Cultural Models about Semiotic Domains Principle

Learning is set up in such a way that learners come to think consciously and reflectively about their cultural models about a particular semiotic domain they are learning, without denigration of their identities, abilities, or social affiliations, and juxtapose them to new models about this domain.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Cultural Models about Learning Principle

Learning is set up in such a way that learners come to think consciously and reflectively about their cultural models of learning and themselves as learners, without denigration of their identities, abilities, or social affiliations, and juxtapose them to new models of learning and themselves as learners.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Cultural Models about the World Principle

Learning is set up in such a way that learners come to think consciously and reflectively about some of their cultural models regarding the world, without denigration of their identities, abilities, or social affiliations, and juxtapose them to new models that may conflict with or otherwise relate to them in various ways.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Learning Dilemma

James Paul Gee makes an interesting observation in his book What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003):

Humans need overt information, but they have a hard time handling it. They also need immersion in actual contexts of practice, but they can find such contexts confusing without overt information and guidance.

Questions:

Is content really king?

What needs to happen with today's training, regardless of modality, to ensure it is relevant and contextualized for our target audience?

For more information or your own copy, click the link below:

Transfer Principle

Learners are given ample opportunity to practice, and support for, transferring what they have learned earlier to later problems, including problems that require adapting and transforming that earlier learning.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Discovery Principle

Overt telling is kept to a well-thought-out minimum, allowing ample opportunity for the learner to experiment and make discoveries.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Explicit Information On-Demand and Just-in-Time Principle

The learner is given explicit information both on-demand and just-in-time, when the learner needs it or just at the point where the information can best be understood and used in practice.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Bottom-up Basic Skills Principle

Basic skills are not learned in isolation or out of context; rather, what counts as a basic skill is discovered bottom up by engaging in more and more of the game/domain or game/domains like it. Basic skills are genre elements of a given type of dame/domain.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Concentrated Sample Principle

The learner sees, especially early on, many more instances of fundamental signs and actions than would be the case in a less controlled sample. Fundamental signs and actions are concentrated in the early stages so that learners get to practice them often and learn them well.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Incremental Principle

Learning situations are ordered in the early stages so that earlier cases lead to generalizations that are fruitful for later cases. When learners face more complex cases later, the learning space (the number and type of guesses the learner can make) is constrained by the sorts of fruitful patterns or generalizations the learner has found earlier.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Subset Principle

Learning even at its start takes place in a (simplified) subset of the real domain.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Adjusting to Generation Y

Barbara Rose reported in an article in Hartford Courant (CT) (03/19/07) recently that:

Employers adopt high-tech training strategies to engage the growing number of Generation Y employees, according to experts. Generation Y is the most rapidly-growing workforce segment, currently making up 20 percent of the private sector. To entertain, teach, and impress those who grew up in the era of gaming and instant messaging, employers are now using computer games and simulations, animated training modules, and video blogs instead of traditional recruitment and training methods. These approaches help new employees memorize job details; the online games and quizzes also weed out those who are adverse to putting in time and effort. The new techniques--used by companies such as Nike, Cisco Systems, and Cold Stone Creamery--accommodate Generation Y's preference for short spurts of information rather than long explanations. Employers are also aware that Generation Y workers typically expect involved managers, rewards, and validation, which forces firms to reform their training strategies to accommodate those expectations. Nike credits its interactive "Sports Knowledge Underground" program with a 5 percent to 6 percent increase in sales. Cisco program manager Jerry Bush points out that after five minutes playing Cisco's binary math computer game, the employee solves 50 problems and is "highly engaged and having a good time."

Questions:

It seems possible that some content may be necessary but unavailable in the higher production values this audience seems to demand. How do you manage the expectations of these learners?

How do you ensure the "short spurts of information" do not lead the learner down an unproductive path or leave out critical information?

Community of Practice

James Paul Gee makes an interesting observation in his book What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003):

It is common today for research on modern workplaces to point out that in today's high-tech and fast-changing world, the most valuable knowledge a business has is the tacit knowledge its workers gain through continually working with others in a 'community of practice' that adapts to specific situations and changes 'on the ground' as they happen. Such knowledge cannot always be verbalized. Even when it can be verbalized and placed in a training manual, by that time it is often out of date.

Questions:

What does this say about the role of social networking in the workplace?

What does this say about the nature of "formal" training versus "informal training in the workplace?

For more information or your own copy, click the link below:

Intuitive Knowledge Principle

Intuitive or tacit knowledge built up in repeated practice and experience, often in association with an affinity group, counts a great deal and is honored. Not just verbal and conscious knowledge is rewarded.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

"Material Intelligence" Principle

Thinking, problem solving and knowledge are "stored" in material objects and the environment. This frees learners to engage their minds with other things while combining the results of their own thinking with the knowledge stored in material objects and the environment to achieve yet more powerful effects.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Multimodal Principle

Meaning and knowledge are built up through various modalities (images, texts, symbols, interactions, abstract design, sound, etc.), not just words.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Intertextual Principle

The learner understands texts as a family ("genre") of related texts and understands any one such text in relation to others in the family, but only after having embodied understandings of some texts. Understanding a group of texts as a family (genre) of texts is a large part of what helps the learner make sense of such texts.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Text Principle

Texts are not understood purely verbally (i.e., only in terms of the definitions of the words in the text and their text-internal relationships to each other) but are understood in terms of embodied experiences. Learners move back and forth between texts and embodied experiences. More purely verbal understanding (reading texts apart from embodied action) comes only when learners have had enough embodied experience in the domain and ample experiences with similar texts.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Situated Meaning Principle

The meanings of signs (words, actions, objects, artifacts, symbols, texts, etc.) are situated in embodied experience. Meanings are not general or decontextualized. Whatever generality meanings come to have is discovered bottom up via embodied experiences.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Multiple Routes Principle

There are multiple ways to make progress or move ahead. This allows learners to make choices, rely on their strengths and styles of learning and problem solving, while also exploring alternative styles.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Probing Principle

Learning is a cycle of probing the world (doing something); reflecting in and on this action and, on this basis, forming a hypothesis; reprobing the world to test this hypothesis; and then accepting or rethinking the hypothesis.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Revolution or Redundancy

Steven Levy interviewed Marc Andreesen (co-founder of Netscape) about how he envisions the emergence of social networking. Andreesen suggests "there are going to be social networks around every conceivable category" and is now co-founder of Ning which let's users set up their own social-networking sites.

The business model is one we have seen before, supported by advertising, and confirms that while social networking may be mainstream as a way of interacting on the internet, it remains a convoluted mishmash of sites and services that will eventually converge into a few dominant providers. Eventually.

Source: Levy, Steven (2007, March 19). The Internet Kid Grows Up. Newsweek, E6

Predictive Marketplaces

The Masie Center is conducting an experiment using a new online tool for "Predictive Marketplace" forcasting. The link below is a marketplace where hundreds of learning colleagues can place "play" bets on this question:

"What will employees, in 2009, use as their PRIMARY tools for everyday learning in the workplace?"

Go to this free site, register and you will be given $5,000 play dollars to buy stocks for answers such as Classes, PodCasts, Classroom, Video Conferencing and others.

The theory is to use a Predictive Marketplace as a tool for gathering the wisdom of the crowds. This marketplace will remain open until April 1st.

"Regime of Competence" Principle

The learner gets ample opportunity to operate within, but at the outer edge of, his or her resources, so that at those points things are felt as challenging but not "undoable."

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Ongoing Learning Principle

The distinction between learner and master is vague, since learners, thanks to the operation of the "regime of competence" principle, must, at higher and higher levels, undo their routinized mastery to adapt to new or changed conditions. There are cycles of new learning, automatization, undoing automatization, and new reorganized automatization.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Practice Principle

Learners get lots and lots of practice in context where the practice is not boring (i.e., in a virtual world that is compelling to learners on their own terms and where the learners experience ongoing success). They spend lots of time on task.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Achievement Principle

For learners of all levels of skill there are intrinsic rewards from the beginning, customized to each learner's level, effort, and growing mastery and signaling the learner's ongoing achievements.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Amplification of Input Principle

For a little input, learners get a lot of output.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Self-Knowledge Principle

The virtual world is constructed in such a way that learners learn not only about the domain but about themselves and their current and potential capacities.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Identity Principle

Learning involves taking on and playing with identities in such a way that the learner has real choices (in developing the virtual identity) and ample opportunity to meditate on the relationship between new identities and old ones. There is a tripartite play of identities as learners relate, and reflect on, their multiple real-world identities, a virtual identity, and a projective identity.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Committed Learning Principle

Learners participate in an extended engagement (loss of effort and practice) as extensions of their real-world identities in relation to a virtual identity to which they feel some commitment and a virtual world that they find compelling.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

"Psychosocial Moratorium" Principle

Learners can take risks in a space where real-world consequences are lowered.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Metalevel Thinking about Semiotic Domains Principle

Learning involves active and critical thinking about the relationships of the semiotic domain being learned to other semiotic domains.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Semiotic Domains Principle

Learning involves mastering, at some level, semiotic domains, and being able to participate, at some level, in the affinity groups connected to them.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Semiotic Principle

Learning about and coming to appreciate interrelations within and across multiple sign systems (images, words, actions, symbols, artifacts, etc.) as a complex system is core to the learning experience.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Design Principle

Learning about and coming to appreciate design and design principles is core to the learning experience.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Active, Critical Learning Principle

All aspects of the learning environment are set up to encourage active and critical, not passive, learning.

For more details, see James Paul Gee. What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Thirty-Six Learning Principles

The next several posts will be taken from the thirty-six learning principles gleaned from James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).



In this work, Gee advocates active learning over passive noting four characteristics which must be present:

Experience: we learn to experience (see, feel, and operate on) the world in new ways.

Affiliation: we gain the potential to join a social group, to become affiliated with like-minded people.

Preparation: we gain resources that prepare us for future learning and problem solving.

Innovation: we learn how to innovate or synthesize the knowledge, skills or attitudes in unique ways.

Information Crisis

A colleague recently shared an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education (Source: Section: Information Technology. Volume 53, Issue 27, Page A38).

Information Navigation 101 by Andrea L. Foster explores new programs aimed at teaching undergraduates how to use the Internet and the online card catalog in search of the best sources.

The article expresses the lament from many in academia that "students rely on Google or Wikipedia as sources, as if oblivious to peer-reviewed scholarship."

It reminds me of the often quoted "if you build it they will come" which for the information age may be modified to express what many seem to believe:

If it's published anywhere it is true.

Patricia Senn Breivik and E. Gordon Gee, in their work, Information Literacy: Revolution in the Library (American Council on Education, Macmillan, 1989), effectively express the challenge many are feeling:

"'information explosion' [is] fueling a crisis in the ability of people to solve problems and make decisions."

Question
How do we make advances in technology without negatively impacting critical skills needed in the workplace?