#learning sciences

[adapted-batteries]

So in my theories of learning class, there are a fair amount of people from the counseling psychology graduate program. Some of these folks specialize in ASD interventions, which within the counseling psychology program in my college of education is, as you may guess, ABA therapy.

In this class we have a project where we have to collect data to test a learning theory of our choosing. Part of the project requires a proposal of what theory you'll be testing and how you're going to collect data to test it. This proposal we have to give peer feedback on before turning in the final copy. And of course, I get someone who's wanting to a study looking at behaviorism and autistic kids.

It's not even that the aproach this person is doing purposely dehumanizes autistic kids, in fact they're using emotions as part of the reinforcement mechanism, but it's still treating autistic kids like they can't think. (Behaviorism, as a learning theory, pretty much ignores the cognition involved in learning)

We just don't think like neurotypical people...but we still think!!! Heck, all the folks who get good at masking are very much thinking about their presentation, how long they can mask, and where they can relax. There's a heck of a lot of cognition going on there. If only neurotypical people would take the time to actually study how we think, instead of just dissmissing it as "not like normal children."

Stuff like this makes me want to totally switch gears in my Learning and Cognition Ph.D. from science education to cognition in ASD. But also being autistic makes the thought of suddenly switching my program plan sound really terrible, oh the irony.

[mez-rperez]

Sharing Space & Taking Time: Reflections on Conference Going in 2023

My friend, the brilliant Stephanie T. Jones, said something casually insightful on Friday night, at the social event marking the first day of the Learning Sciences Graduate Student Conference (LSGSC). We were talking about how the pandemic completely upended our programs and how we are learning how to work as scholars when they said:

"As an adult, the end of the world is a recurring event."

Our table of other grad students in LS laughed at first, until the truth of her statement set in. She was right! And while shared within a light-hearted, getting-to-know-everyone context, the weight of it is something I'm carrying with me.

Part of why her comment stuck with me was that she used the word "recurring," which for me conjured imagery of adding "end of world" into a google calendar invite that gets set as an event that takes place every week. Advisor meeting, co-writing, end of the world, flexibility class. And sometimes, to break up the routine, we have conference travel.

Yet, I had the nagging feeling: should we really even be here? I ask now this in light of the ongoing colonization of Palestine, which is experiencing a surge of violence leaving millions displaced, and thousands physically harmed or dead.

Of course, this wasn't the first time I've asked myself this question. In 2020, it was pandemic-induced lockdown. Between now and then, this question has rung in my ears as I consider my own individual actions. I have accepted that institutions will not make my decisions easy either. The conference must go on, the class must be in person. "We" (read: able-bodied people with the means to get around) "have to" (read: there is money involved) "move on" (read: start subscribing to magical thinking). But "moving on" is getting harder and harder, and is already impossible for some.

My friend's wisdom did not end with her quip. Contemplating, I shared my question: should this conference have even happened? Or framing it another way, should we have still made the decision to be here?

In her consideration, she offered me this: people coming together is always an opportunity. In a venue like LSGSC, we have the opportunity to be in dialog, to change things up, to really take seriously the work of reimagining, in a space that is constantly becoming something new. The AERAs, the CHIs, even the ISLSs of the world that obliquely shape my academic life do not have the ability to turn as quickly, which makes this space even more valuable as a site for growing something new.

So, moving forward I am holding myself accountable for doing my part to hold space for difficult, emotional, or precarious conversations. I'm figuring out where I can take action and change my personal decision-making. And I'm also asking that organizations and organizers do the same.

The Revolution Will Not Be a Re(oc)curring Event: some concluding thoughts on what conferences can be:

What would it look like to plan for the seen, unseen, and unforeseen world events that differentially impact members of our communities? What are ways we can hold space for the events that we cannot put on our calendar?

In a post-academic twitter world, where and how can we hold space as scholars invested in examining power, politicization, and presence?

What are we willing to ask of each other when we come together physically? In a world where COVID-19 is far from over, where collective immunity to other diseases is questionable, and where disabled people have long been relegated to the margins, we need to start taking collective responsibility for the conditions of participation. Masking up, hybrid options, and testing are small ways we can do this.

These questions came up for me because I had the opportunity to listen to my wonderful mentor give a keynote talk, and because Stephanie and I co-faciitated a space on public pedagogy in the learning sciences. Being in conversation with others has had an immesurable impact on my development as a scholar and person. In sharing my reflections, I hope that it can be a point of consideration as we come up with new ways of being together.

[roycekimmons]

Anyone who works in the nexus of technology and education recognizes that there are a variety of interest groups represented in the field, each with their own priorities, beliefs, and expectations with relation to technology and learning.  This Google Spreadsheet represents a (very) incomplete, preliminary attempt at understanding the diversity of the field by (loosely) categorizing it into three main groups: educational technology, instructional design, and learning sciences.

Do these classifications reflect what you see in the field?  How might a categorization like this be valuable for supporting teaching and research? Help me by adding to this table, editing its contents, and leaving comments.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AoMRZPM74y16dEQ2S0JFR2JNOGdGNUtuYk9XdmVSY0E#gid=0

Thanks!

[valideval]

Harnessing Communities’ Tacit Knowledge

by Todd Reimer

This is a response to Brad Feld’s recently published book Startup Communities, which is summarized in a 3.5-minute video here.

VE’s evaluation strategy is grounded in cognitive science research on the social construction and cultural distribution of knowledge. Cognitive scientists, like John Seely Brown (Figure 1), have compared community knowledge to an iceberg, divided between the explicit knowledge of individuals (and artifacts) and the tacit knowledge of groups (and their cultural practices). This knowledge is unevenly distributed, with the vast majority of a community’s expertise residing in the hidden world of social groups and their practices. 

Figure 1: John Seely Brown’s View of Knowledge

This inequitable knowledge distribution is particularly formidable for newcomers to a practice—constrained by access, most of what matters remains hidden from their view.

VE began tackling this problem by focusing on what Brad Bernthal described in Feld’s book as the “glorious mess” of business plan competitions. Similar to the motivation behind TechStars, VE believed there must be a better way for experienced entrepreneurs to help those getting started. Most business plan competitions rely on rank-and-order scales to make decisions, providing limited to no feedback to entrants who dedicated significant time to their submissions. VE began addressing this problem by using performance rubrics to make the expectations valued by startup veterans visible to newcomers. 

VE worked closely with experts to develop rubrics that surface, prioritize, and capture performance criteria tacitly used by veteran community members to make decisions. VE’s mission, aligned with the Boulder Thesis, is to make these privately held assumptions highly transparent, open, and accessible to entrepreneurs new to the process. Newcomers use the rubrics as a shared frame of reference to begin with the end in mind, chart their progress over time, and navigate risk through self-assessment. Interacting with the rubric, as a cultural artifact, entrepreneurs begin to align their decisions more closely with community stakeholders and participate more fully in their practices. 

While designed to support newcomers, VE has found developing rubrics to be mutually beneficial for community veterans as well. In order to develop a rubric, experts involved in their development must externalize knowledge hidden even to themselves after years of experience; a dynamic known as the paradox of expertise. Creating a rubric forces veteran community members to articulate values and priorities in ways that place them in the role of ‘learner’ and away from that of ‘knower’. Additionally, once externalized, rubrics optimize the time and expertise of community veterans and volunteers when mentoring. Embedding common feedback in a rubric frees veterans to provide even more customized recommendations about what they believe matters.

VE’s evaluation software currently adds value to startup communities by providing entrepreneurs with reliable and trustworthy feedback from veteran practitioners. VE believes this service is critical to both newcomers and veterans of a startup community. Entrepreneurs benefit by having more data from community insiders to make better, more informed decisions. Veterans benefit by being forced to regularly explicate and test their theories on what matters and how to most effectively provide feedback. In this way, startup communities begin to generate consensus around cultural practices, values, and priorities. 

VE’s plans for software development involve tapping an additional reservoir of tacitly held community knowledge—the expertise embedded in the horizontal exchange of information between peers. Like Feld, VE believes the informal connections made between peers and near-peers (those slightly ahead in the startup process) are an invaluable resource within the entrepreneurial community. VE is eager to develop mechanisms to surface, capture, and track the collective feedback of one’s peers over the developmental trajectory of a startup.