Scaffolding education: The ability to search, understand key concepts and play with field-specific tools

15 August 2013

One of Merrienboer's central concepts in his Complex Design Instructional Design Model is that as students learn, they should be progressively stripped from "spoon-fed education." In other words, when you start learning you need to be observed and assisted in every action, but as you progress then this support has to be substituted for a learning on how to learn. Merrienboer calls this a scaffolding process.

I our day and age, I believe that one of the central characteristics of this scaffolding process is the ability to search online. But while most people think that searching is something done for the purposes of gathering information about a topic, searching alone is only part of the full-story.

First, concepts are only useful if they are put to a purpose, such as extending them by being able to consult more complex, deeper sources of information. In addition, concepts will play a central role in actually discussing with experts in the field to be able to obtain feedback the use of those concepts. This feedback will turn concepts that were originally static into something dynamic.

Second, searching will provide students with sources of tools where these concepts can be put into practice. For example, if a student is attempting to learn what a statistical average is, simply learning the concept is not enough. The student has to try the concept using whatever tool on a dataset.

The idea of concepts and tools is not mine, but was instead developed by Peter Gallison in what he called trading zones. Tool use and using concepts in an interactive way can also be interpreted as an instance of situated cognition

by Ricardo Pietrobon

About Me

My name is Ricardo Pietrobon and I am interested in big data and situated cognition applied to immersive distance education.