Fall 2006 Congratulations!

Fall Semester 2006 is over.
I learned new ideas to improve my EPFR 515 course.

I will keep the blog, there were just a couple who had a hard time, but in the end everyone managed. All three sections gave me positive feedback on the benefit of knowing how to develop and post on a blog. The new generation of students that my students will teach have knowledge about blog, MySpace, text messaging, blackberry, etc. Even if they spend some time figuring it out it is really worth it to know. And I have step-by-step instructions on how to set up and post on blog.

I will add one more assignment and make a Midterm. Too many left the work to the end and then complained that it was too little time. Even if everyone knew about their topic from first week of school, procrastinators will end up by having work done in the last minute. Midterm will prevent procrastinators.

I will do some shift and change and will improve the course.
It will be fun to see them learn!

Schema and Script

Schema is a generalized knowledge about a situation or event. We form a schema about almost everything that has a certain pattern, or can be thought of as an abstraction with defined characteristics. In a schema we use mostly top-down processing. We use schemas to predict what will happen in a new situation. Every Fall you wonder which one of your students is the best. You have a previously formed schema about how a "best student" should be, should behave, should look like. We use these general patterns of knowledge, or heuristics, to relate to our environment and share our knowledge with others. We remember the new information based on our previous schema. The more consistent is the new information with the preexisting schema the better is remembered. When the material to be remembered is schema inconsistent, in order to be better remembered that new information has to develop a vivid memory that interrupts the existent schema (e.g., your best student one year had pink died hair, tatoos, and piercings. It is likely that you will remember very vivid that one.).

When we process new perceptual information (which happens to be a partial image of an object) and are asked to make a sketch of what we have seen we use top-down processing (which implies seeing the complete). For that reason our sketch will represent the entire information, that is because we expand the boundary in our perceptual processing. Now remember the falshbulb memory? We did a similar thing when instead of keeping a perfect memory in time, when we retrieve that "flashbulb" we add some new information to the existent one. In boundary extension we use the perception of our existent schema, and that is why we add information to the original one, by using Gestalt principles. We reconstruct the schema in the process of recall.

You have a personal schema that might be modified function of the environment you must perform. You behave in one way when at your work place, different when you are in the role of student, and different in your family, or with your friends. There is a cultural schema as well, and that depends on the information that is consistent with that culture. I might have told the story that I found it difficult to play the greeting game when I first came to the United States. "Hi, how are you doing?" "Good thanks, and how are you?" "Fine thanks..." means nothing more than "hello" and then the real conversation can start. In Romania if someone asks me "how are you?" the preson expects that I say something deeper than just a word game, then I will tell in a sentence about how I feel or what I do, or what I am up to, and the person will listen. So, my schema had to be accomodated to the new cultural meaning of greeting.

A script is a schema that has repetitive information, that usually repeats in time, as you would repeate more or less a recipe when you make a favorite dish. We have a script for most of our daily rutines.

Since we are born we develop scripts: about waking up and going to bed, eating at home or at a restaurant, dressing, playing, going to school, going to work, interacting with strangers and friends, etc. Scripts are one more easy and efficient way our brain adapts to this life.

One of my students posted this very nice description of how she teaches little ones about "coming in the morning to school," since this is such a wonderful description of a script I will post it here unmodified:


"For the first two weeks of school I had morning bus duty. I greeted the students as they got off the bus and directed them to where they needed to go. I can laugh now but at the time this was very frustrating. Everyday certain kindergarten students would ask, "Where do I go?", "Where is my class?". The script was simple-you come in and either follow the yellow line to breakfast or go down the steps and sit with your class on the gym floor (which is in the same place everyday)!You're teacher meets you in the gym and you follow her to class, where you unpack your backpack and hang it in your locker. Day after day this became routine for most, but for others it was new every morning. After the first week and a half, I finally noticed my stragglers pausing in the lobby trying to decide whether they were to walk down the steps or the hallway. At times I said nothing, just simply watched, other times I intervened with a question. By the end of the full two weeks, the script for school arrival was learned by everyone."

Semantic Memory

Declarative knowledge, many facts, and other information clustered in categories (class of information that belong together). A category is formed from abstract knowledge named concept. A concept is for example our mental representation of a dog.
Our semantic memory is often thought of as a list of features: fur, four-legs, pricked or droopy ears, sharp white teeth, braks, fetch for bones, etc. Check the list and see if it fits and you use the Feature Comparison model.

If we use ideal features of that four-legged, furry, little (or larger) animal that barks (but we don't have in mind one specific one of these) then we use the Prototype approach of a Dog. If instead we think of Taylor our family little white one going nuts when the waste management truck comes around, barks at the Mail person because he/she takes something out off our mail box, and hates the School bus because that is a monster that swallows the kids in the morning and spits them out in the afternoon (hopefully kids are a little smarter by then), then we use the Exemplar approach.

There are three big levels that usually prototypes are categorized.
Taylor, our little JRT family dog is just an exemplar at the subordinate level.
When we talk in general about a dog, that concept is at the basic level.
When we think of a dog as being a animal, we talk at the superordinate level.

Experts such as judges at the JRTCA and AKC trials use subordinate levels of thinking.
The judge is at the subordinate level since she/he has detailed knowledge about each breed and has such a refined semantic /conceptual memory that is able to separate the perfect prototypical dog from the many. As compared to me who is a novice; my knowledge is mostly at basic level and I also (like the judge) have some superordinate level knowledge that helps me separate the different breeds, and the different types of dogs. But I don't have a too developed subordinate level knowledge. So, the expert has a large knowledge at ALL three levels as opposed to a novice that has mostly basic level knowledge.
That means (if we look at the next model: Network model) that the judge will have a large and dense web of knowledge, compared to mine which will be "lighter" not as many connections, not as much detail.

Collins and Loftus (1975) developed the Network model that proposes that semantic memory is a structure similar to a net. In the nodes are the concepts that are linked, and all that forms a network. When one node is activated the activation will spread through the links to other nodes.
If certain specific links are more often used the activation will be faster through those links. (Like the "use it or loose it" process I explain in class, the more use, the "shinier" the path, the faster to slide on it).

According to ACT (Adaptive Control of Thought) we think in propositions and try to make sense of our declarative memory (factual memory that responds to the question "What?"). Propositions form a network also. There are links between the propositions and practice will increase our ability to make the links between the propositions.

PDP (Parallel Distributed Processing ,we learned in perceptual processing about this) another network-like model where the nods are like little neurons/units, that is why is called connectionist model. Activation of one little nod/neuron-like unit will activate in parallel many other linked units. From here the name of parallel distribution.

Retain that there are different approaches and some explain best certain processes while other ones explain best different other processes. We use what best fits for the needs of the process our brain is involved at that moment.

The beauty of semantic memory is that is factual, language, and concepts. All the "dictionary" we have in our mind. There are many useful ways to develop our semantic memory. One thing is very important that we expand it. As you know there is the Network model, in earlier chapters we learned about the connectionist model, and PDP.

Once a concept (or a label -- such as "cat") is activated, that information will connect to many other ones stored in our LTM (all the features and details about how a cat looks and behaves, what eats and what is not). Now, at times too much of those connections will give us the bottle neck effect, since we know that LTM is very large capacity, but the WM is only 7+/-2. So if there are too many links activated then they get stuck and we cannot retrieve a certain detail.

Also when we talk about retrieval of information from LTM we have two kinds:
- Recognition (such as when we are asked to respond multiple choice questions), and

- Recall ( such as when we are asked to respond a question, or we have to write a short essay on a given topic).

In this process of course we do lots of top-down processing.

Sometimes we cluster the information that is linked to a concept and we develop an abstract description; a prototype. When we encounter a new information with a quick top-down processing we use that prototype (which at times is a stereotype-- often a prototype with a negative connotation ). This use of information in a block (using the stereotype) gives space to bias in judgment. We will learn more in the next part when we learn about schema and scripts.

Metacognition

What is your knowledge about your memory processes? Do you think about your thinking? Do you control your cognitive preocesses?

Metacognition is the "contemplative" process about your thinking.

Remember Alan Baddeley's working memory model?

Yes, that one with the Visuospatial Sketch Pad, Phonological Loop, Episodic Buffer, and the most important (form the point of view of metacognition) Central Executive. That CEO of your working memory uses the exact same processes as they are used in the metacognitive processes. Decision on planning and controlling our thinking.

Metamemory on the other hand is our knowledge and control of memory.

If we study a list of items that we have to remember we will be pretty accurate about how much and which items we will remember. Another things will be if we have to predict how much we will remember. Our estimates will be higher than our later performance, and that is called overconfidence. Remember Pollyana effect? If we like to remember the old good times and only the positive happenings, well, we also overpredict the abilities for the future. That is why students believe they will get As in their future performance and they are completey surprised to find out that they did not do such a great job as they thought they did :-(

You will find a nice explanation about metacognition on Professor Tom Shuell's web page (he was my teacher :-) at SUNY at Buffalo).

Some good tool for teachers to use in class on the NCREL web.

Tip-of-the-tongue
Of course you know it...is there... on that page on the left, by the middle of the page...

The knowledge may be available in your LTM but it is not accessible, or not at the moment. You know that you know but cannot access in that particular moment. That is why TOT is related to metacognition.

If you think that you understand what metacognition, metamemory, and TOT means then we talk about metacomprehension. if you have any doubt, then it would be good to take a pretest, so you can check yourself by looking in our text and matching it with what you stated in that pretest. Again, remember that deep processing (personal, meaningful, elaborate) will improve your metacomprehension, and in consequence the performance.

Memory strategies

This chapter is the favorite for most of my students: tricks of the trade!

How to remember all that information we process on a daily basis? How to remember that enent that even did not happend, but we need to do?

We know that it is important not only WHAT information we process and try to remember it later, but also HOW we process that information. In other words is important the content and the context. The level of processing: superficial (shallow) or deep (meaningful, personal). That is why you teachers are told always: Make it meaningful, make it personal, use groups, and hands-on activities. All will help making that information personal, and hopefully processed on a deeper level. Cognition and memory (and learning) is situated, otherwise said, is context dependent. The way we encode the infromation reflects and affects how we retrieve (recall, remember) the information stored in the LTM.

Should we also know that along with cognitive factors there are psychological and physiological factors. How do you learn and keep in memory the information when you are under great stress, or in a bad mood, and how do you learn when you are sick (bad headache, stomach pain, etc.).

Practice, practice, practice... sounds a good encouragement, but we know that repetition is not enough, it all boils down again to superficial or deep level of processing. Be aware that cramming in the night before the exam will result perhaps in a most wanted A, but fast come, fast go! One day after the exam the student might not remember what the exam was all about.
Conclusion: Distribute the practice. Learn and re-learn over a longer period of time. So, instead of cramming the night-before is better to start a couple of weeks ahead and each week revise again the previous information. Know that when we repeat the information we learned in previous weeks we bring that information into WM, then we store it then back in LTM and each time we revise that information we do the same. As a result when exam time comes the most-wanted-A is granted, and as a bonus we remember even three weeks after that exam!

Some tricks to remeber the information are based on mnemonics (visual, or using keywords, method of loci - imagine things on a list situated in familiar places to you).
Don't forget chunking (not only numbers and letters but objects, meanings, can be gathered together). Make charts, graphs, hierarchical charts and schemas, make stories about what you would like to keep in mind.

Remember what you must do in three weeks? You for sure use Prospective memory. That is memory for things that did not happend yet but will have to happen. Usually we are good in remembering what we are supposed to do in the future, but if we have a usual schedule and at one time needs a small change in the pattern, then we might end up being absentminded.
You take the same road to come to school to attend EPFR515, then one day you were supposed to make a small change and stop at the grocery store, but you find yourself remembering that only when you just passed the intersection where you were supposed to turn to the left towards the store, not to the right towards SIUE. Why? Just because by repeating so many times the usual pattern when it comes about the exception day/task we continue doing the regular well known pattern.

Pal Pilots, post-it, alarm clocks, call yourself on the cell phone, string on your finger, highlighters, colored papers, schemas, charts, bells and whisles :-) all are helpful, all are good.

Final wisdom:
Don't suppose your students know all these. Don't even suppose they know how they are supposed to learn!
TEACH them memory strategies along with teaching the content they must learn.

Long term memory

Remember the chapter on Attention and Consciousness? We learned in it that we must "pay attention" when we process information and want to store it for later when we try to remember it. When someone asks you to remember a certain concept, give a list of book titles you read lately, or do a task that require a conscious effort, you most likely use explicit memory which requires conscious recollection of previously stored information in your Long-Term Memory (LTM). But there are times when we do not need consciousness to remember some information stored in the Long-Term Memory (LTM) and then we use implicit memory - recall of information that does not require conscious recollection. Implicit memory can be developed through repetition till the information becomes automatic, such as different motor skills, procedures, or when you learn rules of a game but once you mastered the game you don't have to think anymore to the rules. Or for example if you are given a list of words to read, later you will notice that some words (that you encountered recently) are remembered easier.

When we use explicit memory we use a conscious effort to remember something, so that we can declare what we remember. But implicit memory does not require effort and many times is related to procedural memory (when it becomes automatic).
When you first learned how to ride a bike, you had to pay attention to what you were explained and what you were doing. You had to learn step-by-step (and fall by fall :-) ) how to do that procedure. But once you practiced enough you mastered the procedure till it became automatic (automaticity), and now you don't even think about what you really do, and how do you keep your equillibrium on that bike. That means, through automaticity your explicit memory of that procedure transformed into implicit memory, procedural memory, that does not require conscious effort to perform.

If explicit memory can be lost such as in amnesia, implicit memory is more stable. That is why some people who suffer of amnesia still know how to walk and ride a bike and dial their phone number even if they don't remember it.





Let's take a trip in the warehouse of memory. Long Term Memory (LTM) is our memory warehouse. Our brain stores in an efficient way our knowledge about the world. We learned first that when we perceive the information, following the laws of perceptual processing (remember Gestalt), we do bottom-up and top-down processing. That means, in the process of storing new knowledge we use our previously stored knowledge, and perceptions about the world, and in this process we take into consideration the context. Our knowledge stored in LTM can be about facts (Declarative memory), and skills, or procedures (Procedural memory). The LTM about facts is stored in networks called schemas. We have a schema about what a table means, what means going to school, and what means Milky Way :-)

Our declarative memory holds the meaning of concepts, knowledge, information about our world ( the meaning of abstract knowledge as well), and that is called Semantic memory. Also under the declarative memory we have the memory of our life history, and schemas of different actions we take, list of structured events such as what we do when dinning out to a resturant, what we do at the stop light when we would like to cross a busy street. These structured/serial lists of events in a particular and repetitive order are stored in the Episodic memory.

In order to store the information from WM into LTM we use the process of encoding the information. When we encode we relate the new information to pre-existing information in the LTM. We use attention and consciousness and in the process of encoding we link the new information to older information already stored. When we give a meaning to the information we process that information at a deep level (we use attention and consciousness).

The deep level of processing comes from the fact that we make distinct the new information from old ones -- distinctiveness means how different is one information from other. You teachers might have heard in other courses many times the advice to "make it meaningful" when you teach a new content. That is coming from the need to process the information at deep level so it is better encoded and stored in the LTM.

You remember Allan Baddeley's theory of WM and the special feature of Episodic Buffer. We know that is the working memory part which will help us relate the new information with personal information (episodic memory from LTM). In the process of encoding if the new information is related to previous personal information this will also create a deep level of processing -- self-reference effect. As teacher you might have been instructed to make things hands-on and personal. The reason behind that advice comes from the necessity of deep level of processing of information, and linking the episodic buffer from WM with the episodic memory from LTM. In this process our frontal lobe, specifically the prefrontal cortex presents activity in the process of encoding of self-specific information.

A good advice is that when you meet a person for the first time don't only shake hands, but since you know about deep level of processing and the need to encode meaningful and personal information, next time when you shake hands repeat the name of that person (phonological loop + semantic memory), pay attention to the face specifics and any differences from another person with the same name (perceptual processing, distinctiveness, self-reference, episodic memory), and try to keep longer eye contact looking at the different features of the face so you can encode more information.

Remember (sic!) encoding and retrieval of information are related, that is in other words: what you put in that you will take out. Noise in, then noise out!

More than that it matters the encoding and retrieval context. We process information in a context, our encoding is context dependent. We are not computers to process only the stimuli that are input we process the context, and we are dependent on our physical, psychological, and emotional well being. You know that your students do better on tests if they take the test in their own classroom than in another classroom or other environment. Guess what.... there is plenty of research on encoding specificity that demonstrates the importance of the context.
If we are hungry, happy, or angry and all other emotions, moods, and physical and physiological conditions of our being will affect the way we process, encode, and store the new information.
Storage, encoding will also affect our information retrieval.

When we talk about retrieval we must make the difference between: recall and recognition. Recall supposes an effort in retrieval of the information (as when you are asked to remember all the Presidents of the United States); as opposed to recognition (when some part of the information is already present -- first three letters of each name; which is also a used method to test implicit memory). In teaching/learning is the difference between taking essay exams (recall) as opposed to multiple choice ones (recall + recognition).

This is very important for educators since teachers should take steps to activate existing schemas before presenting new information. That is why you will hear often the advice that you must make the information presented to your students meaningful, personal, and give hands-on experience (that will help to make the information personal). Also remember that when we process new information we link it to previous one stored in our LTM. New is linked to old, and when we retrieve some newer information will activate and bring with it old one (Parallel Distributed Processing). One more reason to stop and ponder our stereotypes!

One big question is: do we keep all of it or do we loose some in order to store more, newer information?

As with many other things, with memory is the same saying "use it or loose it."
We might not loose the information, all that we ever learned might be still available, but it not all accessible because of interference and/or decay. In the process of encoding, by rehearsal in the WM, the information is stored in the LTM, but since we do both bottom-up and top-down processing, we modify the stored information, linking it to older knowledge, reformulating, constructing, and developing constantly our knowledge and meaning in the LTM. Then when the information is retrieved it might be modified. That is why flashbulb memory is not like a DVD in our brain. We can add, modify, blur, or even delete some of the information that we think only it is a perfect video of a certain event.

Easy useful site here.

Working Memory

Working Memory or Short Term Memory (depends on what base was developed the theory: neuroscience /connectionist theory or computer model). We learned that WM is of small capacity: Miller's magic number 7+/-2; and that is "short" in time in the range of seconds.
For some reason each generation of EPFR515 students have the tendency to think that one can modify the characteristics of working memory. That we could expand it (like you blow into a baloon), that we can hold in there information for let's say a couple of days, weeks.... which is not true at all!

The working memory is the water in the faucet in your kitchen, water goes through it when you open it. The long term memory is the water reservoir, water stays in there for as long as one keeps it there. One can draw water from the reservoir (LTM) when needed. But the water runs through the faucet, is moving (WM). Be it a bathroom, kitchen faucet, or be it the fire fighters' hose no matter the quantity of liquid that goes through (remember perceptual processing?) is GOES does not stay and that's why Baddeley named it working.

I like Alan Baddeley's model. It gives a very nice pictorial explanation to my students. From this model they can relate different classroom applications of the working memory theory.
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The above model is Alan Baddeley's (2000) revised working memory model. LTM = long-term memory. From "The Episodic Buffer: A New Component of Working Memory?" by A.D. Baddeley, 2000, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, p. 421.

Robert W.Proctor and Kim-Phuong L.Vu (2003). Human Information Processing: An Overview for Human Computer Interaction. In: J. A. Jacko and A. Sears (Eds) The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook. Lawrence Erlbaum

Fall semester 2006

Fall 2006 EPFR515 @ SIUE started and people are ready to blog
:-)

We learned this first week about perceptual processes: bottom-up and top-down. We use them on a daily basis.



Top-down processing, which in a nutshell is "we see what we expect to see" based on previous experience.
Bottom-up processing, we learn all from scratch.

The amazing human brain likes to take all the short cuts possible, and in fact uses Gestalt theory! :-)

One of my students after we ended the class, going out of the classroom, said: "this first night and I learned so many new concepts."

Any many more to come! I am sure by Christmas break they will know a lot more, and will have many new ideas that they can apply in their life and career.

Congrats EPFR515 Summer

I for sure enjoyed this group of 515 Summer 06 :-) They were fun, smart, and hard working.
This last class we played a game "Challenging vs. Exciting" in this 10 weeks of summer class.
Most of them choose for the "challenging" part the blog :-)
I know they struggled with it, some knew blogging before, other ones did not. By this last class all did a good job on their finals. Some are very good! The "Exciting/Enjoying" was more diverse: group work, team workshop, blackboard discussions, discussion facilitators.
I know they will do a good job. Many realized that they must teach students not only what to learn, but also how to learn! They have the content, they have the tricks of the trade, and they have the skills. I am sure they will do good! I am proud of every one of them!
One of them will graduate with this last course and invited the entire class to her graduation party. Hooray!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL!

Summer 06

Summer courses are intense for students and for their teachers as well.

I am done with EPFR 415- Adolescence, for this summer.
I had two sections, nice students. Some of them were better than the others, but all worked really hard to get it done and survived the every day 3 hours sessions. It is not easy when the entire big topic is Adolescence.

To make it more fun and active I used mostly class discussions. I think through discussions and preparing a specific subject in teams helped them to better understand and find applications in their career as teachers.
Blackboard was used by me only to post the readings. Since we met every day there was no time and need to use discussion board. The feedback from Spring was that some found it was too much (some did not use it ever before).

With the second group June 5th -23rd (since they were half class undergraduates and half class graduates), I changed a little the style asking more from them. Graduate students had to conduct workshops along with the regular class discussions.

I definitely enjoyed the in-class group exams (every week at least one). I did not use this method before. At the first one their performance was not as efficient, but by the third one they were pretty good. I could see each group getting better at their work in team and developing a style.

I had so much fun and I hope they did too! It's not easy to be together every day for long periods of time and revisit the same topic over and over again from different points of view. In the EPFR 315- Ed Psy course, at least there are different theories each class time, the content is more dinamic itself.

It's interesting how attached I get to a group. Over the course time I manage to learn their names, to match faces with names, and know a characteristic that can remind me of the person. I know also that there will be always some who love me and some who hate me. It's just the normal curve of teacher evaluation.
My only hope is that they do learn to think, perhaps in a different way about teaching as experience, and about the topic we cover in the course.
I know I learn. I try new things to make the course more appealing.

I have EPFR 515 - Cognition, till July 27th. Since this is almost as long as a regular semester (10 weeks), this time I use the style I used in Spring. For the fall when I teach again this course I would like to change. To do something new. I know my students won't know if the style is the usual or a different one... but I do! For me it becomes too repetitive. I need to create something new in order to enjoy it myself. I love the book: Cognition- Margaret Matlin (Wiley). It is such a rich ground for my students who are mostly all teachers. So many new theories and explanations for things they used, thought of them before, but they did not know it has an explanation, a name, and that it is MORE to this!
Each group comes up with so many good examples from their work and everyday life experiences. I know they definitely change their script about what a graduate course is like :-)

It's so interesting that each section has some exceptional workshops. Really great work that some of the students do. Then in what it stands the performance? Perhaps on their skills and previous experience in conducting a workshop. It's difficult to prepapre a workshop, not just a lecture with power point presentation that they read from the board or from their papers.

As for me, I think I have to keep my mind open to their suggestions and feedback when it is a constructive feedback. And not take it too personally when the feedback is based on facts I cannot change (gender, ethnicity, ESL).
In the end we teachers learn also!
:-)

EPFR 315 Class of Spring 2006

My beautiful and smart students!
I had so much fun with them this semester. Just loved them, and I pray that all next sections would be as inquisitive, talkative, and fun. I had in this group some very good students, some who struggled a little more than others, but they all have grown into smarter professionals.
Thanks to all of you!
I am proud of you and I wish you all good luck in your careers!

And don't forget to use ZPD in your learning and in your work with students
Attitude is everything!
:-)

EPFR courses

As Assistant Professor (Since 2005) at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville I teach Educational Psychology, Adolescence, Cognition, and Assessment in schools courses to graduate and undergraduate students.



This is my little Taylor and she has lots of fun :-)
I am her teacher and I use Behaviorism as theory in her training.
You can see other ones like her at this site JRT (Jack Russell Terrier)