This glossary gives priority to terms that describe behavior of people as they learn, including with Tablet and other mobile PCs. It updates earlier glossary notes. It increases the number of terms and refines definitions, expecially those related to NESI (New Era School Initiative) and aLEAP (a Learning Efficiency Analysis Paradigm/Plan/Program).
Each term has technical, operational criteria used to calculate changes in the probability of a learner reaching learning criteria of lessons. They help make transparent a behavioral infrastructure that accounts for these changes.
People implicitly use this infrastructure when discussing, planning and assessing learning, instruction, and education venues as well as education hardware and software.
These terms also serve as reminders of empirical research, scholarship, and evaluation reports that offer ways to manage learning more efficiently through this infrastructure. And, they indicate the breadth and depth of what’s possible to increase learning today.
Some descriptors originated in empirical experimental behavioral research studies (symbolized by ER), mostly conducted by others. Others come from less rigorous efforts, such as proof-of-concept exercises (identified with symbol POC). (Unless credited to someone else, I coined POC terms and definitions, frequently adapted – with credits given in formal papers – from disciplines other than education.) All have technical frames that allow generalizations beyond uses in their original contexts. Check the tabs on this blog for details about POC entries.
Terms appear in two sections: Behavioral Principles of Learning and Organizations about Learning.
Terms about Behavioral Principles of Learning
aLEAP (a Learning Efficiency Analysis Paradigm/Plan/Program) (POC). 1. A frame to illustrate an infrastructure of behavior patterns people use to learn.
2. Relationships among experimental empirical researh study results of behavior patterns people use to learn. a. Relationships among these patterns. b. Elements used in flow charts and algorythms that identify options and decision points that constitute behavior patterns people use to learn.
3. A project to develop a real-time automatic analysis and reporting of learning with Tablet and other mobile PCs.
4. An elaboration of the earlier project Applied Learning Behavior Analysis with Tablets (ALBAT).
Direct Learning (DL) (POC). 1. Direct Learning software gives no more than three examples before someone can solve problems offered in a software program.
Example: MathPractice software lets people solve problems without additional mediation by a person or by more examples or directions.
Tip: Writing DL software requires the use straight-line logic to analyze separately the problem presentation process (image sequence) and the content (astronomy, English, mathematics), before blending these two analyses into a single step-by-step presentation of a problem that allows a quick, correct answer by learners.
2. DL software has three main dimensions familiar to educator and education material developers: sensory context, presentation process, and content analysis. Usually, each has a technical legacy (pedigree). Discussion: Each of these dimension consists of enough operational details to mire a software development project in debates about data point assumptions and levels of confidence. Yet, theoretically, managing these dimensions by using operational criteria from learning research will increase learning rates. (Source: http://tabletpceducation.blogspot.com/2005/03/defining-direct-learning-for-tablet-pc.html)
Information supply chain(POC). 1. Passing an intangible information commodity (such as 1+1=2) along from one source to another as in a tangible business commodity supply chain.
2. The transmission of ideas and processes from one generation to another as through school curricula. Discussion: Others set a higher standard by calling this transmission chain a knowledge chain. Teachers and books have been a major part of these chains, with increasing value to users the more they save learner’s time in mastering ideas and process of other people.
Learning. The learner meets criterion for successfully solving a problem or in other ways performing a new task.
Learning analyst (POC). 1. A specialist who estimates probabilities of learning from a lesson, educational material such as a software program, and a learning venue, such as classroom or a Tablet or other mobile PC.
2. A specialist who uses experimental empirical behavior research descriptions of how people learn to assesses instruction, software, and venues.
Learning, Commoditizing POC). 1. The process of making learning processes visible and manageable.
Learning criterion (ER). 1. The observable result expected in order to claim learning occurred.
Learning efficiency (POC). 1. Measures that indicate the extent to which instruction and learners’ attentions meet to yield a learning criterion quicker, easier, or with less effort when compared with other possible ways of reaching the same criterion (Heiny, 2007).
2. From a learner’s view, learning efficiency means spending less time, effort, and other personal resources acquiring a given set of information or skills. It also means gaining something of personal value in exchange for those resources.
Learning efficiency rating (LER) (POC). 1. An informal system to rate student learning efficiency according to teacher instructional patterns.
2. A learning efficiency rating score (LERS) indicating the level of confidence that an instruction will yield a learning criterion promptly, directly, and easily.
3. Raters use the Learning Efficiency Scale (LES) to score instruction and then convert it into a rating.
4. Discussion: This rating is to teaching what a financial credit rating score is to lending. Both indicate levels of confidence to have in someone’s future performance, based on past performance.
Learning efficiency scale (LES) (POC). 1. Measures of learning efficiency indicate the extent to which instruction and learners’ attentions meet.
2. A measure of instructional competence, e.g., power or proficiency.
3. A framework for students and school observers to rank the relative capacity of school lessons and instructional material to yield intended student academic behavior.
Learning efficiency Star Rating System (LESRS) (POC). 1. The number of stars assigned to an efficiency level symbolizes the instructional capacity to yield efficient learning.
***** Highly Efficient instruction receives a Five Star Rating,
**** Efficient instruction receives Four Stars,
*** Normally Efficient instruction receives Three Stars,
** Less Efficient instruction receives Two Stars, and
* Inert / Laissez-faire instruction receives One Star.
Learning forecasts (POC). 1. Use of aLEAP to project the likely learning curves of individuals and aggregates of learners across academic subjects and levels of difficulty.
2. The probability a student or group will meet learning criterion for a lesson.
3. General statements by such indexes as I.Q. scores, academic achievement test results, and grade level assignments to technical estimates based on instructional processes.
4. Projection of a learner’s likely learning curve based on real-time data analysis, including for single as well as multiple subject areas at various levels of difficulty.
5. A proposed online subscription service for teachers of online databased real time information indicating whether instructional technique A or B will likely yield the most efficient learning rate by individual and aggregates of students in a given lesson.
Learning, Generics of (POC). 1. A profile of how a person learns across learning tasks and venues.
2. One of two commonalities (with learning genomics) to calculate learning efficiency.
3. The result from examining correlations between vocabulary and logic and adoption of academic behavior patterns. Posted by The Tablet PC In Education Blog, Calculating Learning Efficiency: NESI Conversation 3, April 1, 2009, at 5:24 PM.
Learning, Genomics of (POC). 1. A new science based on scientific behavioral literature of the past century.
2. An observable, tangible way to assess the value of advice and instruction.
3. One of two commonalities (with learning generics) to calculate learning efficiency.
4. It can contribute in unmeasured ways to learning in and out of schooling with and without mobile PCs. Posted by The Tablet PC Education Blog, Calculating Learning Efficiency: NESI Conversation 3, April 1, 2009, at 5:24 PM.
Learning, Informatics about (POC). 1. The study of the structure, properties, and principles of how people learn as distinct from what (the content) they learn.
Learning, Monetized (POC). 1. The dollar cost of learning, as in meeting a learning criterion of a lesson.
Learning, Monetizing (POC). 1. Formuli for calculating a dollar cost of learning, as meeting a learning criterion in a lesson.
Example: Formula 1. Total state reimbursement to district per teacher / (Total number of minutes of scheduled classroom instruction per teacher for the Academic Year / Total number state standards for students of a teacher to meet {= Average number of minutes per minimum academic standard}) = Average cost per minimum academic standard.
Example: Formula 2. Average cost per minimum academic standard / Average number of learning objectives per standard = Average cost of learning objectives to meet each state minimum academic performance standard.
Learning, One Step(ER). 1. Human learning occurs in one step.
2. Other activity of learners before learning is random trial and error behavior while searching for the relevant dimension to complete a task successfully.
Source: Zeaman and House documented one step learning repeatedly in experimental laboratory studies of two choice visual discrimination tasks.
Learning, Rates of (same as learning rates) (LR) (incomplete POC). 1. I don’t think I’ve defined learning rates.
2. Indirectly, I’ve said for software designers that the threshold question about education software seems apparent: What learning do you as the software designer intend from the use of your software? Specify, at least for yourself, an operational definition of what you mean by learning.
Example: This software will increase a users correct responses from 4 out of every 10 tries to 9 out of 10 tries.
Learning, Rationed (POC). 1.
Learner, Resources of (POC). 1. Time, energy, and personal tangibles as well as intangibles required to use prerequisite skills and information while meeting a learning criterion.
Learner View (POC). 1. A view of instruction and its venue as seen by a learner.
Nearsourcing (POC). 1. The fewer interventions, the nearer the original source the user selects.
2. Nearsourcing of information acknowledges using insights of an information originator without considering interpretations others assign to those insights.
3. It distinguishes sources closest to originals from farsourcing, or from what academics commonly call secondary, tertiary and other more removed sources.
4. Occurs when information users give priority to content in information supply chains with fewer interventions between original sources and a decision.
5. A simplified information transmission from originators to learners with greater efficiency of collaboration between learners and originators of the information.
Net learning (POC). 1. A calculated or estimated difference between learning gained and learning limited by the learning venue or lesson.
Open learning paradigm (OLP) (POC). 1. A working descriptor of the commonly asserted access that mobile PCs allow anyone to learn anything, anytime, anywhere (Any; ATTW; A3TsW?) on demand.
Personal benefits (PB) (POC). Learner gains more than personal resources given in exchange for more advantages, choices, or profits. (Heiny, 1980).
QuickStart Learning (QSL) (POC). Activities that provide a person with prompt changes in behavior.
2. Learning-by-doing.
3. A generic category of immediate, efficient behavior change activities.
Discussion: QSL is to learning what instant gratification is to the learner. They define engaged learning. Once the person starts the activity, measurable learning occurs. QSLs increase a learner’s behavior repertoire efficiently, that’s one of their common attributes.
Time. 1. The duration of an event, process, condition, etc., as with passing clock moments, trial blocks, beginning to end, start to finish, before and after, betwixt and between.
Trial and error learning (ER). 1. Learner’s behavior before meeting before learning is random (trial and error) behavior while searching for the relevant dimension to complete a task successfully.
Venture educators (VE) (POC). 1. They are to education as venture capitalists (VCs) are to business.
Discussion: Like venture capitalists, venture educators take the small daily gambles, risking their careers as well as the learning rates of their students as they test the utility of tools for learning. VEs seem more frequent in non-public schools.
2. Calculating risk takers who try to increase student learning rates as VCs try to increase returns from capital investments.
3. No formal schooling or professional preparation exists comparable to VCs.
Discussion: Dodge offers useful insights for VEs to consider. Many of the logic patterns he reviews, VCs learn in business school and through trial and error. Some patterns they adapt and create. Others they create on-the-fly.
4. When a VE fails, theoretically students pay the price of less learning. But in practice, the novelty of the VE’s efforts usually appears to help students more than regular curricula and instruction. I don’t know of empirical objective data to support that hypothesis.
Discussion: Observations in a variety of settings appear as a fair basis for this generalization until it’s tested empirically.
Associations and other Organizations of and for Learners
Association of Public School Learners (APSL) (POC). 1. A proposed independent body of public school learners and alumni advocating for public school policies that promote competition with private schools for the best students to address global demands.
National Association for Public School Learning (NAPSL) (POC). 1. A proposed independent body to advocate for public policies that make public school learning more competitive with private schools and with other efforts for students to meet global demands
Open Learning Study Group (OLSG) (POC). 1. A proposed group of learning scientists and policy analysts who give priority to understanding the potential and implications of learning on-demand anytime, anywhere, about any topic by anyone for any reason.
Children’s Research Center for Mobile Learning (CRCML) (POC). 1. A proposed empirical research organization.
I’ll post an updated version of this glossary, hopefully sooner than later. Let me know if you have Qs before then. I’d welcome your comments and knowing how you’ve used the terms in this glossary.
(Note: I edited these entries, so differences may exist between them and some original postings.)