Dwight Allen

The Influence of Overt Practice, Achievement Level, and Explanatory Style on Calibration Accuracy and Performance

The authors measured the influence of overt calibration practice, achievement level, and explanatory style on calibration accuracy and exam performance. Students (N = 356) were randomly assigned to either an overt practice or nopractice condition. Students in the overt practice condition made predictions and postdictions about their performance across 5 quizzes by entering their estimates online just before and after completing the quizzes. Students in the no-practice condition did not enter their predictions and postdictions for their quiz performance. Results did not support the hypothesis that overt calibration practice on the quizzes would improve calibration accuracy or exam performance. Higher achieving students were significantly more accurate in their predictions, yet underconfident in their predictions; lower achieving students were less accurate and overconfident. Approximately 32% of the unique variance from achievement, prediction accuracy, and postdiction accuracy was explained by student explanatory style concerning student-centered factors related to studying and test taking and to a task-centered factor.

Technology and Learning: Reimagining the Textbook.

James C. Onderdonk is associate director for education and outreach, Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Douglas Allen is director, Global Business Programs, Daniels College of Business, at the University of Denver. Dwight Allen is eminent scholar of educational reform, emeritus, at Old Dominion University. Address correspondence to James C. Onderdonk, Offi ce of Continuing Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 901 West University Ave., Suite 101, Urbana, IL 61801, USA (E-mail: onderdon@illinois.edu). In My Opinion

A Technological Reinvention of the Textbook: A Wikibooks Project.

Abstract Education traditionally has been defined as a one-way relationship between teacher and learner. However, new technologies are dramatically changing that relationship in a multitude of ways. In this article, the authors describe some of these changes and explore one example of the intersection between technology and pedagogy, describing a college course in which students compose the course text using the wiki platform. The process described proceeds from the premise that the needs and capacity of learners in the information age have been transformed and discusses one way that using an appropriate technology may address them. For this wikibook, the creators of the content become the prime users of the content as well. The authors discuss both the philosophical underpinnings and practical implications of this approach. Evaluation of the project suggests that the methodology produces an active, credible learning process. This study explores the advantages and disadvantages of this wiki process to provide context concerning the efficacy and utility of employing particular types of Web 2.0 tools. The course development rationale points to its potential for radically changing how students and teachers interact with the phenomenon of ubiquitous learning.

School Reform Movements: Tinkering with the System

American education must redefine standards of excellence to make quality and equality of opportunity compatible. Past reform efforts have failed because of the lack of a cohesive structure. Reform efforts have tended to gyrate between calls for more basics and focus on the learner. Basic skills for the twenty-first century need redefinition. The focus must shift from knowledge to process, from acquisition to the access of information. Until we decide what to learn we cannot decide how to teach it. Technology can help. Staffing, organization, and curriculum all need transformation, not simple reform. A national curriculum and a national system of experimental schools provide new opportunities.

We Can Influence the Future

When we talk about things like the changing composition of the workforce, we are really dealing with future projections. In looking at higher education concerns for the 1990’s, one of the problems we have is that the same words mean very different things to different people. We really are not talking the same language, for instance, in terms of our definition of what change is and what composition of the workforce is. We have different definitions of what the workforce is, who is in it, who is out of it, how you prepare to get into it, when you are prepared, and when you are still in preparation. All of these definitions are there to confuse things. In addition, one of the reasons that higher education doesn’t change often times is because future predictions are too easily dismissed. Many people don’t believe we can study the future. I would argue that we can study the future as easily and as systematically as we can study the past.