COGNITIVE LOAD THEORY AND THE ACQUISITION OF COMPLEX COGNITIVE SKILLS IN THE ELDERLY: TOWARDS AN INTEGRATIVE FRAMEWORK

The purpose of this article is to explore the advantages of instructional formats based on cognitive load theory for elderly learners engaged in the acquisition of complex cognitive skills. A great body of research has demonstrated that cognitive aging is accompanied by a reduction of working - memory capacity, a general slowing of mental processes, and a decline of the ability to repress irrelevant information. The core idea of cognitive load theory is that working - memory capacity is limited and should therefore be managed with great care and discretion. Cognitive load theory claims that this can be achieved by minimizing the level of extraneous cognitive load, which is the portion of load that does not contribute to schema acquisition, and by maximizing the level of germane cognitive load, which directly contributes to the construction of cognitive schemata. Since instructions based on cognitive load theory deal with cognitive limitations, in that they lead to an efficient use of the available resources, it was hypothesized that they are especially effective when elderly people are involved. This idea was analyzed by means of a framework merging cognitive load theory with the aforementioned research findings concerning cognitive aging. It was concluded that cognitive load theory, enabling elderly people to acquire new complex skills, can be regarded as an essential guide for educational gerontology.     

Ethical requirements for reconfigurable sensor technology: a challenge for value sensitive design

Information technology is widely used to fulfill societal goals such as safety and security. These application areas put ever changing demands on the functionality of the technology. Designing technological appliances to be reconfigurable, thereby keeping them open to functionalities yet to be determined, will possibly allow the technology to fulfill these changing demands in an efficient way. In this paper we present a first exploration of potential societal and moral issues of reconfigurable sensors developed for application in the safety and security domain, in the context of a large scale R&D-project in the Netherlands. We discuss the subtle distinction between the relevant notions of reconfigurability, function creep, and unrestricted or unforeseen technological affordances. We argue that the feature of reconfigurability makes context of use the central issue in the assessment of the societal and moral impact of the technology. It follows that the design of good policies for new application contexts has to be central in a value sensitive design approach to reconfigurable technology.     

Higher Education and International Student Mobility in the Global Knowledge Economy

Tertiary Education and Management -     

Design and evaluation of a development portfolio: how to improve students’ self-directed learning skills

In on-demand education, students often experience problems with directing their own learning processes. A Structured Task Evaluation and Planning Portfolio (STEPP) was designed to help students develop 3 basic self-directed learning skills: Assessing the quality of own performance, formulating learning needs, and selecting future learning tasks. A case study with 10 first-year students in the domain of hairdressing was conducted to evaluate STEPP’s use, usability, and perceived effectiveness. Results from student interviews show that usability and use are influenced by several factors. Students with low prior hairdressing skills, a weakly developed personal approach to direct their own learning, and an inclination to update STEPP as part of their weekly routine, use STEPP more frequently than students without these characteristics. Both the supervisor and students who frequently used STEPP perceived its use as a positive contribution to the development of self-directed learning skills. Furthermore, this study provides guidelines for the design of development portfolios in on-demand education.     

Observational learning from animated models: Effects of modality and reflection on transfer

Animated models use animations and explanations to teach how a problem is solved and why particular problem-solving methods are chosen. Often spoken explanations are proposed to accompany animations in order to prevent overloading the visual channel (i.e., the modality effect). In this study we adopt the hypothesis that the inferior performance of written text compared to spoken text is due to the fact that written text receives less attention and, consequently, less effortful processing. In a 2 × 2 factorial experiment (N = 96) with the factors modality (written, spoken) and reflection (reflection prompts, no reflection prompts) the hypothesis is tested that prompted reflection requires learners to explicitly attend to written explanations and carefully process them, thus yielding higher transfer performance, whereas for spoken explanations prompted reflection would have no effect on transfer performance. The results indeed showed the hypothesized interaction between modality and reflection prompts. They suggest that the modality effect can be compensated for when learners explicitly attend to the information and effortfully process it. This has implications for learning situations in which spoken explanations are no option, such as education for the hearing-impaired.     

From dignity to security protocols: a scientometric analysis of digital ethics

Our lives are increasingly intertwined with the digital realm, and with new technology, new ethical problems emerge. The academic field that addresses these problems—which we tentatively call ‘digital ethics’—can be an important intellectual resource for policy making and regulation. This is why it is important to understand how the new ethical challenges of a digital society are being met by academic research. We have undertaken a scientometric analysis to arrive at a better understanding of the nature, scope and dynamics of the field of digital ethics. Our approach in this paper shows how the field of digital ethics is distributed over various academic disciplines. By first having experts select a collection of keywords central to digital ethics, we have generated a dataset of articles discussing these issues. This approach allows us to generate a scientometric visualisation of the field of digital ethics, without being constrained by any preconceived definitions of academic disciplines. We have first of all found that the number of publications pertaining to digital ethics is exponentially increasing. We furthermore established that whereas one may expect digital ethics to be a species of ethics, we in fact found that the various questions pertaining to digital ethics are predominantly being discussed in computer science, law and biomedical science. It is in these fields, more than in the independent field of ethics, that ethical discourse is being developed around concrete and often technical issues. Moreover, it appears that some important ethical values are very prominent in one field (e.g., autonomy in medical science), while being almost absent in others. We conclude that to get a thorough understanding of, and grip on, all the hard ethical questions of a digital society, ethicists, policy makers and legal scholars will need to familiarize themselves with the concrete and practical work that is being done across a range of different scientific fields to deal with these questions.     

Designing Education for Professional Expertise Development

How to facilitate learning by novices (students) on their road to expertise has attracted the attention of a vast number of researchers in cognitive and educational psychology as well in the field of learning and instruction. Although many studies have investigated the phenomenon of expertise development, the implications of the findings for instruction are scattered throughout the literature. This article reports the results of a systematic literature review of 37 studies on expertise development. Using Tynjälä's Integrative Pedagogy Model as an organising framework, the implications for educational practice described in these studies are presented as 10 instructional principles. This study takes a step towards translating expertise development research into guidelines for instruction. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Participatory instructional redesign by students and teachers in secondary education: effects on perceptions of instruction

Students’ perceptions of instruction are important because they direct the learning of students. The fact that teachers have only limited knowledge of these perceptions is likely to threaten the effectiveness of learning, because congruence between interpretations of an instructional intervention is necessary for its optimal use. This study examines participatory design as a strategy for taking student perceptions into account in instructional re/design. Participatory design meetings of groups of teachers and seven co-designing students in a secondary education setting identified changes to improve the regular education process. The results on changes in student perceptions, perceived-desired discrepancy, and teacher–student disagreement showed some improvement for the co-designers but, unexpectedly, limited or even negative effects for the non-co-designing students. Possible causes are discussed. Participatory design seems to have potential for improving education, but further research is needed.     

Does Individual Performance Feedback Increase the Use of Retrieval Practice?

Educational Psychology Review - The testing effect—the power of retrieval practice to enhance long-term knowledge retention more than restudying does—is a well-known phenomenon in...     

Marathon performance but not BMI affects post-marathon pro-inflammatory and cartilage biomarkers

We tested the hypothesis that changes in serum cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP), tumour necrosis factor α (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6) and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) concentration after regular endurance training and running a marathon race depend on body mass index (BMI) and/or on marathon performance. Blood samples were collected from 45 runners of varying BMI and running experience before and after a 10-week marathon training programme and before, immediately and 24 h after a marathon race. Serum biomarker concentrations, BMI and marathon finishing time were measured. The mean (95% confidence interval (CI)) changes from before to immediately after the marathon were COMP: 4.09 U/L (3.39–4.79 U/L); TNF-α: ?1.17 mg/L (?2.58 to 0.25 mg/L); IL-6: 12.0 pg/mL (11.4–12.5 pg/mL); and hsCRP: ?0.08 pg/mL (?0.14 to ?0.3 pg/mL). The mean (95% CI) changes from immediately after to 24 h after the marathon were COMP: 0.35 U/L (?0.88 to 1.57 U/L); TNF-α: ?0.43 mg/L (?0.99 to 0.13 mg/L); IL-6: ?9.9 pg/mL (?10.5 to ?9.4 pg/mL); and hsCRP: 1.52 pg/mL (1.25–1.79 pg/mL). BMI did not affect changes in biomarker concentrations. Differences in marathon finishing time explained 32% of variability in changes in serum hsCRP and 28% of variability in changes in serum COMP during the 24 h recovery after the marathon race (P < 0.001). Slower marathon finishing time but not a higher BMI modulates increases in pro-inflammatory markers or cartilage markers following a marathon race.