Thursday, March 28, 2013

Richard E. Clark discusses two key questions for education: How can we best capture expertise and knowledge from experts? How do we teach the expertise effectively to other people?

Two key questions for education today
How can we best capture expertise and knowledge from experts?
How do we teach it effectively to other people?   How do we transfer that expertise and knowledge?
These are two questions that face education today.


The following interview took place in Dr. Clark's office in Redondo Beach, Calif. on 27 February 2013.  

Partial transcript of an interview with Richard E. Clark.
See the website for papers at the CogTech.usc.edu website

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhsBqmakNMc&feature=youtu.be





Summary of key issues

We talked about expertise that comes from a lot of experience.  -- Richard Clark
Highly accurate pattern matching and predictions about what happens to those students as they go through a program.  

is it possible to capture how he does it?         Capture Expertise and knowledge
how do we teach it effectively to other people?   Transfer that expertise and knowledge
The two questions that face education today.


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PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT
Starting at Minute mark 0:22

What you are describing to me is expertise that happens as a consequence of a lot of experience.  -- Richard Clark

Let's take you [Will Sutherland] as an example.

Highly accurate pattern matching of what you see in students and your prediction about what's going to happen to those students as they go through a program.  

1) I'm curious to know how we can capture from you your expertise and knowledge.
2) How do we teach it to other people effectively?   Transfer that expertise and knowledge
The two questions that face education today.


That's what education should be about.

Capturing expertise and knowledge
and Transmitting it effectively so that it can be applied.

We have ways to capture that expertise that people are not paying attention to because so much of it (the expertise) is implicit.

It's unconscious.

I don't think you know exactly how you do it, because when you see those students and watch them behave,  all of a sudden it just occurs to you "This fellow is going to do fine."

Then it will occur to you with someone else, "Whoa, this is a problem."

Are you deeply aware of what you notice?  Generally our evidence is that you are aware of about 30 percent __________.

70 percent, most of which is at the decision level, at the deep mental analysis level, is not available to you because you have done this so much that it is automatic, like talking or driving a car.  


So I want to find out how to capture that kind of information from experts and build it into an education, even if it is information about how to solve a math problem.  Math experts know how to solve problems and they have very quick strategies for it, and obviously some of those strategies require a lot of prior knowledge.  

That's why prior knowledge turns out to be very critical.  There are certain areas of math that you can't master until you've grasped the math of other areas.
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Once you've done that, there are problem solving strategies that are available to [virtually] all areas of mathematics but they are quite specific to the area and the type of problem.  

There are very few general problem solving strategies that can be applied effectively.  That's what swims upstream against the belief systems of so many teachers.

(end partial transcript at 3:01)

COMMENT:  Dick Clark is perhaps referring to the belief that teachers should adjust their presentations to fit the "learning styles" of individual students.  In fact, the adjustment should be to the prior knowledge of the students.  Ideally, the math teacher would put students into groups that are organized by prior knowledge so that presentations could be made based on the prior knowledge of those students.

(more of this video will be transcribed here over time.)

To read more about Richard Clark's analysis of "Popular but Questionable Principles"
Clark, R. E. & Feldon, D. F. (2005). Five common but questionable principles of multimedia learning. In R. E. Mayer (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

see other publications at COG Tech http://www.cogtech.usc.edu/recent_publications.php
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Get these posters
See pages 31, 33, 35, 37 and 39

also on the phone call (part of the interview):
Will Sutherland,  ws@qbeglobal.net        www.QBEAcademy.net   life skills at sea (entrepreneuring)
Noel Thompson, noeldthompson@gmail.com
John Vornle,  johnvornle@gmail.com     www.SpacePathAhead.com
Mario Llorente, mariopatriot@yahoo.com
S. McCrea, transcriber   visualandactive@gmail.com

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