Preface
This glossary includes descriptions that address the question, “What do people do to learn?” It gives priority to describing behavior patterns of people as they learn, sometimes with Tablet and other mobile PCs in and out of schools. These descriptions have resulted mostly from experimental empirical behavioral studies and their use in the management of learning, such as through instruction. Use of practices these terms describe can lead to increases in learning and learning efficiency.
Few, if any, words in this glossary knowingly have meanings foreign to people who have attended U.S. public schools. At the same time, it offers a specialized behavioral interpretation of learning. These interpretations contrast with some words also having meanings related to biochemical, cognitive, psychoanalytic, psycholinguistic, and other views of learning.
It consolidates and makes these specialized meanings available for common use during discussions of how people learn. In this spirit, no discussion of learning can have more precision and accuracy than the meaning of the words and other symbols that embody it.
So, learners and managers of learning will find these descriptions useful to increase learning efficiency by more closely matching their efforts with ways people learn. These descriptions make explicit what people do, at least implicitly, when they try to increase and in other ways manage learning. It also describes ways to use Tablet and other mobile PCs to analyze, monitor, and manage learning as a finite set of observable behavior patterns.
Introduction
This edition (2.0) in it’s latest iteration (2.0.1) updates earlier releases. It increases the number of terms and refines descriptions, especially those related to aLEAP (a Learning Efficiency Analysis Paradigm/Plan/Program) and NESI (New Era School Initiative).
Each term helps to make transparent an infrastructure of behavior patterns that describes the learning process. Terms have technical, operational criteria used to calculate changes in the probability of a learner reaching learning criteria of lessons, whether formally presented or informally encountered by intent or accident.
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 how it is possible to increase learning promptly and dramatically today.
Key to the Abbreviations, Acronyms, Sources, and Symbols Used in this Glossary
CP – Common practice in one or more learning venues.
ER – Description originated in empirical experimental behavioral research studies.
LA – Description of an analysis of learning.
LI – An element of an infrastructure of learning, especially observable patterns of behavior learners use to adopt new behavior patterns.
LR – A learning resource.
LV – A learning venue, such as a classroom, online video, or mobile PC.
OAL – An organization about learning whether a real or fictitious demonstration of managing a venue to increase learning rates.
POC – A description from a proof-of-concept exercise. (Unless credited to someone else, I coined entries of 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.
A Glossary of Learning with Tablet and other Mobile PCs
ABCs of Learning (LA). (See Learning, ABCs of)
aLEAP (a Learning Efficiency Analysis Paradigm/Plan/Program) (LA, POC). 1. A frame to illustrate an infrastructure of behavior patterns people use to learn.
2. Relationships among experimental empirical research study results of behavior patterns people use to learn. a. Relationships among these patterns. b. Elements used in flow charts and algorithms 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).
Association of Public School Learners (APSL) (OAL, 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.
Behavioral Principles (ER). (See: Principles of Behavior Patterns.
Children’s Research Center for Mobile Learning (CRCML) (OAL, POC). 1. A proposed empirical research organization to study learning with Tablet and other mobile PCs, iPads, and smart cellphones.
Direct Learning (DL) (LR, 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. Software has three main dimensions: sensory context, presentation process, and content analysis.
3. DL 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(LR, 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 means by which transmission of ideas and processes move from one generation to another as through school curricula and instruction. Discussion: Others set a higher standard by calling this transmission part of a knowledge chain. Teachers and books have been a major part of these chains for learners, with increasing value to users the more they save learner’s time in mastering ideas and process of other people.
Learning. (LA, ER). 1. The learner meets criterion for successfully solving a problem or in other ways performing a new task.
2. The learner adopts a new behavior pattern.
Learning, ABCs of (LA, ER). 1. Learning consists of three parts: Ante-behavior (an observable occurrence immediately before an observed action by the learner), Behavior (observable action of the learner), and Consequences of behavior (that which occurs immediately after the learner’s action). (Source: Thomas Caldwell, Illinois State University, 1994.)
2. A restating in colloquial terms of Skinner’s description of Stimulus – Response patterns.
Learning analyst (LA, 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 person or software program that uses experimental empirical behavior research descriptions of how people learn to assesses instruction, software, and venues.
3. A person or software program that traces the pedigree of lessons, occurrences, and observations that result in someone (learning) adopting a new behavior pattern.
Learning, Commoditizing (LI, POC). 1. The process of making learning processes visible and manageable.
Learning criterion (LI, ER). 1. The observable result expected in order to claim learning occurred.
Learning efficiency (LA, 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) (LA, 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) (LA, 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) (LA, 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 (LA, 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 (LA, 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, Generic Criteria of (LI, ER). 1. General (universal) criteria used to formulate assessments of whether learning occurs; used in formal and informal judgments of learning.
2. Five generic criteria: (a) What is it? or Name it. (b) What is it like? (c) What is it not like? (d) What is missing? (e) What comes next?
3. Assessment developers use one or more generics for each criterion.
4. The third dimension of aLEAP: performance assessment variables of learning.
Sources: Heiny, R. A Learning Efficiency Analysis Paradigm Abstract. Posted by The Tablet PC In Education Blog, August 7, 2009, 3:54 AM.
Terman, L. and Merrill, M. (1960). Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale: Manual for the Third Revision Form L-M. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Learning, Genomics of (LA, 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, Independent (CP). 1. Adopting a new behavior pattern on demand and without necessary mediation of a teacher or other learning manager.
Learning, Informatics about (LA, POC). 1. The study of the structure, properties, and principles of how people learn as distinct from what (the content) they learn.
2. Extends the legacy of behavioral research about learning with and without Tablet and other mobile PCs.
Learning, Loss of (LA, POC). 1. An index of the negative effect of instructional choices on the learning rate of a student.
2. Learning that could have, but did not occur.
3. The negative difference between learning achieved and that earned by others in the same or different cohorts.
Learning, Manager of (Synonym: learning manager.) (LA, POC). 1. 1. A member of a class of social role holders commonly called parents, educators, and religious leaders.
2. A person or technology that sets the pace and other learning options, such as a teacher, curriculum, or PC hardware or software.
Learning, Mass Market of Independent (LA, POC). 1. 1. A broad undefined aggregate of learners who independently use learning resources, increasingly with Tablet and other mobile PCs as well as with smart phones, to adopt new behavior patterns.
2. Consumption by large numbers of people of learning resources available without educators increasingly through use of PCs and other smart mobile electronic communication tools.
2.
Learning, Monetized (LA, POC). 1. The dollar cost of learning, as in meeting a learning criterion of a lesson.
Learning, Monetizing (LI, 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 (LI, 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.
3. Demonstrated by use of the backward learning curve.
Source: Zeaman and House documented one step learning repeatedly in experimental laboratory studies of two choice visual discrimination tasks.
Learning, Orders of (LI, POC). 1. A hierarchy of four behavioral dimensions of learning.
2. The hierarchy illustrates relationships among these dimensions from sensory input (First Order Learning) to use of values that sustain adoption of a behavior pattern (Fourth Order Learning).
Learning, Rates of (Same as learning rates) (LA, 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 (LA, POC). 1.
Learning, Risk of Lost (LA, POC). 1. 1. The relative lack/loss of learning compared one or more other learning resources, such as instructional style or software package.
2. Calculated probability that a learning resource will yield less learning than from one or more other resources.
Learning, Self (Learner) Initiated (LR, POC).
Learning Transactions (LI, POC). 1. Exchanges of time, effort and other personal resources learners make to adopt new behavior patterns.
2. A way to assign value a new behavior pattern has for a learner.
Learner, Independent (). 1. A person who initiates adoption of new behavior patterns.
Learner, Resources of (LV, 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 (LI, POC). 1. A view of instruction and its venue as seen by a learner.
2. A learner looks at instruction and its venue for answers to three generic questions: (1) “What do I have to do?” (2) “What will it cost me?” and (3) “What do I get, if I do it?”
Lesson (LR). 1. An arrangement of material, equipment, and instructions intended to produce new behavior pattern(s).
2. An occurrence, instruction, or observed person from which a learner adopts a new behavior pattern.
Lesson, Learning Pedigree of a (LA, POC). 1. Descent of experimental empirical behavioral study descriptions of learning used to plan and offer a lesson.
2. Lessons derived from identifiable experimental empirical behavioral descriptions of how people learn.
National Association for Public School Learning (NAPSL) (OAL, 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 prepare to meet global demands.
Nearsourcing (LV, 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.
NESI (OAL, POC). 1. New Era School Initiative.
2. Descriptions of real practices and arrangements that accelerate learning.
3. A fictitious account of using real instruction, Tablet PCs, and administrative arrangements to demonstrate that it’s possible to increase learning promptly and dramatically today.
NESI Conversations, Interviews, Reports, and Press Releases (See also: The link New Era School Initiative (NESI) under Post categories in right-hand column of this blog.) (POC) 1. Fictitious presentations to demonstrate how some real educators accelerate learning dramatically and promptly.
2. Real procedures that teachers know and may use to gain unusual acceleration of learning with existing resources.
3. Presentations describe the utility of aLEAP, an offspring of the development and a core description of the learning infrastructure of NESI.
NESI TipSheet 1: Learning Centered Lesson Plans Checklist (LR, POC). 1. A series of tips for teachers and other learning managers about real, behavioral science based ways to accelerate learning as depicted in NESI statements.
2. Each sheet includes direct instructions for accelerating learning.
Net learning (LA, POC). 1. A calculated or estimated difference between learning gained and learning limited by the learning venue or lesson.
Open learning paradigm (OLP) (LV, 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.
Open Learning Study Group (OLSG) (OAL, 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.
Patterns of Learning Variables (LI, POC). 1. A four part hierarchy of behavioral principles of learning.
2. Used in aLEAP as “Dimensions of Learning” to distinguish between sensory input, purpose, and other social aspects of a learner adopting a new behavior pattern.
Personal benefits (PB) (LA, POC). 1. A learner gains more than personal resources given in exchange for more advantages, choices, or profits. (Heiny, 1980).
Principles of Behavior Patterns (ER). 1. Descriptions of patterns of observable responses raised by objective empirical data to that of rules that explain human behavior, including “learning”.
2. Results and agreement by common use of experimental empirical studies of what people do when they encounter similar occurrences.
QuickStart Learning (QSL) (LV, 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. (LI) 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 (LI, 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.
Variables, Patterns of Learning (LI, POC). (See: Patterns of Learning Variables.)
Venture educators (VE) (LV, 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.
I’ll post an updated version of this glossary with more links to sources, hopefully sooner than later. Let me know of your additions to it and if you have Qs before then. I’d welcome your comments and knowing how you’ve used these terms.
(Note: I edited these entries, so differences exist between them and earlier postings.)