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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (10 results)

  • Article
  • Peer Reviewed
UC San Diego Previously Published Works (2014)
In the early 1990s, Chip Bruce created a taxonomy of education technology uses, which the author of the article helped to expand and evaluate. This taxonomy is based on John Dewey's 'four impulses of the child': inquiry, construction, communication, and expression. This taxonomy has helped people interested in the uses of technologies for education to better understand the range of uses and it has also helped spur the development of new uses.
    Cover page: Taxonomies of Educational Technology Uses: Dewey, Chip and Me
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 3 (1981)

    Everyday problem solving is different in significant ways from the kinds of problem solving that take place in laboratory mlcroworld settings. Attempts to simplify have excluded important factors that can help us understand aspects of the problem solving that are problems from the point of view of the laboratory. This paper describes several research projects that have examined problem solving in nonlaboratory settings, and some of the Implications of these studies for cognitive science. The current notions of distributed cognitive processing can be extended in a powerful way to the socially distributed problem solving characteristic of everyday settings. This notion of socially distributed problem solving can then reflect back on individual problem solving, which is acquired and often carried out in social settings.

      Cover page: Everyday Problem Solving
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      UC San Diego Previously Published Works (2016)
      The goal of this research study has been to develop, implement, and evaluate a school reform design experiment at a continuation high school with low-income, low-performing underrepresented minority students. The complexity sciences served as a theoretical framework for this design experiment. Treating an innovative college preparatory program as a nested complex adaptive system within a larger complex adaptive system, the school, we used features of complex adaptive systems (equilibrium, emergence, self-organization, and feedback loops) as a framework to design a strategy for school reform. The goal was to create an environment for change by pulling the school far from equilibrium using a strategy we call “purposeful perturbations” to disrupt the stable state of the school in a purposeful way. Over the four years of the study, several tipping points were reached, and we developed agent-based simulation models that capture important dynamic properties of the reform at these points. The study draws upon complexity theory in multiple ways that have supported improved education for low-achieving students.
        Cover page: Navigating the Turbulent Waters of School Reform Guided by Complexity Theory
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 3 (1981)
          Cover page: Point of View in Problem Solving
          • Thesis
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2017)

          This research study aimed to expand our understanding of the factors that influence student persistence in engineering. The unique experiences of engineering students were examined as they transitioned into and navigated their first year of college at a public research university in California. Most students provided similar responses with respect to the way they experienced the transition to college and social life. There was, however, wide student response variation regarding their experience of academic life and academic policies, as well as in their level of pre-college academic preparation and financial circumstances. One key finding was that students’ experiences during the first year of college varied widely based on the extent to which they had acquired organizational and learning skills prior to college.

          The study used a mixed methods approach. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through an online survey and one-on-one interviews conducted with freshman students near the end of their first year of college. The theoretical foundations of this study included Astin’s Theory of Student Involvement and Tinto’s Theory of Student Departure. The design of the study was guided by these theories which emphasize the critical importance of student involvement with the academic and social aspects of college during the first year of college.

            Cover page: The First Year of College: Understanding Student Persistence in Engineering
            • Article
            • Peer Reviewed
            Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 14 (1992)
            Electronic networks are being increasingly used to support a variety of educational activities. Although early research in this area has been promising, there has been less work to date concerning more basic cognitive and theoretical issues associated with the design and use of educational electronic networks. This paper proposes a distributed network learning framework (DNLF) which will be presented through three main aspects: (a) network mediators and the flow of information and knowledge, (b) networks and cognitive theories of learning, and (c) the network-human interface. A s an example of an application of the distributed network learning framework, an ongoing research and development project is discussed that involves a cognitively-based educational electronic communication tool. The Message Assistant. In addition to the standard electronic mail features such as creating, sending, and receiving messages, this program includes a user-defined incremental expert system and hypertextual linking functions to assist a network mediator in her or his evaluation, organization, and distribution of network information and knowledge. The distributed network learning framework can function as a flexible-and extendable—set of conceptual views from which to examine and to work with different aspects of dynamically evolving network learning environments.
              Cover page: Towards a Distributed Network Learning Framework: Theory and Technology to Support Educational Electronic Learning Environments
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              UC San Diego Previously Published Works (2019)
              Education is a complex system, which has conceptual and methodological implications for education research and policy. In this article, an overview is first provided of the Complex Systems Conceptual Framework for Learning (CSCFL), which consists of a set of conceptual perspectives that are generally shared by educational complex systems, organized into two focus areas: collective behaviors of a system, and behaviors of individual agents in a system. Complexity and research methodologies for education are then considered, and it is observed that commonly used quantitative and qualitative techniques are generally appropriate for studying linear dynamics of educational systems. However, it is proposed that computational modeling approaches, being extensively used for studying nonlinear characteristics of complex systems in other fields, can provide a methodological complement to quantitative and qualitative education research approaches. Two research case studies of this approach are discussed. We conclude with a consideration of how viewing education as a complex system using complex systems’ conceptual and methodological tools can help advance education research and also inform policy.
                Cover page: Education as a Complex System: Conceptual and Methodological Implications
                • Article
                • Peer Reviewed
                Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 11 (1989)
                The problem of transfer remains one of the most difficult challenges for schooling: knowledge and skills that students leam in a classroom is often not used in out-of-school contexts. To address this problem, this paper analyzes educational interaction conducted via long-distance electronic networks. W e present a new methodology, called Semantic Trace Analysis. From our analyses, we present two possible solutions to the transfer problem. First, we describe an organizing framework for network interactions, which we call "receiver site transfer", which provides a functional environment for students' problem solving. In addition, we describe some initial explorations of "teleapprenticeships", instructional interactions through which students learn knowledge and skills by interacting with adults outside the school system. To the extent that adults increasingly use electronic networks for their work, we will be able to avoid the transfer problem by instructing students within the same context that they will use that instruction.
                  Cover page: Distributed Problem Solving: The Social Contexts of Learning and Transfer
                  • Article
                  • Peer Reviewed
                  Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 5 (1983)
                    Cover page: How do Children Think About Numbers? Let us Count the Ways
                    • Article
                    • Peer Reviewed
                    Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 8 (1986)
                    What are the factors that cause a problem solver to become blocked? And what are the factors that allow a person to become unblocked? These are the motivating questions for a set of studies we conducted of individual and joint problem solving. By constructing an isomorph of the classic "water jar" problems (Luchins, 1942) as a dynamic graphic microworld, we were able to identify several factors involved in producing blocked states. By comparing the behavior of individuals tackling the "missionaries and cannibals" problem to pairs of people solving this problem, we have been able to identify ways in which problem solvers operating in a social context are able to overcome problem solving blocks that are difficult for individuals. These studies point to the importance of "reflection" (evaluation of problem solving results) for flexible problem solving. These results may also account for the difficulty in showing learning in "discovery learning" uses of computers, such as the use of Logo, since such uses also often do not encourage students to reflect on the outcome of their problem solving.
                      Cover page: Reflexibility in Problem Solving: The Social Context of Expertise
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