Cognitivism Strategies

According to “Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works,” cues, questioning, and advance organizers “all focus on enhancing students’ ability to retrieve, use and organize information about a topic (Pitzer, et al. pp 91). They can be used at the start of a unit to narrow students’ attention to make them more receptive to the new information they are about to receive.  Cues are clues as to the information to come. Questioning “helps students deepen their knowledge by requiring the use of critical thinking skills.” Advance organizers can pique students’ interest in the topic.

I was particularly interested in the section in the text about instructional media. This section mentions using online discussion forums to use cues and questions. In the example of how this is used, the teacher, Mr. Hiser posted a video for students to watch online. As cues, he included the time stamps for the sections of the video he wanted his students to pay special attention to. Having the cues makes it easier for the students to focus on the information they will need to understand the key concepts of the lesson.

The Pitzer, et al. text asserts that “summarizing and note taking focuses on enhancing students’ ability to synthesize information and distill it into a concise new form” (pp 147). In order to summarize and take notes effectively, students must be able to determine what information is most important for the understanding of a certain piece of information. One strategy I really liked from this chapter was the note taking template where students write facts about the topic on the left side of the paper, and draw a picture on the right side. This is helpful for visual learners, because they now have a visual aid that they can link to the facts on the left, so they can better retain the information.

Concept maps, outlined in the article “The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct and Use Them,” are also useful tools for learning. The maps are a great visual representation of the hierarchy of information on a given topic. Viewing a concept map on a topic can be more informative than reading the same information in paragraph form, because the map flows from the bigger ideas of the topic to the smaller details. This helps the learner organize the information in his mind, thus making it more memorable.

All of these cognitivist strategies are helpful for today’s learners. Each of them helps students focus on the information to be learned, and allows them to organize the information in such a way as to help them remember it more readily.

Resources

Novak, J.D., and Canas, A.J. (2008). The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct and use them., Technical Report IHMC CmapTools 2006-01 Rev 01-2008. Retrieved from the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition Web site: http://cmap.ihmc.us /Publications/ResearchPapers/TheoryUnderlyingConceptMaps.pdf

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction that works (2^nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.