ONLINE LEARNERS
Cognitive Engagement Style, Self-Regulated Learning & Cooperative Learning
Bobbi Kerlin, 1992 [excerpt]Learning is fundamentally a cognitive process. Students can develop facilitative or debilitative styles of cognitive engagement. What different styles of cognitive engagement can you recognize in your students?
For many years educational practice has been influenced by psychology research. Behaviourism, modelled after the work of Watson and later B. F. Skinner, rose in prominence during the sixities and seventies, but was soon eclipsed by the social learning theories of Bandura. Today social learning theories are closely interwoven with a cognitive perspective of learning. Long (1990) is just one of many educators who has suggested that learning is predominantly a cognitive process; such learning, he believes, is influenced by a number of factors, including the state of the learner, existing or prior knowledge, and the attitudes and beliefs held by the learner toward the source, content, topic, and mode of presentation. The understanding that learning involves the activation of specific cognitive processes has led practitioners and researchers to explore the concept of cognitive engagement. It has been suggested that students can develop facilitative or debilitative styles of engagement (Marx and Walsh, 1988). Self-regulated learning is, by definition, a facilitative style of cognitive engagement.
Self-Regulated Learning
Self-regulated learning is an effort to deepen and manipulate the associative network in a particular area (which is not necessarily limited to academic content), and to monitor and improve that deepening process (Corno and Mandinach, 1983, p. 95.)
Self-regulated learning represents the highest form of cognitive engagement and is epitomized by the task appropriate use of information acquisition and transformation skills, and metacognitive control processes are also an important component of this concept (Corno and Mandinach, 1983; Corno, 1986).
Task Focus
Task focused learning, exemplified by the successful implementation of test-taking skills and problem solving strategies, involves the predominant use of transformational, rather than information acquisition cognitive processes (Corno and Mandinach, 1983). Corno and Mandinach suggest that particular cognitive transformations such as careful attention to specific detail, comparative analysis of prominent characteristics, and the ability to isolate relevant from irrelevant information, are typical strategies used by task focused learners. Some methods of instructional delivery have been suggested by Corno and Mandinach as promoting a task focused approach to learning. Such approaches are characterized by guided practice, the use of analogies, models, and taxonomies as systems for organizing information. Corno and Mandinach found that the task focus approach to learning was used more frequently by males than females when solving spatial and technical problems; this they have hypothesized as one explanation for gender-related differences in performance on spatial, mathematical, and scientific problem solving tasks.
Resource Management
The typical learner who utilizes strategies of resource management is one who relies heavily on assistance from others such as peers for the purpose of deliberately avoiding the extended mental effort that is necessary for the transformational processing of information (Corno and Mandinach, 1983). It has been suggested by Corno and Mandinach that the social character of some learning environments, typified by cooperative and small group task structures, may promote dependence on resource management skills by providing increased opportunities for learners to obtain assistance from others on difficult tasks. That some students might rely exclusively on a resource management approach to learning tasks should be cause for concern among educators, particularly in light of the recent thrust toward cooperative learning.
Recipience
The recipient learner is one who engages in a passive approach to learning (Corno and Mandinach, 1983). Recipient learners are least likely to make use of metacognitive strategies or to engage in high level acquisition or transformational processes. These are the learners who are easily distracted by peers and other elements of the environment and who frequently are described by teachers as lacking motivation for school related tasks.
RESOURCES
Online Learning: An Overview
Key Elements of an Online Program, Strengths and Weaknesses of Online Learning, The Successful Online Instructor, Profile of the Successful Online Student, Self Evaluation Quiz, Tips for Success, Discussion Questions, Glossary of TermsWork Smarter, not Harder: Study Guides and Strategies
Why Survey Online? A Practical look at Issues in the use of the interenet for surveys in higher education.
Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Evaluation Association, Honolulu, November 2000. Christina Ballantyne, Murdoch University, Western Australia. This paper explores the use of online survey forms for collecting student ratings of teachers and to increase the response rate in other surveys of students and recent graduates.
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