Using ICT to implement learning as a problem solving

Inten. Conference PEG 2003, St.Petersburg (Russia), July 2003

Using ICT to implement learning as a problem solving activity G.Dettori(*), P.Forcheri(+), M.T.Molfino(+) [email protected] {forcheri, molfino}@ge.imati.cnr.it (*) ITD CNR (+) IMATI CNR Via De Marini 6, 16149 Genova, Italy tel.+39 010 6475 1

Abstract. At present, learning is no longer limited to be a school activity, but is more and more necessary at any stage in life; this means that people must be able to learn autonomously, effectively and efficiently. This is not a trivial task, since few people have innately this ability, which thus should be explicitly taught and included in school curricula. Learning to learn entails becoming able to make use of methodologies and experiences and to adapt them as necessary, to tackle new learning situations by re-organising one's own knowledge according to new objectives and by setting out collaborative relationships. These considerations led us to sketch a model of learning as a problem solving activity, and to analyse which tools can support and favour a fruitful implementation of our model. Problem solving is essentially based on three processes: problem understanding, detection of means to build a solution, construction of a solution strategy. An analysis of the abilities and activities entailed by our approach shows that ICT offers the possibility to implement it straightforwardly and effectively. In this paper we describe the main aspects of our model and illustrate them by means of some examples from an experimentation we carried out.

Keywords: learning to learn, problem solving, learning model, methodology

1 Introduction How learning takes place and what conditions and activities can really favour its realisation is a key question in the educational research, and still an open problem, as witnessed by the number of students who still face difficulties in school and the amount of working adults who experience trouble in keeping updated with the rapid changes of the current social and cultural context [Vermunt & Verloop 99, Ellstrom 01]. Moreover, in the present school setting, the learning of content knowledge is usually guided by the teacher, who decides the starting point, chooses the strategy to be adopted and the outcomes to be reached. As a consequence, in most situations the acquisition of knowledge is not accompanied by the learning of the process which led to the construction of knowledge [Lunenberg & Korthagen 03, Niemi 02]. This means that, usually, when content knowledge is acquired, learners fail to learn to make explicit the process through which this result have been reached. Hence, something should to be changed in the currently accepted model of teaching and learning by working out methodologies and tools to ease the implementation of a new model. On the other hand, learning to learn is likely to become more and more necessary in any kind of job or profession [Guile 01], so that it should be explicitly included among the educational objectives, and also explicitly taught, since only few people have innately this capability. In order to tackle this issue soundly, it is then necessary to analyse what learning to learn entails, and how it can be effectively introduced into educational contexts. In this paper, we suggest to model learning to learn as a problem solving activity, based on a characterisation of learning to learn which underlines how the main abilities entailed are the same that can most easily be developed within a problem solving context. In this framework, we briefly discuss what role can be played by ICT, as many of its tools favour the setting of problem solving environments, where students are lead to work out a personal approach to learning through direct activity and facilitated interactions with teachers and peers. We briefly present an experimental implementation of our model, and stress the importance of proposing both content-dependent and content-independent activities, in order to help develop general learning competences.

2 ICT and new approaches to the educational process The literature of the past few decades reports an ever increasing number of studies which emphasise as ICT can improve in different ways teaching and learning of subject matter [Chan et al. 01]. It can help teachers to make their teaching more effective, by giving them the possibility to realise different approaches to a same content (e.g. [Dettori et al 98]), to deepen concepts and topics which are hard to tackle with traditional means [Kolodner & Guzdial 00], and to give of a flexible view of topics through the integration of different representations [Ainsworth 99, Van Someren et al., 1998]. It can help students to learn more effectively, giving them tools to explore concepts and formulate conjectures [Bliss 96]. It is worth, then, to analyse if, and under what conditions, the opportunities offered by ICT allow also the start of

an educational process oriented to give the learner not only command of content knowledge but also learning abilities. As a support to the educational process, the use of ICT tools naturally leads to carry out activities such as case-based reasoning, simulations, hypertextual and multimedia organisation of content knowledge, individual study through personalised paths, search and integration of different source materials, shared discussions and joint project development without the constraints for the participants to work contiguously in time and space [Jonassen & Land 00]. Such activities are not an exclusive feature of ICT, but are strongly eased by the tools it provides - a variety of application software, e-mail and discussion lists, hypertexts and multimedia, archives on the www, teleconferences. Moreover, ICT is a field in continuous evolution, and it is well known that any program or approach currently in use may soon become outdated. This stresses the need to become able to learn autonomously, to acquire a knowledge not strictly dependent on some particular tools, and to be able to reason on it so to extrapolate principles and procedures that can help one to quickly adapt to the functioning of different programs to solve a known task. ICT’s useful features, however, do not automatically guarantee fruitful learning experiences. As widely pointed out in the literature, it is necessary to have a sound pedagogical approach and to set up a suitable context in order to make these opportunities effective [Dettori 2002, Salomon 2000]. ICT by itself is not a catalyst for change, nor is it clear, yet, how deep an impact computers can have on formal education. [Watson 2001]. If consistently and regularly exploited within a sound educational context, the above mentioned features can favour a change of the current learning organisation: • interactive tools, giving consistent feedback and relieving the users of the need to concentrate on computations or on the construction of representations, allow them to focus on the meaning and connection of concepts, as well as on the nature of processes and solution strategies; • the availability and easy accessibility of a huge amount of material, spread all across the world, forces the learners to become selective and to reflect on what and how and for what aim they are learning; • the possibilities of increased interaction and co-operation impose a reflection on one's own learning context and on the need to organise one's own thoughts and words in order to allow or ease communication. The scene that emerges from this characterisation of ICT recalls on one side the approach to learning based on problem solving, where students acquire knowledge through applicative activity, on the other side the very definition of learning abilities.

3 Linking learning abilities and problem solving Learning to learn may be defined as the process of acquiring knowledge through individual reflection, based on external stimuli and sources, and through the personal re-elaboration of individual knowledge and experience, in the light of the interaction with other people and with the social context. This is not trivial and requires: • motivation and confidence in self-efficacy [Bandura 97]; • planning ability, that is, building one's own learning objectives, studying how to pursue them, tailoring them according to one's own time and resources, evaluating the effort to reach them [Forcheri, Molfino & Quarati 2000]; • ability to search for data, knowledge and information, critically analyse and compare them, and choose which is most relevant in relation to the current objectives. • metacognitive abilities, that is, awareness and control of one's own learning processes, and reflection on one's own knowledge [Davidson et al, 1994]; • creativity, that is, capability to adapt familiar strategies to new situations, and to try out new approaches [French & Rhoder, 1992]. Based on these considerations, it appears that, in order to foster the development of learning to learn abilities, the learners should be guided to act as problem solvers rather than as solution receivers. This leads us to characterise the process of acquiring learning abilities as a problem solving activity. In this view, the central task of an educational process oriented towards learning to learn should be to help people to become conscious of, and experience, the problem-solving aspects involved. In order to characterise learning to learn as a problem solving activity, it is necessary: • To define what “solving a problem” means, and investigate what educational methodology can favour its development. • To analyse how the process of working out a solution has its correspondent in that of constructing learning abilities, and evaluate what types of activities can foster its development. • To make these component explicit for each teaching topic.

Methodological considerations The solution of a problem can be viewed as a transformation from an initial state (the given data and description of a problem’s situation, which somehow represent the result in implicit form) to a final one (the result in explicit form); this is performed by applying some suitable knowledge, and sometimes this can entail to adapt some known knowledge to a (partially) new situation and to find or synthesise some new one. In the case of learning to learn, this means to establish meaningful relationships between what is known and what has to be learnt, enriching the process with newly acquired knowledge. This entails to become aware of a variety of knowledge sources and to take advantage of the occasions at disposal in order to build new knowledge related to the learning objectives. Thus, an educational proposal oriented to foster learning abilities should: • include a variety of approaches to the process of knowledge formation, and propose a variety of learning experiences; new topics should be introduced at different levels of difficulty and from different points of view; new problems should be proposed, suitable to the current knowledge and abilities of the learners, so that new representations of already acquired knowledge can be shaped; group activities should be assigned so to involve and integrate knowledge and experience of all group members; • encourage the application of the previously acquired knowledge through individual and group activities, balancing the acquisition of abilities specific to problem solving in the field under consideration with the acquisition of general abilities to construct relations, in order to encourage the acquisition of the flexibility that is necessary to apply to different topics the methodologies acquired in one field.

Operational considerations From an operational point of view, the solution of a problem is made of three components: problem understanding, detection of means to build a solution and construction of a solution strategy. As concerns learning to learn, motivation, awareness of personal situation and reflection on personal learning strategies are the key conditions of problem understanding; solving tools are detected by searching for, and examining, learning sources, including personal resources and difficulties, as well as methods and strategies to overcome them; re-organisation of personal resources (previous learning experiences and strategies, and their integration with new knowledge and methods detected) are, in turn, central to the construction of a solution strategies [Forcheri & Molfino 2000]. In order to call in play these factors, various abilities are required, related both to individual action and to the interaction with the context, as well as a learning environment apt to facilitate the exploitation and development of tools and abilities. Let us briefly describe these aspects. Understanding the problem - At individual level, problem’s understanding strongly depends on personal objectives and self-evaluation abilities. The lack of personal objectives often means that learning needs are not perceived. For example, school students usually do not see a concrete link between what they learn in school and the outside world. Sometimes, it is difficult to help them find motivations for learning, as these strongly depend on individual feelings, and ‘objective’ factors (such as the idea that learning is an investment for the future) are not always sufficient. To this aim, learners should be encouraged to acquire (at least some) sense of responsibility, self-confidence, intellectual curiosity, open mindedness; to perceive the need of learning and develop some wish for it, overcome stereotypes about learning. In this respect, it is useful to propose to the learners activities that lead them to reflect autonomously on the object of study and on its applications, to become aware of the difficulties faced while learning some topic, as well as of possible motivations and methods to overcome them. Work aiming to help learners to generalise learning abilities, so to make them as much as possible topic-independent, should also be proposed. Detection of tools and resources - It is important that learners become able to recognise and find sources of information, to critically analyse and compare them, and to select those that are relevant to the objectives. At individual level, the necessary conditions are: detection of personal resources and recognition of personal lack of knowledge. In this respect, we recall that detection of personal resources and individual deepening encourages the discovery of personal objectives, and helps the formation of new ideas and strategies through reflection on personal attitudes and interests [McWhaw & Abrami 2001]. To develop this kind of abilities students should have the opportunity to access useful learning sources, and be encouraged to put time and personal effort to searching and organising knowledge and information. At social level, the abilities to be developed are: detection of sources and occasions of learning, and integration of different views so to learn from each other. To this aim, learners should have the possibility, and develop the willingness, to make use of others’ experience; attention should be paid to guide them to overcome the fear to ask peers and teachers for help. Construction of a solution strategy - In order to implement this approach to learning to learn, planning abilities, that is, building one's own learning objectives, studying how to pursue them, tailoring them according to one's own time and resources, evaluating the effort to reach them, developing the abilities of applying one's own experience to new issues and knowledge, use of personal resources and self-monitoring should be developed at individual level. To this aim, learners should be encouraged to dedicate time and personal effort to effectively apply what has been learned, as well as to show initiative and to develop some

creativity. At social level, favourable conditions which can ease the development of planning abilities are: willingness to work with peers and opportunity for social interactions.

4 An example of implementation We have tried to implement our model within the course “Multimedia in Education” of the Teacher Training School (SSIS) of the University of Genova, Italy. This course is addressed to prospective highschool teachers of any discipline, and makes use of ICT both as learning topic and as teaching tool. The program of the course is sketched in Table 1. Table 1. Content of our course "Multimedia in education" The computer as (programmable) system • Evolution of the computer technology and relationships between technical changes and socio-economic situation: influence on the organisation of work, new jobs, new approaches to existing jobs. • Technological model underlying the computing technology. Hardware, software. Human-machine communication, operating system, graphical interfaces as a means to organise and manage computer resources. The computer as a tool for exchanging and sharing knowledge and information • From stand-alone to networked computing. Impact of the net on the organisation of work; models of communications; knowledge sharing and information distribution • Technological concept of networked computer system • Synchronous and Asynchronous Communication, Distant co-operation, Access to knowledge and information The (networked) computer as a tool for problem solving • Applications as a support of the final user to carry out complex, circumscribed, every-day tasks • Examples of classes of applications for individual work and corresponding tools • Applications to increase collaboration and knowledge sharing and examples of tools (data base, repositories of documents, ...) Models and approaches to knowledge representation brought about by the computing technology: Multimedia and hypermedia • Tools for building web based multimedia pages • Technical and cognitive problems brought about by multimedia technology • The impact of web-based multimedia technology on education: examples of realisations

In order to experience the feasibility of our approach, we combined lectures and practical activities, both traditional and based on ICT tools, to be carried out individually or in groups, aiming to solve problems, to situate learning, to deepen topics or to learn new ones autonomously. The course was articulated into modules. Each module included a theoretical introduction, a lab session under the supervision of a teacher, a number of free lab sessions without teachers’ guidance. Interactions with the teachers outside the class hours and distance group work were encouraged and often assigned as obligatory exercises. The course was given by a group of teachers who, though co-ordinating, have voluntarily followed different approaches. For instance, the lesson about computer’s technology, in particular operating systems and graphical interfaces, was tackled from a conceptual point of view, by using examples to call the students' attention on the existence of different solutions, and on the need to understand a program's philosophy in order to be able to anticipate the command's organisation; the task to apply this teaching was then left to the students to carry out during a lab session. On the other hand, the class about the use of Javascript to develop interactive web pages was carried out by guiding the students to acquire its technical features through the analysis of some examples. This voluntary non-homogeneity of approaches aimed to force the students to become aware of the fact that similar topics can be tackled in different ways. In order to allow the students to approach topics at different difficulty levels and from different points of view, we left a good amount of freedom as concerns the choice of activities and the way to carry them out. In order to encourage the integration of different points of view and the involvement of everybody, we encouraged the formation of groups including people with different competence and levels of knowledge (though not so different to fail communicating). We encouraged the most proficient students to do also some extra work on their own. In particular, we proposed two different kinds of activities: content-dependent work, aiming to solve a known problem with new tools, or to tackle some problem which represent an extension, a modification or a generalisation of those examined in class (e.g. improving the structure and presentation of a web site). The second one aimed to fostered the acquisition of general competence /flexibility by means of content-independent activities (e.g. reflection on the organisation of a lesson); some examples are shown in Table 2. The students were encouraged to make use of the laboratories, in groups or individually, also

outside the scheduled hours. Interactions with the teachers outside the class hours, either in person or via email were also strongly encouraged. In the realisation of this experience, two factors appeared crucial: 1) to propose a riche choice of flexible activities, both content-dependent and content-independent; 2) to set up easy ways of communicating among students and between students and teachers. Both factors were successfully realised by using ICT tools, which were in principle not strictly necessary but certainly made this operation easier. The outcome of our experiment were quite encouraging; through direct observation and evaluation of the activities carried out we remarked a change of attitude of the students towards learning and an increase of their autonomy in selecting and carrying out activities. These results partially were expected, since: • From the very beginning the students were told that learning to learn was an objective of the course, thus an element of the final evaluation. • The students were future teachers, thus available to experiment with new educational proposals • The students were adults, and interested in applying the topic of the course in their future professional activity, thus willing to dedicate extra-time and effort. • The teachers put at disposal extra-time to discuss the choices of the course, to take into account the variety of backgrounds of the students and to help them to relate their knowledge to the current learning objectives. • The teachers put extra-effort in establishing a different didactical contract, taking into account the need of balancing the acquisition of some specific content and general learning methodologies Though the conditions of this experiment appear particularly favourable, the outcomes obtained seem to confirm the usefulness of modelling and implementing learning to learn as a problem solving activity.

5 Conclusions In this paper, we introduced a conceptual framework for course’s design, apt to support the development of learning abilities. We showed that ICT can be a valid help for realising such an approach to learning, in that it offers tools which allow one to implement in natural way a problem-solving-like learning methodology. Our model is based on the idea that this task requires adopting methodologies and carrying out activities which can guide the learners to develop systematic personal paths to tackling learning tasks, through their active involvement in their own learning process. We pointed out that, in order to reach these objectives, it is necessary to assign, besides activities concerning content knowledge, also content-independent activities, so to lead the students to develop general strategies to control learning which can be transferred to different contexts. We also underlined the need to modify the didactical contract, partially entrusting to the students the responsibility of their own learning process, especially in the case of working adults, who are mostly aware of their own learning needs. We exemplified our model focusing on one experience we carried out within an ICT course in a Teacher Training School. In particular, we illustrated what we mean by generalisation of learning abilities, by suggesting a set of reflection exercises concerning the organisation of the work done rather than content knowledge. Several questions remain open, such as: What are the critical barriers to overcome in order to introduce learning to learn in the school system? What does this introduction entail, in terms of organisation issues (e.g. time required, teacher preparation, etc)? What kind of support should be given to teachers in order to encourage and enable them to foster learning to learn in their classes? How could the school system possibly balance the need to guarantee the attainment of a common minimal content knowledge, with allowing some freedom to each student to shape individualised learning paths? Many points still need to be defined and clarified in order to favour a progressive transformation of the educational system towards a more conscious promotion of learning abilities. With our approach we aim to give an operative contribution in this direction, as such evolution appears to be necessary in the current social and cultural context.

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