Principles of Instruction and Learning
Knowledge Base
A portfolio created by Autumn Elniski.
Learning Scenario: Cognitivist Perspective
What is a Learning Scenario?
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A learning scenario is a brief (200-250 word) description of a scene in which an instructor is interacting with their students and a lesson or learning opportunities are occuring. The following is a learning scenario written for an instructor who is teaching their undergraduate students how to make a handsheet of paper for the first time with the TAPPI standard sheet former. This lesson would be typically observed in an undergraduate Paper Engineering program.
From the Cognitivist Perspective
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This learning scneario can be observed and analyzed from a Cognitivist perspective. Different items a cognitivist might look for include:
Gaining Attention - garners student attention about the topic at hand
Inform Students of Objectives - makes learning expectations for the lesson known to students and promotes focus on those objectives throughout the lesson
Organize Information- information is presented in an organized manner
Activate Prior Knowledge and Recall Information - uses activities like signals and questions to activate and gauge students' prior knowledge. This helps facilitate the connection of new material to the schema or models (prior knowledge) students already possess
Assimilation and Accomodation - means through which learners relate new information to their prior knowledge or models. Assimilation is an easier relation to existing schema whereas accomodation requires the modification of current models or creation of new schema to place new information into.
Elicit Performance - grants students the opportunity to practice the content, skills, and other information
Feedback - used to show students where their competencies are and what they need to improve, generally prior to and after assessment
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The Cognitivist looks for input, processing, and output relationships in learning scenarios that can ultimately lead to an alteration in a mental representation or cognitive model, generally inferred through behavior (though showcases of behavioral changes are not neccesary for learning in Cognitivism). In this case, the learners are to make a handsheet using the TAPPI handsheet former and use this behavior to infer their new schema of small-scale papermaking procedures. The students don't quite get far enough in the procedure to finish the handsheet (the sheet must be couched and dried to complete the procedure), so the desired learning objective is noted here instead.
Below is the same learning scenario that is analyzed from a Cognitivist perspective to include applicable items listed above.
