WHY YOU SHOULD READ CHAPTER 5

Chapter 5 - Cognitive Tutors - not only explores and provides examples of the use of computers for instruction, but also “Principles and Methods for Cognitive Tutor Design” and “Cognitive Tutor Meta-Design Principles”. What this might mean is that if you are interested in – or presented with – a cognitive tutor, but wish to analyze the credibility, reliability, and relevance of the technology, you could use these principles to evaluate the technology (sort of reverse engineering).

Why would you be interested in Cognitive Tutors? Scaffolding has proven to be a topic repeatedly encountered in both our readings and discussions. Scaffolding can be difficult to implement because of the costs involved to have teachers available for each student.  Using computers for instructions – specifically Cognitive Tutors – would likely be much more cost effective. For scaffolding via tutors to be effective it must be timely and “operate at the outer and growing edge of a [student’s] competence” (Gee, 2003). If not challenging enough, a student may lose interest, but this can also happen if too challenging. A cognitive tutor would allow students to be “pleasantly frustrate[ed]” – challenged yet not left to struggle along on their own.

REFERENCE

Gee, J.P. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. ACM Computers in Entertainment, Vol. 1, No. 1, October 2003, BOOK01.