Classifying the Type of Learning in Your Project
None of us would teach all kinds of materials in exactly the same
way. Learning to be a soccer goalie is different from learning how
to solve and math problem. And yet, there are certainly similarities
in how we teach some kinds of knowledge and skills as well.
Instructional designers and others have attempted to deal with this
by positing various ways to classify the types of learning that
human beings do.
The goal of this is not just to have you do an academic exercise.
It is to help decide how to teach your goals effectively. For
example, there are a couple of systems for teaching concepts, so
perhaps one of them would work in your project.
Here is one way to classify types of learning:
Verbal information: This is when we learn definitions,
facts, dates, names, etc. This is similar to the very lowest level
of Bloom's taxonomy (knowledge). Notice that it doesn't necessarily
involve understanding what you are learning. If your project
contains just (or primarily) this type of learning, it probably
isn't a very good project right from the start.
Intellectual (or Cognitive) Skills: These are the most
common things we learn in school and academic settings. They range
from very simple to very complex. They include some subsets:
- Concepts
- Physical concepts (cold, wet, rain)
- Verbal concepts (cumulonimbus clouds, barometric
pressure)
- Rules ("dark clouds mean rain is coming")
- Principles ("falling barometers accompanied by winds from
the Northeast mean... (well something, anyway")
- Problem solving ("Here are today's weather statistics and an
up-to-date map. Will we be able to have our picnic tomorrow?"
Many of your projects will be primarily about intellectual
skills. They may be difficult to observe, but their importance in
undeniable.
Psychomotor skills: These are the physical skills
that we need to do a variety of things, from playing baseball to
gardening to fixing a sink to driving a car to mousing around on a
computer. Their importance differs from project to project. In some
projects, the physical skills might be the most important ones. In
others, especially the computer projects (e.g. searching) they are
there but the most important things are intellectual skills. For
example, knowing how to click a mouse is trivial for most people;
knowing what to click and when may not be.
Attitudes: Perhaps you are trying to change how people
feel about and react to something. Are we teaching racial tolerance,
for example? How about an "increased appreciation" for atonal music
from the early 20th century? These are attitudinal objectives.
Cognitive Strategies: Sometimes called metacognition,
these goals are concerned with teaching people how to learn and
think. They go beyond intellectual skills.
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