. Pirollli, & A. L. Brown (1995) Training in Self-Explanation and Self-Regulation Strategies: Investigating the Effects of Knowledge Acquisition Activities on Problem Solving. Cognition and Instruction, 13, p. 221-252.
Chi, M. T. H., & M. Bassok (1989) Learning from Examples Via Self-Explanations. In L. Resnick (ed.) Knowing, Learning, and Instruction: Essays in Honor of Robert Glaser. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. p. 251-282.
Chi, M. T. H., M. Bassok, M. W. Lewis, P. Reimann, & R. Glaser (1989) Self-Explanations: How Students Study and Use Examples in Learning to Solve Problems. Cognitive Science, 13, p. 145-182.
Chi, M. T. H., N. De Leeuw, M. Chiu, & C. LaVancher (1994) Eliciting Self-Explanations Improves Understanding. Cognitive Science, 18, p. 439-477.
Glaser, R. (1996) Changing the Agency for Learning: Acquiring Expert Performance. In K. A. Ericsson (ed.), The Road to Excellence. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. p. 127-165.
Hattie, J., J. Biggs, & N. Purdie (1996) Effects of Learning Skills Interventions on Students Learning: A Meta-Analysis. Review of Educational Research, 66. p. 99-136.