Cognitivism in Practice

For my class, Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction and Technology this week we did a study on the Cognitive Learning Theory and were assigned readings on Cues, Questions and Advanced Organizers and on Summarizing and Note Taking.

How I think the chapter on Cues, Questions and Advanced Organizers demonstrate cognitivism in practice is through the use of concept mapping to facilitate student understanding especially when introducing new concepts (Pitler, 2007).  This chapter gave several clear examples of different uses of software for making concept maps,  and some of the tools that come with them, like Inspiration's Rapid Fire tool which helps with keeping up with the students when they are brainstorming topics like the one demonstrated in the book on the "Civil War".  This gave me the idea to use this with my students during our unit on Reconstruction.  I had already began the unit when I learned about this, but I've been using it with each daily lesson to help the students predict what we would be learning about, and then using their concept maps to reflect back on the lesson the next period to help build enduring knowledge as we move into the next topic of study.  I've already noticed that the students seem to be recalling more information as we begin each topic and are able to apply a previous lesson to their current one to go into more depth and are asking deeper questions of each other and me.

The chapter on Note Taking and Summarizing helps to pull in the Cognitive Learning Theory in that through summarizing the student begins to network the information into long-term memory.  By having students practice summarizing the information, they begin to "chunk" materials into a form that makes it easier for them to understand it, and then if coupled with imaging they can dual code the information for better understanding.  I already use note taking with my students in Cornell Note style, but am seeing that if I can incorporate more graphics and, instead of just having them do notes on paper, have them do their notes in online blogs and wikis student interest will increase and that I may see more deeper levels of questions from them.