Week 6's Lecture+ Readings Review

Recognising Fuzzies

When someone says something in specific such as "there is room for improvement in the contents of our project final report", it is essential that we see it as something important enough to do something about it.We need to differentiate between abstractions(also known as fuzzies) and something important that we need to apply goal analysis.Through goal analysis can we break down the idea into meaningful steps to complete.In other words, if something is deem important to achieve,one must apply goal analysis to determine what to do to get the desired results.

From the readings,a goal is a statemnt describing a broad or abstract intent,state or condition.A goal analysis is useful whenever a goal exists that is important to achieve,or to achieve better than is presently the case.It is used whenever a statement of intent describes an abstraction,when the statement doesn't answer the question "How will I know one when I see one?"

Task Analysis

It refers to a collection of techiques used to help make the components of a competent performance visible.It is a set of ways to draw a picture of what competent people actually do, or should do, when peformancing a task.It is a way of visualizing the steps in a procedure, the key decisions that are made while performing the procedure,and how to tell when to begin and end the procedure.

How do we then differentiate the task and the steps required to complete the former? A task is a series of steps leading to a meaningful outcome.On the other hand,a step is one of many actions that need to be taken in order to reach the meaningful outcome.

An example of a task is to write an essay on global warming.Steps in the task include reading up on causes and effects of global warming from books and online sources.

Task analysis consists of 2 steps which are task listing and task detailing.

Task listing is coming up with a list of all the tasks that make up the job so that one can have a complete overall picture(layout) of the job. An example of a tasking listing is as follows for a salesperson: identify customer's needs, narrow down choices for customer, assess benefits and possible impacts of customer's lifestyle, ensure mutual understanding etc.

Task detailing is listing the steps and decisions invovled in performing each of the tasks on the list.There are two practical ways to list steps and decisions which are through lists and flowcharts.

An example of lists is the user instruction manual for setting up a wireless router.The manual offers a step-by-step guide for user to plug in the cables and wirings.

A flowchart is preferred as it is east to read and clearly shows the alternatives to be followed when decisions are involved.It also reveals where information is still missing.In a flowchart task, there is only two symbols to depict the steps of a a task, a rectangle to depict actions and a diamond to depict decisions.

The Outcomes of Learning

(i) Verbal Information

Declarative knowledge or knowing that.Organised bodies of knowledge that we require. Consists of many units including names,facts,principles and generalizations.Knolwedge can be learnt through various means such as a textbook, a lecture or a photo.The learning of verbal information as a performance means that the learner has acquired the ability to state in propositional form of what was learned.What makes words information is their sentence form which carries meaning for the learner.For example, when someone says Nokia-Samsung-Motorola, he or she learns something but there is no information inferred from it.However, when someone states "Nokia leads the mobile phone market with Samsung and Motorola trailing it behind, that individual has acquired information.

The functions of information and knowledge serves as a necessary requirement for further reading.For example,if one is to learn driving, one has to have access to information about car controls,the engine,the steering wheel,the rear mirrors and so forth.Some information are of practical importance to us in our lives.The amount and kind of practically useful information learnt depends on individual's inclination.A male driver is generally more skilful in driving a manual car while a female driver is generally more hesitant about driving a manual car.Organised and associated bodies of knowledge are known to provide a vehicle for thought. The vast store of information which an individual possesses provides almost limitless possibilities for flexbile thinking.For example,a computer technican may consider many possibilities when repairing a computer that has broken down.From his experience and knowledge,a computer can break down due to many reasons such as virus attack and faulty internal components.

(ii) Intellectual skills

Involves 'knowing how'.Involves the ability to carry out actions, not just to state them or talk about them.The intellectual skills that one learns enables him or her to respond adequately to entire classes of interactions with the environment through symbols such as letters, numbers and diagrams.They are further classifed into several categories which are discriminations, concrete concepts, defined concepts, rules and higher-order rules.

Discrimination is the ability tio distinguish one feature of an object from another(one symbol from another).It is another name for the perceptual learning.It results in the selective perception of features of the learner's environment.The performance made possible by discrimination learning is the ability to tell the difference among stimuli,which means that the learner can respond differently to different stimuli but may not be able to name them or use them in some other ways.For example,a rookie in computer component learning course may initially tell the difference between a RAM stick and video card adaptor on the motherboard. After learning discriminate features of the two different components,the rookie can learn to change the correct component if it becomes faulty.

Concrete concepts are classes of object features,objects and events.Many concrete concepts are learned in early childhood but new concepts are learned at any point in time during one's life.
The performance indicative of concrete concept learning is the ability to identify a class of object, object qualities or relations by pointing out one or more instances of the class. What is important is that the acquistion of a concrete concept enables the learner to identify the entire classs of things by indicating one or more examples of the class.Very often,identifying a concrete concept is shown by naming but we must understand that it is not eseential to just name to learn the concepts.

To be continued ...

(iii) Cognitive strategies

(iv) Attitudes

(v) Motor skills