- I think I've put my finger on one or two of the difficulties I have with this part of the study.
- I am fascinated by how we can use statistics and what information we can extract this way.
- I have always had issues with numerical results that are presented in paragraph form - why bother? It seems that the academic community has decided that 'all' papers must follow a particular format, and the appropriateness of the format to the material being presented is irrelevant.
- I would love to learn about the various research methods by trying them, rather than reading about them.
- It's hard enough to read about various research methods presented in a relatively sterile format (A table or summary would be wonderful. A long verbal description is difficult.). Reading about research that I am not interested in with the goal of learning about the methods counts for me as a some of the hardest work I've had to do.
- It turns out we spent a great deal of time discussing this in the doctoral seminar course as well. The most entertaining portions (and enlightening) of this were those lead by Aaron Renert (PhD student) and the ones I read that were written by Richard Feynman.
- As for this week's reading, I found the paper very difficult and dry. The sense I get from this paper (and many many others I have seen) is that the statistics are used without any real understanding of what the numbers tell us. I admit to having a very weak background in statistics, so I had to have Jim explain some of the acronyms to me. To me, if you cannot explain, in English what the numbers mean then you haven't completed the work.
- Maximizing constructivist learning from multimedia communications by minimizing cognitive load
This experiment consisted a group of 60 University psychology students, broken into 5 groups of 12.
I have some questions for the authors.
The statistics seem sound, but the experimental protocol is questionable. The chosen sample is absolutely NOT representative of anything but university psychology students. They conclude by speaking with confidence about what they have learned, when in fact they have only learned something about a very highly skewed group. University students are already about one standard deviation removed from the mean when it comes to IQ, so the work done can really say very little about average people. University students are already highly trained to learn - they have already proven themselves to be advanced learners - again, this is not representative of the general population. The subjects are all essentially young adults, so the conclusions cannot be applied to children, high school students, adult learners who never went to university, older adults, ....
- I disagree with the authors, the study only advances our understanding of how to help psychology students integrate verbal and visual information. Further, it does not adress many other, related influences, such as level of interest. People who are interested in a task will be more actively engaged and learn better - the same 'experiment' would likely have different results if they chose a group of people interested in lighting, or cars.
- They are probably correct when they claim that it is important to minimize working memory load, however, this study did nothing to convince me.
We have, by now, I think learned a tremendous amout about psychology students - just as we also know a great deal about the physiology of white lab mice, and the genetics of fruit flies. Does anyone have the stats on how this actually applies to other populations?
|
EDER 679.12
Computer Based Learning II