Engines for Education online

2) Cases: a story that illustrates behavior or the way the world works

3) Processes: a high-level, abstract skill

4) Facts

1. Identify Target Skills: skills the course should teach
2. Create a Mission: the goal of the scenario, must be clear but widely applicable
3. Choose the Focus: General class of task

1. Design
2. Diagnosis
3. Discovery
4. Control

1. Create the Cover Story: the premise; must draw in the student
2. Plan the Operations: Concrete activities within course
3. Build the learning environment

Standards are impossible because the world changes, and individuals require different knowledge.

1. Communications
2. Human Relations
3. Reasoning

Should not be taught explicitly, but through experiences designed to elicit them.

Richard Jew and Lauren Austrian - CS092, Spring 2001

Now that you have (hopefully) read Lauren's rundown of Chapter 11, here are some questions to consider from the text:

1. Schank and Cleary speak to practicality in this chapter: "We must look to concepts that relate to today’s world, one where there’s so much to know that it is likely that students will have to direct their own education out of practical necessity." (p. 183) They suggest that we somehow find a way to instill a caring about practical subjects into students, but how do they resolve this with their notion that children’s natural interests should be explored?

2. Schank and Cleary explicitly state, "Ideas matter more than facts." (p. 185) Imagine that we had had a curriculum devoid of all fact learning unless necessary. When, during our younger years, would fact learning have been necessary? How would our educations have differed under Schank and Cleary’s model for education?

3. The problem of fixed curricula versus geared, pragmatic learning is often addressed in comparing the educational philosophy of America to the education philosophies of numerous other countries, such as China and England, where professions are determined early in education, and can lead to ceilings in terms of salaries, social status, and upward mobility. Ironically, America prides itself on individuality, yet its educational philosophy pushes for equality, while other nations may not encourage the individual spirit, yet embrace an educational philosophy that segregates individuals based on interests or fortes. Would implementation of S & C's philosophy lead to a structure much like these other countries, which goes against our philosophical background?

4. Lauren mentions S&C's Basic Processes of communication, human relations, and reasoning. Do you agree with these Basic Processes? Are they too abstract to be useful, or not broad enough to cover what is necessary?

5. We hold that younger students may not know what they’re interested in. However, Schank and Cleary feel that "…students should not be forced to take those courses if they don’t match some interest the student holds, or that the teacher can help the student develop." (p.204) At what level of understanding can young students know what they want to study?

6. How can Schank and Cleary justify many of the "impractical" studies carried on by universities? For example, studying Classics or Creative Writing are not necessarily pragmatic, and their contribution to the world is debatable at best.

7. What are the pros and cons of domain-oriented teaching? Would students realistically be able to synthesize the knowledge they need to solve problems (i.e. even if you had the Yankees teaching you Algebra and corporate sponsorship/embezzlement, would you have a good enough basis to accomplish your goals if you hadn’t run across mathematics before)? Will students be able to combine different subjects without having explicitly studied a subject? Does the example of the wine school effectively demonstrate the utility of the domain-oriented theory?

8. Although Brown has given us freedom to mold our education, our prior education has required certain subjects to be studied. Why are such subjects mandatory? What problems are there with teaching on a need-to-know basis?

9. It seems as though the open curriculum operates on the principle that students will know what subjects will most interest them, what subjects will prove most useful to their success, and how to integrate the two. However, the authors seem to imply that education, under this scheme, is lifelong, and that we must assume education to be accessible for all at any given time when anyone wishes to learn about particular subjects. How could this be feasible? What changes must be uprooted in our current social and educational system to allow this to happen?

10. The authors wish to destroy the factor of fear that is associated with failure in peer groups at the younger levels. Would this be accomplished through the use of GBSs? How would such a system segregate students, if not by age-grade level?

11. Schank and Cleary, we felt, gave a rather vague definition of what exactly a domain entails. What do you feel a domain encompasses? Does studying by domains provide a better fulfillment of their definitions of knowledge than studying by subjects?

12. Think about GBS and your own project. Does your project fit into this scenario? If so, how have you accomplished this, and if not, why does the GBS not work well with your program?

13. We pulled a question from Laurence Blakely's questions from the 2000 seminar: Is it a problem that the student and the designer have to approach the goal-based scenario from opposite ends (top down vs. bottom up)? Are the two examples given in the text good ones?

14. Lastly, how can educational software facilitate learning under this model suggested by Schank and Cleary?