Publish at January 30 2017 Updated September 20 2023
Note: this text is based on a presentation by André Tricot to the CREF Paris Ouest Nanterrelearning team.
André Tricot is an educational psychologist. He is interested in the learning processes involved in institutional situations. He teaches atESPE Toulouse. He strives to deconstruct myths linked to the Internet and learning, and to find practical answers in terms of learning ergonomics. It situates the issue of digitizing learning within the history of communication, starting with non-verbal communication identified as early as 200,000 BC, followed by the emergence of oral languages and parietal drawings, the identification of writing on coins (6,000 years ago), then traces of written languages (3,300 years ago), followed by the invention of printing 1,500 years ago, the structuring of grammar, the stabilization of spelling, and finally the explosion of computers and the Internet in the 2000s.
For him, every time technology develops, the question is "what difference does it make to teaching situations?
The 1945 article " As we may think " describes the Memex (human memory expansion system), the ancestor of hypertext. It's often a condition of technology appropriation that it respects the way humans think and create links. Human thought functions by association of ideas and analogy, so a technological learning support system should respect this way of working. Memory theater (15th and 16th century) takes this organization of knowledge into account (Yates, The Arts of Memory).
Today, digital technology has invaded our lives. The majority of young people in wealthy countries use Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter several times a day. In the USA, adults spend an average of 4 hours 30 minutes reading a day (White 2010), compared with 1 hour 46 minutes 40 years ago (Sharon 1972). One of the consequences noted by Umberto Ecco is that adults are reading more and more!
Research into the psychology of learning makes it possible to:
The limitation of psychology is that reality depends not only on what people do, but also on what they believe. For example, Wikipedia is used very frequently by young people, but 75% of them don't trust it completely(Sahut et al; 2014). This is because teachers make a lot of remarks and express reservations about it. Opinions and attitudes on the part of individuals, teachers and parents all play their part.
André Tricot explores 9 myths and lists scientific research to support or dispel them. For example, an academic search engine such as google scholar lists over 46,000 research articles on the subject of serious-games, but less than a hundred have a scientific research protocol with a test group and a control group to back up the authors' statements.
Myth No. 1: You're more motivated when you learn digitally
- Yes, but not always. It depends on the task, and motivation can be unrelated to learning efficiency.
Myth 2: We learn better by playing with digital technology(Girard et al ; 2013, Wouters et al ; 2013)
- Yes, between +10% and +15% on average, but the effect is obtained when the control group is in a passive learning situation. You don't necessarily learn a lot. The effect size is not necessarily significant. What's more, it's difficult to transfer outside the game.
Myth 3: Digital technology promotes learner autonomy
- The opposite is true. Digital technology requires learners to be more autonomous. To be autonomous, you need to have the means to do so. Motivational, metacognitive and cognitive strategies are essential. E.g.: MOOCs
Myth 4: Digital technology makes learning more active
- Yes, when it allows you to produce content and when it offers several representations of the same information. But you have to organize your course yourself: a high requirement.
Myth Number 5: Moving images make learning easier (Amadieu and Tricot 2014)
- Yes, when they help to understand a dynamic process, which is very demanding at the start of learning, or when they help to acquire know-how. The analysis of eye movements helps us to better understand this type of result: at the start of a learning process, she doesn't know where to look, her eye landing randomly on the proposed representation.
The static representation allows the eye to go back and look at an overlooked detail(Muybridge's decomposition of a horse's gallop, 1878).
Myth 6: Digital technology can be adapted to the specific needs of learners
- Yes, at the sensory level: compensation and work-around strategies: vocalization, sound images, use of virtual reality.
Digital technology improves access to online training. Promising work is available on TSLA and TSA. But there are negative effects of teachers' lack of technological knowledge
Myth Number 7: Screen reading reduces young people's reading skills and attention spans (Nicholas Carr " Is internet making us stupid? ", 10,000 citations on Google Scholar)
- Yes, backlit screens tire the eye, but contrary to Nicholas Carr's assertion, digital reading calls on skills shared with paper reading and requires the development of new digital-specific skills.
Myth No. 8: Students know how to use digital technology naturally, because it belongs to their generation(Roussel, Rieussec, Nespoulous and Tricot, 2008).
- Yes, for their personal use, but learning at school is based on specific tasks that are little influenced by digital literacy. Prensky's myth of the digital native should therefore be put into perspective.
Myth No. 9: Digital technology will change the very status of knowledge, teachers and students (Tricot and Amadieu, 2014).
- No, basic school knowledge is more necessary than ever. To learn it, we need schools and teachers.
Conclusion
Digital technology has invaded our lives. It makes it extraordinarily easy for us to access knowledge and task materials. It enriches media. It requires new skills. It does not fundamentally alter school tasks or learning. It can have an effect on motivation. It may enable learning to be regulated more frequently, but in a frustrating way for the time being.
Illustration : Geralt - Pixabay
Source:
Apprendre avec le numérique" André Tricot and Franck Amadieu Retz 2014
http://www.decitre.fr/livres/apprendre-avec-le-numerique-9782725633206.html
Learning with digital technology - François jarraud - Café pédagogique
http://www.cafepedagogique.net/lexpresso/Pages/2014/10/21102014Article635494737667005194.aspx
Nicholas Carr - Site - http://www.nicholascarr.com/?page_id=25
Nicholas Carr: Is the Internet Making Us Stupid --What would McLuhan say? - TED Ed
http://ed.ted.com/on/3u20Ho9T
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