Behaviorism

IST 520 Learning Theories

Group Project #1 – Talking Paper and Presentation
Deborah Ceryes, Irfanullah Jan and Joan Miller
Behaviorism Talking Paper - Agenda
• Principal Elements and Ideas
• Social/Economic/Technological Context
• Positive Contributions, Criticisms and Sources
• Major contributors
• Situations for Application
• 5Ps Rubric Analysis
Principal Elements and Ideas
• Observable behaviors
• Classical, behaviorism, connectionism, operant
• Objectivity over subjectivity
• No introspection or mental states
• Mind is a “black box”; Not available to study
Social/Economic/Technological Context
• Positivism and Scientific Theory
• World War II
• Military
• Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI)
• Teaching machines and programmed instruction
 Contributions Criticisms
• Too simplistic
• Segmented Instruction
• Ignores information
• Social Efficiency processing

• Operant Conditioning

• Rapid Feedback

• Mastery Learning
Major contributors
• Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
– Classical Conditioning to produce response
• Edward L. Thorndike (1874-1949):
– Connectionism
– “Sensation and impulse”
• American Psychologist, John B. Watson (1878-1958)
– First American to use Pavlov’s ideas
• American psychologist, Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-1990)
– Operant Conditioning
– Positive and Negative reinforcement to change behavior
Situations for Application
• eLearning:
– Classifying (drag and drop)
– Generalizing categories
– Matching exercises
– Chaining a sequence of steps/procedures
• Feedback:
– Positive reinforcement for correct responses
– Negative reinforcement (loss of privilege) for incorrect
responses
5P Rubric Analysis – Presentation
No/Not Applicable/
Yes Cannot Determine
• Material and/or • Material is relevant to needs and
presentation/stimulus is novel, is goals of the learner
something new and interesting
• Intrinsically pleasant*/
interesting/stimulating/ thought • * not always pleasant
provoking
• Wording, visuals, audio, language
being manageable and useable to
the receiving group or individual
5P Rubric Analysis – Practice
No/Not Applicable/
Yes Cannot Determine
• Activities, to include repetition and • Requires that practice is
spiraling, designed to develop relevant to needs and goals of
automaticity in responses and execution the learner
• Assessment by other means that displays
that skill/competency acquisition is
occurring
• Activities that are within or slightly above
the learner’s competency level
• Designed to lead to correct response.
• Opportunities being provided to develop
proficiency in application of the skill,
knowledge, ability or concept
 5P Rubric Analysis – Production, Posting,
Participation and Collaboration
Yes No/Not Applicable/Cannot Determine
• Production and Posting:
• Production and Posting: – Encourages publication of
– Encourages application of the skill, whatever is produced by the
knowledge/ability or concept being learner to group for peer view and
learned learning
• Participation/Collaboration: • Participation/Collaboration:
– Form of accountability with respect – Synchronous or asynchronous review
to who is contributing of posted products
– Community of
Practice/Wisdom/Knowledge
– Provides for collaboration
– Variation in task readiness and ability
to contribute to group effort to meet
goals