Subject: A System model of Cognition, and Instructor to Student dialogue

Posted by Markus Eklund on 12/9/2004

Message:

Hi,

Thanks to all those who initially helped me in my in my query regarding 'System Dyanmics Modeling: Memory and Learning". Especially to Steve Kipp, and John Gunkler who pointed me in the right direction of literature to review and how to think about my problem. Based on their (and other's) feedback, I decided to spend a couple months studying results from cognitive psychology concerning how to measure learning and forgetting rates, and how these are affected by problem spacing, testing intervals and some individual differences. Along the way I was able to get quite a bit of help understanding this by some researchers around the globe (mostly at Carnegie Mellon) that are associated with ACT-R.

Currently, I have a validated Systems model (thanks to Farhad Saba and Rick Shearer) that describes the inverse relationship between the structure (a measure of an educational programme's responsiveness to learners' individual needs) and dialogue (the extent to which learner and instructor are able to respond to each other). Thus, in education the 'distance' between instructor and learner is determined by the level and rate of dialogue and structure, not physical distance. This model has several assumptions, one of which that learner experience (e.g. knowledge represented internally by memory) is a constant. To use this model for instructional prescriptions, this constant needs to be the variable that it is.

My goal is extend this model to include the fact that experience is dynamic (see my proposal abstract for more complete details). Based on my extended review of the literature I believe I've found the equations needed (already backed-up by plenty of data) to meet this goal but I need some help in figuring out how to translate these into flow diagrams and a systems model.

Is there anyone out there who could help me, or provide me with a method for how to reverse engineer these equations into flow diagrams and a system model? I already have a start, but don't think my method is good. Also it's been 15 years since Calculus so my math is a bit rusty! I've attached the equations in the word document.

thanks in advance for you help,

Markus Eklund
Masters' Student
San Diego State University


ABSTRACT
This proposal will investigate the affect of the learners' declarative prior knowledge on the structure and dialog between instructor and learner. Drawing on four different fields – Cognitive Science, Distance Education, Discourse Analysis, and System Dynamics – the project will measure ten key variables in education. The data collected will be input in a systems dynamics model of transactional distance and learner prior knowledge (learner experience).

It is anticipated that learners with more prior knowledge of the content will be more active in asking questions and providing information, which will cause the rate and amount of communication to increase. This will provide more evidence that the communication needs of learners vary as they move from the cognitive stage to the autonomous stage of learning. These communication amounts and rates will affect problem spacing and according to the Power-Law of learning, the learning rates. Thus, to make learning rates optimal, the instructor must know how to control amounts and rates of communication patterns during different stages of learning.