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There are many theories in this page that we should be interested in in this page as learning sciences students. An example of two groundbreaking research results in learning sciences is (1) Entwistle's Phenomenography theory This conceptual framework focuses on the experience of learning from the student's perspective and is based upon a phenomenological approach to research. Entwistle explains: "Our task is thus to describe more clearly how learning takes place in higher education and to point out how teaching and assessment affect the quality of learning. From these descriptions teachers should be able to draw their own lessons about how to facilitate their students' learning" (Marton, Hounsell & Entwistle, 1984, p.1). (2) Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory According to cognitive dissonance theory, there is a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions (i.e., beliefs, opinions). When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance. In the case of a discrepancy between attitudes and behavior, it is most likely that the attitude will change to accommodate the behavior.

They say "No one else does what we do" while mentioning their interdisciplinary approach. They say that "The learning sciences field emerged more than two decades ago after researchers found that what worked in a laboratory simply did not hold up with real children, teachers, classrooms and workplaces. They saw that learning technologies, which held great promise for solving education's problems, were not being transferred to classrooms and schools. Cognitive scientists, educational and instructional psychologists, and computer scientists worked together to put their ideas and knowledge to use to improve the learning outcomes for a diverse group." The institute basically do two things: 1 - They identify the critical challenges in education, literacy, mathematics, science and the social sciences. 2- They work to find solutions. Their main aim is to create learning systems for 21st century classrooms thanks to interdisciplinary research in teaching and learning. They believe that learning is a complex process and so they get benefit from different disciplines (e.g. anthropology, computer science, education, linguistics, psychology and sociology) to share knowledge and best practices on education. At their another webpage, they define learning science as a science which "focuses on how to create new, improved and equitable learning environments for 21st century learners.". In order accomplish this, they focus on four questions: 1- How do people learn? 2- What do we want them to know and be able to do? 3- How can we design learning environments that help them learn? 4- How can we monitor what they are learning? They offer a Ph.D. program to raise future learning scientists.

This is a nice little newsletter that mentions some characteristics of situated learning. Some resources on situated learning and its usage in learning environments are offered !

Firstly, it was a nice source to read, thanks for sharing it. I agree with you time concerns, teacher and student charateristics are prominent to implement the principles of situated learning in practice. It is really difficult to create authentic learning environment in our classes under the stess of keeping up with the curriculum which is based on traditional theories of learning. Thus, it is the work of the curriculum specialists to revise the curricula to be more in line with the improvements in the field of learning sciences.

There is a case study which I really advise you to look at it. It is about a political course in which they took a government's problem about content and design of websites. He says "given all the considerations at work in municipal government, the students will decide how the power of the web can best be brought to bear on making government work better."

The article talks about how CSCL experience, data, reflections can enhance e-learning and enrich the new learning experiences of e-learning.

What is the Situated Learning Theory? Situated learning, simply put, is learning that takes place in the same context in which it is applied. It was first proposed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger as a model of learning in among group of people who share a craft and/or a profession, i.e., a community of practice.The basic tenet of the theory is that abstract knowledge usually given in the classroom is harder to retain.

This article is from Journal of Educational Psychology describing an advanced learning technology used to investigate hypotheses about learning by teaching. The proposed technology is an instance of a teachable agent, called SimStudent, that learns skills (e.g., for solving linear equations) from examples and from feedback on performance. SimStudent has been integrated into an online, gamelike environment in which students act as "tutors" and can interactively teach SimStudent by providing it with examples and feedback.

http://ehis.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=62560df9-81f0-48df-9217-73a31d3da977%40sessionmgr14&vid=3&hid=6 This is the direct link to the article.

It's an interesting article about Learning Management Systems from George Siemens originator of Connectivism Theory.

As you've learned from the article by Goswami, there are some pervasive 'neuromyths' around. This TedEd video explains one of them besides providing some key points about brain. By the way, it is being a very 'brainy' week for me. :)

The article states "Intelligent Tutoring Systems are not as effective as one-to-one human tutoring." The reason is that in one-to-one human tutoring a tutar is able to identify learners' affective state as well as their attention span. So, the article proposes the Mutimodal Intelligent Tutoring Systems (MITS), which provides information about learners' attention span and affective state.

This is an interesting study. I would be curious to read more about the multimodality of the ITSs, specifically how different type of interactions (audio, visual, etc.) have impact on learner's development. People in this area also started conducting research on "multimodal learning analytics".

Sajan George TedX Talk about the future of education. Sajan is the Founder & CEO of Matchbook Learning, a national non-profit school turnaround management organization that has designed and implemented a unique blended model of school, the only one of its kind targeting turnaround (i.e. bottom 5%) public schools that blends face-to-face and virtual instruction.