Learning artifact (education)

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In educational psychology, a learning artifact (or educational artifact) is an object created by students during the course of instruction. To be considered an artifact, an object needs to be lasting, durable, public, and materially present. [1] Under the constructionist theory of educational psychology, the concept of making knowledge visible is a central component. The creation of material artifacts is a technique used to allow students to display their knowledge in a public forum (usually the classroom). Artifacts can be in the form of paintings, drawings, sculptures, models, or anything else that is not erased after completion.

Students create evocative objects for the purpose of making their knowledge visible. [2] The creation and display of these artifacts allow students opportunities for engagement, revision and feedback, all hallmarks of quality learning design. [3]

A cognitive artifact is a physical representation of a conceptual idea, such as an experience, a memory, a thought, or a feeling. The term is used in the discipline of human-computer interaction. Cognitive artifacts can take on different forms, and are intended to aid or enhance one's cognitive abilities. [4] Because a cognitive artifact is a representation of a conceptual idea, the artifact may be interpreted in different ways. Cognitive artifacts use various mediums that often differ from the medium in which the situation initially occurred. These artifacts focus on the essentials, disregarding any irrelevant material in order to simplify the situation and elicit the most critical information from a particular scenario. [5]

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An intelligent tutoring system (ITS) is a computer system that aims to provide immediate and customized instruction or feedback to learners, usually without requiring intervention from a human teacher. ITSs have the common goal of enabling learning in a meaningful and effective manner by using a variety of computing technologies. There are many examples of ITSs being used in both formal education and professional settings in which they have demonstrated their capabilities and limitations. There is a close relationship between intelligent tutoring, cognitive learning theories and design; and there is ongoing research to improve the effectiveness of ITS. An ITS typically aims to replicate the demonstrated benefits of one-to-one, personalized tutoring, in contexts where students would otherwise have access to one-to-many instruction from a single teacher, or no teacher at all. ITSs are often designed with the goal of providing access to high quality education to each and every student.

Enactive interfaces

Enactive interfaces are interactive systems that allow organization and transmission of knowledge obtained through action. Examples are interfaces that couple a human with a machine to do things usually done unaided, such as shaping a three-dimensional object using multiple modality interactions with a database, or using interactive video to allow a student to visually engage with mathematical concepts. Enactive interface design can be approached through the idea of raising awareness of affordances, that is, optimization of the awareness of possible actions available to someone using the enactive interface. This optimization involves visibility, affordance, and feedback.

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E-learning theory describes the cognitive science principles of effective multimedia learning using electronic educational technology.

Human–computer interaction Academic discipline studying the relationship between computer systems and their users

Human–computer interaction (HCI) is research in the design and the use of computer technology, which focuses on the interfaces between people (users) and computers. HCI researchers observe the ways humans interact with computers and design technologies that allow humans to interact with computers in novel ways.

The concept or theory of meaningful learning is that learned information is completely understood and can now be used to make connections with other previously known knowledge, aiding in further understanding. Since information is stored in a network of connections, it can be accessed from multiple starting points depending on the context of recall. Meaningful learning is often contrasted with rote learning, a method in which information is memorized sometimes without elements of understanding or relation to other objects or situations. A real-world example of a concept the learner has learned is an instance of meaningful learning. Utilization of meaningful learning may trigger further learning, as the relation of a concept to a real-world situation may be encouraging to the learner. It may encourage the learner to understand the information presented and will assist with active learning techniques to aid their understanding. Although it takes longer than rote memorization, information is typically retained for a longer period of time.

Pedagogical agent

A pedagogical agent is a concept borrowed from computer science and artificial intelligence and applied to education, usually as part of an intelligent tutoring system (ITS). It is a simulated human-like interface between the learner and the content, in an educational environment. A pedagogical agent is designed to model the type of interactions between a student and another person. Mabanza and de Wet define it as "a character enacted by a computer that interacts with the user in a socially engaging manner". A pedagogical agent can be assigned different roles in the learning environment, such as tutor or co-learner, depending on the desired purpose of the agent. "A tutor agent plays the role of a teacher, while a co-learner agent plays the role of a learning companion".

Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) is a theoretical framework which helps to understand and analyse the relationship between the human mind and activity. It traces its origins to the founders of the cultural-historical school of Russian psychology L. S. Vygotsky and Aleksei N. Leontiev. Vygotsky's important insight into the dynamics of consciousness was that it is essentially subjective and shaped by the history of each individual's social and cultural experience. Especially since the 1990s, CHAT has attracted a growing interest among academics worldwide. Elsewhere CHAT has been defined as "a cross-disciplinary framework for studying how humans purposefully transform natural and social reality, including themselves, as an ongoing culturally and historically situated, materially and socially mediated process". Core ideas are: 1) humans act collectively, learn by doing, and communicate in and via their actions; 2) humans make, employ, and adapt tools of all kinds to learn and communicate; and 3) community is central to the process of making and interpreting meaning – and thus to all forms of learning, communicating, and acting.

References

  1. Kafai, Y.B. (2006). Constructionism. The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. pp. 35–38.
  2. Turkle, S. (2004). "Global Technologies as Evocative Objects". Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium (97).
  3. Lester, J.C.; FitzGerald, P. J.; Stone, B. A. (1997). "The pedagogical design studio: Exploiting artifact-based task models for constructivist learning". Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces: 155–162. doi:10.1145/238218.238317. S2CID   1654427.
  4. "Cognitive Artifacts". The Glossary of Human Computer Interaction. Interaction Design Foundation.
  5. Norman, Donald (1991). "Cognitive Artifacts". Designing Interaction: Psychology at the Human-Computer Interface: 17–38.