Might help in explaining failure of some software- which can focus on an expert mental model rather than student / novice mental model.
"How can computer representations be used to communicate a system of concepts to a student who does not already participate in the expert's worldview?" (p.1) - we must compare the designer's intention with the student's learning processes
How do we understand a novice mental model if we are experts? (we could use Participatory design- see below)
Epistemic Fidelity (see defn. below)- supposedly good representation (in software, etc) will have high correspondence with an expert's mental model.
In practice, this wasn't always the case. Novice learners (students) often missed key features of the representation because they didn't know what they were looking for (as a novice).
Student mental models correspond to their worldview, one that is much different than an expert's. Sometimes success can be had with the representation (software) even with an altered worldview / mental model than the expert's mental model (success achieved in the software through a 'wrong' mental model / conceptualization of the idea)
Understanding an expert's mental model will not allow us to understand how students learn. (Epistemic fidelity is not the best design model)
Instead, we need to focus on HOW STUDENTS LEARN
- process of transferring from novice to expert mental model
- similar to Dewey (1938) process of inquiry: life is a process of learning from problematic situations (coping mechanism, we learn procedures for common tasks)
- inquiry is communicative and collaborative: situations where inquiry takes place are BOTH social and cognitive
- best is a system where collaborative inquiry can take place, and where uncertainties can be easily resolvedDesign of such a system: use Participatory Design (my notes)
- Epistemic Fidelity (Wenger, 1987): when the external representation portrays the expert's mental model with high fidelity- with accuracy and clarity, and without ambiguity or extraneous noise.
- Mediated Collaborative Inquiry (MCI): social process of inquiry where students learn by creating, negotiating, and trying out meanings for the activity they're engaged in.
see paper (circled)
Cites Boulding, 1985: "Intentions are fairly easy to perceive, but frequently do not come about and are not fulfilled. Design is hard to perceive. But it is design and not intention that creates the future." (Boulding, 1985, p.212)