Sunday, February 27, 2011

Reflection on Goal-Based Scenarios

There’s no question but that the Goal-Based Scenario approach is more interesting than chalk-and-talk. There’s also no question but that we lose young people somewhere between elementary school and high school due to the inability/unwillingness of school systems to relinquish its use of traditional teaching methodologies. Furthermore, GBS adapts wonderfully to internet applications, allowing the creator of online instruction to employ flash animation into a learning module.

So why am I less than totally enthusiastic about GBS? Well, to be totally honest, I can see how GBS would be of tremendous benefit in, say, an American History or World Civilization class, or perhaps as a supplement to home economics or biology. But would it work in a music, foreign language, or mathematics class? And how might one evaluate a student using this approach? Would we be able to prove to the state board that the students have learned the curriculum sufficiently to give them passing grades? And if we’re talking about “learning by doing”, isn’t that exactly what Cognitive Apprenticeship is all about? Will students remember what they have learned long after the class is over? These are unresolved issues that one must consider before employing GBS.

Some of the models I have seen of GBS presuppose that the student has gained a sufficient understanding of economics, mathematics, and the like to be able to make the intelligent decisions required of them. How did they gain this expertise in the first place? By role-play? That seems a bit far-fetched to me.

In many ways, however, this approach makes all the sense in the world. We are, after all, goal-directed by our very nature, and our goals carry along with them certain expectations. We need to learn how to make plans to achieve our goals, otherwise our goals are nothing more than daydreams. Plus, in the process of achieving our goals, we may just fail at first. GBS does not condemn the erring student to failure, but allows him/her to learn from his/her error. This is where explanation comes in. There’s nothing like positive feedback from a mentor to help us understand why we failed, and encourage us to get back on our feet and try again.

Schenk makes a comment that rather annoys me: “you cannot really teach anyone anything unless they are ready to receive new information.” This reminds me of psychedelic humanism, which suggests that we are not to teach a child anything unless he/she has expressed a felt need to learn. That’s when I usually “wax third reich” and tell the student that he is about to explain his unwillingness to learn to the school principal!

Schenk does make one profound statement: “Commonly, learners do not understand the relevance of what they learn, and the lessons do not apply to an intrinsically motivating goal. The effect of these shortcomings is that learners do not index the lessons learned effectively, and thus cannot retrieve them when they need them.” Schenk’s final statement in this week’s reading really sums up his approach: “One can maximize the effectiveness of GBS learning environments when the domain and the scenario are interesting to the student. When students are pursuing goals in a topic that they care about, they are motivated to pay attention to the information that is required to accomplish that goal. They are unlikely to forget what they learn, because the lessons will be indexed with other memories of other experiences in the domain. When they work within the domain again, they are likely to retrieve the relevant memories. GBSs allow the students to do target skills by doing them. Each experience provided within the GBS environment helps the learner to build a domain-relevant case library, complete with many lessons learned. This is how novices become experts.”

Sounds like Dr. Schenk just answered one of my questions.

8 comments:

  1. You pose some good questions. As far as your questions about "Will students remember what they have learned long after the class is over?" I think they will if it is a goal that they were interested in accomplishing. That seems to be the point of this theory, that they delve into something that they are interested in and become involved in real-life scenarios and applications. I really like the last quote that you used, and I agree, when the student is interested in the scenario and when the scenario has relevance to the student, then the student will ultimately learn more.

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  2. You certainly went very in-depth with your post. As Catherine mentioned in her comment, if the students are engaged and interested, they will remember what they have learned. I am a firm believer that if students are provided with the opportunity for "hands-on" experience, it allows them to use higher order thinking skills and essentially they will be able to reflect back on their "genuine" experience.

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  3. You have raised some very good questions and some very interesting points. My favorite part of your post was about the students being unwilling to learn and then you "wax third reich". Although a humorous comment, a very important issue. Sometimes trying to coax the student into learning doesn't not work and you are forced to be militaristic...rather than catering to the student. I may have misunderstood your point, but that is what I took away from it at least.

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  4. The part you quote at the end, about 'building a case library' as what it takes to go from novice to expert - that stood out for me in the readings too. It reminded me of Schon's Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action - he uses the language of developing a repertoire of responses to different types of scenarios, and what sets experts apart is the depth and variety of that repertoire they have developed over time.

    Regarding your comment on students being ready to learn - I guess I thought of it as relating to his idea of 'expectation failure' - in that often in a school setting (vs. that of job training) it is important for learners to get a sense of the boundary of their knowledge, but do so in order to show the student that one, they can extend that boundary and two, how they might do so. I think there is value in helping students see what they don't know - but then a challenge still remains whether the student would like to expand that boundary or not, and I think Schank does not necessarily address this latter aspect as well.

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  5. I agree with Donna! You went quite in-depth with your post however I can totally understand the questions/concerns you have mentioned. I do feel that there must be an established background of knowledge before a lesson is present via GBS. I do feel that an instructor would have to be knowledgeable of what students already know and need to know once completing the planned lesson. I do feel that the extra time that is included within preparation will essentially discourage some from utilizing this model.

    Heather Haymer

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  6. Zak: yes, you took my point correctly. Hope my classmates can overlook my sarcastic sense of humor.
    Donia and Heather Marie: I probably did go in-depth with my post. Hey, I'm an old man...we're supposed to ramble!

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  7. Al, I think that you pose some great questions. I don't think that an educator should jump into using any of the models without buy-in... if you're not convinced, your students won't be either.

    I think that the root/driving force of the GBS model is student interest. You touch on this in your last paragraph with quotes from Shenck.

    (Julie Jones)

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  8. Al, I really enjoyed reading your post, and do agree with you that this model is, in essence, a wonderful model for use with our students. Yet, how do we assess their learning and how do we "help them" become interested in the topics? Not every student is always going to be interested in the competencies and objectives I teach in my courses.

    p.s. - I do enjoy your sense of humor! It makes for wonderful reading and causes me to think as well!

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