ITEC: Meaningful Learning (Ausubel) and Schema Theory (Ch. 4)

I agree with several blogged opinions that this chapter lacked organization. Examples were fuzzy at critical moments, and although the cites of studies work well in other chapters, they seem to get in the way of the "meat and potatoes" in this chapter. I believe, in part, that my unfavorable reaction to this chapter results from reading it right after reading Chapter 10 on Gagne. Chapter 10 was heavy on theory, but the theory segued into practical application. That element was sorely deficient in "Meaningful Learning and Schema Theory."


Regardless, the chapter led me to a single conclusion which, while sounding obvious, is at the root of a lot of unsuccessful teaching: The instructor/designer must evaluate both the potential learner and the knowledge to be transferred if the transfer of knowledge to the learner is to be successful. Prior knowledge is a critical element of successful instruction. Advance Organizers are a useful tool.

Ausubel's model of cognitive organization which breaks LTM information into a hierarchy sounds great, but I think it's a limited view of the human mind. Hierarchies are by their nature cumbersome and strict, whereas the human mind is a nimble organ with remarkable powers of organization, association, and recall. When Tim Berners-Lee created the hypertext markup language which led to the World Wide Web on the Internet, his preliminary drawings were of a hierarchy and a cloud in which every particle had the potential to connect to every other particle. Berners-Lee found hierarchical organization, which was the original organization of the Internet (and all other computer-based information systems) to be limited, and less useful and functional as the hierarchy grows larger. Additionally, while the concept of a cloud may seem vague, hazy (no pun intended), or disorganized, cloud-like systems such as the Web are actually self-organizing, highly structured, and flexible---they self-organize into communities of common interest. (Want a reference? Try the work of G. W. Flake while he was at NEC.)

The hierarchical storage model employed by the operating systems for computing machines makes retrieving documents cumbersome. Have you ever looked for a folder or document on your PC or MAC? Whether you look by navigating by hand through your documents or use the search function, you are forced to go through the entire storage partitions' hierarchy to locate the contents... The latest trend in search-related computing is embodied in Microsoft's Vista operating system, in the form of virtual folders. Virtual folders allow linking to documents and other folders from a different folder---much as if you were to place copies of the same document in multiple folders or copies of a folder into one or more different folders. If you draw that arrangement it's not a hierarchy but a cloud-like organization.