The idea behind goal-directed learning is that "when teaching relates to students' personal goals, rather than those goals imposed upon them by school, students are eager to respond" (p.157). Schank and Cleary believe that the order that information is taught in school is the direct opposite of the order people approach problems in real life. If you give students a goal, they will be excited to learn the information needed to complete that goal.
Schank and Cleary present two software systems that use goal-directed learning to motivate students. The Sickle Cell program puts visitors to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago in the role of a genetic counselor. Users advise a couple who is worried that their children may be at risk for sickle cell. The idea behind putting users in the shoes of a genetic counselor is to give them a challenging problem to motivate them to learn.
The Broadcast News software teaches high school students about social studies topics by inviting them to produce a TV news show. Creating the news stories forces the user to learn the background information that she doesn't already have to present a clear story to the audience. As the user becomes more advanced she takes on more responsibilities in developing the news show.
Schank and Cleary outline eight principles of quality software that apply to education on a whole:
At the end of chapter 10, Schank and Cleary outline the need for educational software in schools and the barriers to getting the software into the schools. The also talk about the tools that are needed to easily build educational applications.
Knowledge can be broken down into four distinct types: facts, cases, skills, and processes. Schank and Cleary think that it is important to teach skills, cases and processes, but not facts. They believe that students will learn the facts they need when they need them.
Courses are no more than a set of scriplets students need to acquire, according to Schank and Cleary. Therefore courses should be designed so that students can acquire these scriplets by practice. To motivate students to learn a scriplet, we should provide a goal. If an interesting goal does not exist, Schank and Cleary believe that the scriplet isn't all that important for the student to learn.
Goal-Based Scenarios (GBSs) are skill-centered, learner guided courses that allow a student to pursue clearly stated goals and the teacher to present the skills she thinks the student should learn.
At the end of chapter 11, Schank and Cleary go back to the basic processes of education. The processes that should always be taught indirectly by being embedded in the GBSs are communication, human relations and reasoning.
How does your project fulfill of not fulfill goal-directed learning?
What do you think of the Sickle Cell and Broadcast News software programs? What are their strengths? Are there any problems?
Both programs allow their users to asked questions based on what they are learning. The user asks a question by choosing from a list of questions. Do you think enough questions can be covered this way with extensive testing? Or is this a weakness the software has as opposed to a teacher?
Do you think that goal-directed learning leaves out information you should learn about a topic? Is there too much focus on a specific goal and broader things are overlooked?
What role should the teacher play when using the software?
Schank and Cleary outline eight principles of quality software (p.175) that apply to education overall: learn by doing; problems, then instruction; tell good stories; power to the students; provide a safe place to fail; navigation to answers; the software is the test; and find the fun. Did your education follow any of these principles? How did the presence or absence affect your education? Which in particular would have helped and why?
"Eventually this new industry [educational software] will be created, when it is in someone's interest to do it." (p. 178) Is this being optimistic after he has outlined all the barriers?
Do you think it is possible to find an *interesting* goal for everything?
"If no situation containing a particular scriplet can be found that is rewarding for the student, it is reasonable to assume that this scriplet isn't all that important for the student to learn." (p.187) Do you agree with this?
Is software a better way to do Goal Based Scenarios than other teaching methods or is GBS just compatible with software?
adt@cs.brown.edu