Learning Sciences & the Impact on Learning Technologies and Learning Activities (abstract)
Phil Long @radhertz

Learning = acquisition of knowledge (dictionary); reflects permanent change in behaviour (psychologists). Tied up with context; it’s about retrieving knowledge to suit present needs.

Summary: We’ve known a lot about learning processes for 50-100 years – just starting to get out of academic circles with advent of learning technology.

Overlearning – learning beyond mastery – extremely powerful way to impact long-term retention
• Variable/interleaved vs consistent practice – studying in different environments outperformed studying in same environment. Studying artists mixed up outperformed studying artists sequentially.
• Mixing questions vs blocking questions: during practice blocking wins; on testing mixing wins. (However cramming for the test will often outperform – for that one exam, but not a week later.)
• Giving a series of tests outperforms giving study time (but annoys students and is a lot of work!

We should build tools that make better learning practices part of the design.

Metacognition – awareness/understanding one’s own thought process.
Refers the Dunning-Kruger issue of people over-estimating their competence. Cleese sums up as “people who are so stupid they don’t know how stupid they are”. Conversely top performers underestimate how well they’re doing.

Digital tools building in these findings:

• Cerego – creates a knowledge map of what you need to know, when you need to know, so it can provide it to you at the moment that will most help you learn it.
• Smart Sparrow – define how content will adapt to each student, optimise lesson flow, include simulations.
• And more: ITHAKA report Personalizing Post-Secondary Education: An Overview of Adaptive Learning Solutions for Higher Education

Learning Tools Interoperability – allowing multiple tools associated with courses to interact and link between each other. LTI apps on dedicated app store. But also and open source a federated store behing developed: Casa.

Hoot.me tries to integrate learning into Facebook – people can sign up as a tutor. Can submit a drawing/voiceover as a question. Maybe-creepy part is allows people to charge for tutoring. Probably-creepy part is this can show up in LMS for professor to read and respond, which will show up on Facebook.

How are we connecting where students are hanging out with where we’re teaching? [Should we? Don’t people sometimes need downtime?]

Where do we stand on spectrum between adaptive tools and personalised learning tools.
Why aren’t we proactively developing our own learning app store that represents good learning theory?