Designing a Grounded Embodied Mental Model Learning Environment - Assignment Example

? Task Introduction Many environments of formal learning give a kind of learning that is shallow and fragile. This makes students not to remember whatever they learn after the lesson or after the test. These lessons therefore do not get application in relevant situations away from the setting of the lesson in conceptual context, time and space. The learning is never made part and parcel of that which the student interacts with and thinks about each day (Varela, Francisco, Thompson, Evan, Eleanor and Rosch 423). In these circumstances the design of grounded mental model learning environments can be of help since students will have to learn with the involvement of other body parts with which they can touch, feel and see. Students are therefore able to integrate experience with learning which brings more meaning to the lessons. In this paper I will design a grounded cognition model learning environment that can provide a grounded environment to make the learning of the students more meaningful. Description of the topic The topic chosen for this learning environment design is arithmetic. Arithmetic is the most elementary and the oldest branch in mathematics. It is used in almost by everybody because it is applicable in every day counting as well as business calculations and in advanced science. In arithmetic quantity is studied more so in combining numerals. In simple usage arithmetic is used to refer to simple properties in traditional operations of division, addition, subtraction and multiplication with numbers having smaller values (Lakoff and  Rafael 188).  Professional mathematicians at times can use “higher arithmetic” to refer to results that are more advanced and are related to the theory of numbers. However this need not be confused at all with elementary arithmetic. Arithmetic is also used to make reference to number theory. Inclusive here are the integer properties that are related to divisibility, primality, and solving equations in integers and modern research as well. Arithmetic is one topic that needs a good learning environment to help students understand the concepts. Being allowed to visualize them in their minds alone has so far proved not to be very useful. Therefore the design of an embodied cognitive learning environment is critical; to enable the student to use the other body senses such as touch in order to learn (Lakoff and  Rafael 200).  Description of the grounded environment and how it would make the content more meaningful The GEMM learning environment has physical objects that should be used by the students. It involves gestures which are expected to make understanding better than if they were not there. This is the main difference with the ordinary learning setting. The physical objects such as computers are expected to help the student to learn. The student manipulates these objects to create a better understanding of the abstract concepts being taught (Greeno, & Moore, 210). The arithmetic learning environment consists of a number of equipment and parts such as natural user interfaces. These are of two types thus; free interfaces and the touch use interfaces. In the touch use interface the user has to directly touch the device and a single touch could be appropriate such as the SMART Board or multi touch such as SMART iPhone, table, surface or iPad. Free form interfaces with gestures don’t need the user to handle the device like the kinect Microsoft project. The gestural controller and touch screen mechanics have 3 parts which are an actuator, comparator and sensor. Bodily rooted knowledge has perception processes that have an effect on conceptual thinking. Researchers in the area of embodiment and cognition discovered that there exists a compatibility effect between the physical state of a person and his mental state. Physical touch and movement enhance the learning of a student. When children involve their hands in learning they develop knowledge and brain connections through the movement. When children make use of compatible actions for mapping ideas in lessons they are in a better position of transferring learning to other new domains. Embodied interaction has to do with the human senses and specifically it involves touch as well as physical movement which assist the student to retain knowledge he has acquired. A number line can be used as an example of how a child can learn with action. It can be used to show how embodied interaction can affect conceptual representation for simple mathematical principles. In geometry the embodied perspective shows that performance across different complex and simple tasks has its basis in physical interactions with the learning environment and the mental representations that correspond to these interactions and are formed through the interactions. The processes that are used in the estimation on the number line are applicable in geometry (Greeno, & Moore, 211). The innate human object and navigational perception abilities represent major systems on which from which Euclidean geometry can come from. Perception of objects is important because geometric figures can be introduced to young children in the same manner in which any other physical objects and their names can be introduced to them. This is common in small children whose reasoning is based on identifying and sorting out tasks on the holistic appearance of shapes. The challenge here is that students are exposed to just a limited amount of exemplar figures which generate sparse mapping between the names of shapes and the associated figures. Children must be given a very wide range of curricular materials. Geometric thinking needs something bigger than just a visual vocabulary of different shapes. For example the success of a child in distinguishing between a parallelogram and a trapezoid does not require that the child comprehends the defining features behind the shapes or how these shapes relate one to the other. Adults and children can be able to attend to salient and irrelevant shape features. \ Gestures are important in helping students to grasp ideas. A head nod, a wave, a raised eye brow or a toe tap are all gestures. Touch and physical movement when included can improve learning. The use of mouse and key board in computer use on the contrary proves to be so passive. Educational approaches like Montessori (1949/1972) philosophy of education show that touches and physical movement can enhance learning. Children learning with their hands are able to build brain connections with the movement. Martin and Schwartz (2006) discovered that children using compatible actions in mapping of ideas could transfer their lessons to other domains (Greeno, & Moore, 156). For example those children with basic knowledge in division received a bag with candy and they were expected to share it out with their four friends. The children were told to make piles of candy into four different equal groups. One group tackled the assignment by use of graphical representation by drawing the pictures of what they were told to share. Those children learning via complementary actions had better chances of solving division problems in arithmetic. Manipulating physical objects has been found to be effective as well with learners of kindergarten and pre-school age. In the above described study, those children who used linear number board games and those who played a numerical board game lasting for fifteen minutes were seen to improve their proficiency in numerical estimation and their numerical magnitude knowledge. Congruent gestures can improve mathematics performance Segal, Black and Tversky examined how compatible the gestures designed for gestural interfaces are with mathematical concepts represented digitally. These concepts were addition, counting and number line estimation. Through stimulation of mental operations required in solving the problem with right gestures students could construct better spatial cognitive models of the mathematical procedures. When gestures to the concept that has been learned are mapped, simulation for mental operations is enhanced so that it can be constructed for the problem to be solved. The embodied gesture is a representation of the operation that has to be mapped to mental operations (Pfeifer & Bongard 31).Is possible for action to support mental cognition? From the perspective of grounded cognition, using gestural interfaces such as iPad versus other traditional interfaces like monitor-mouse must produce better learning with the computer. To answer the above question one has to observe the performance of children in numerical; estimation and arithmetic. Arithmetic being a task that is discrete it needs to be supported with discrete actions instead of continuous ones. Children either made use of a traditional or gestural interface. The actions mapped in a congruent manner to cognition or did not. Where the action is in support of cognition then there should be better performance with gestural interface (Pfeifer & Bongard 66). Gestural Conceptual Mapping According to (Marshall 2007) in (Varela, Francisco, Thompson, Evan, Eleanor and Rosch 123), existing research on learning and tangible interfaces has a gap. He argues that research does not exist on how a user abstracts the underlying domain laws and how various representation levels are integrated in the design. Theoretically, the gap is on how the learning domain structure needs to be represented by an interface. Gestural conceptual mapping is a term used as a conveyance for mapping between the gesture to the digital representation of what has been learned. It applies to three direct manipulation properties. This is a new term which Segal, Black and Tversky (2010) explore, define, and put their focus on as they design and use gestures in interfaces as they promote and support thinking and better learning. Segal, Black, and Tversky (2010) examined how compatible learned concepts such as visualization or digital representation is with physical gestural representation and with the mental representation of the concept being learned (Clark, Andy 76). When a gesture is used to make an illustration of the concepts being taught, then the student is enabled to create a better model in his mind of that very concept that has been learned. For example when one taps with the finger or clicks with the mouse on a virtual block in order to add up or count are types of gestures congruent with discrete representations of counting. Contrastingly when a finger slides over some blocks or a mouse is dragged on some block series in order to add them up constitutes continuous movements that which are indiscrete with the counting procedure. The two meaning the gestures and digital content representation must be compatible with the concept that has been learned. Compatibility should be created between the external content representation and the internal representation constructed by the user. Such compatibility gives support to the mental imaging of the user and makes him construct better models in the mind. For such compatibility to be achieved the designers must find the compatible embodied metaphor to be used in illustrating the concept that has been learned in the best way. This embodied metaphor happens to be a kind of gesture that the designer has chosen to be used in manipulating the educational content on screens (Greeno, & Moore, 116). Use of agents e.g. robots and video games and how they would be important or not in learning the content Agents are important for helping students to grasp whatever they learn. Research shows that learning abstract computational concepts is easy to improve when one grounds embodied instruction in familiar scenarios and actions. John Black, Ayelet Segal, Jonathan Vitale and Cameron Fadjo carried out a research on this. Their interest was to see whether children in middle school learning abstract computational constructs via imagined and physical grounded embodiment were able to implement more computational and mathematical constructs in personal video game artifacts in a better way compared to those who learned these same constructs minus the physical embodiment (Varela, Francisco, Thompson, Evan, Eleanor and Rosch 67). From the perspective of cognition their interest was in whether the provision of formal instruction of the abstract concepts via perception and action would affect positively the structures that are used in defining the artifacts. They explored the effects that instructional embodiment has on computational and mathematical thinking in the design of video games. Instructional embodiment involves using perception and action to develop understanding of concrete or abstract concepts through surrogate, direct, imagined or augmented embodiment within a setting of formal instructions. The content they used was popular musicians, local sports teams, playing video games and topics for completion of homework (Pfeifer & Bongard 46). With grounded embodied conditions the researchers found out that it was not only those that took part in Direct Embodiment and Explicit Imagined Embodiment (DE-EI) in the instructions who made significant use of mathematical structures. Those engaging in (DE-EI) wrote more code structures very significantly in their story or video game artifact. The fact that the students had to physically pre-define code structures for about 5 minutes when the class began brought about artifacts that were complex with more code structures and displayed more computational thinking. The researchers believe that the embodied grounded learning environment can be able to extent beyond the language used historically to teach computational thinking meaning the languages used in computer programming like scratch to other topics and domains like word problems, probability thinking and geometric patterning where there is a big challenge for abstract concepts to be taught by the instructor and for the student to be able to learn in the setting of a formal class room. In the construction conditions of the world of imagination there was found a correlation between the choice of constructing an imaginary world clearly different than the video game world that is offered to all students and the satisfaction of accomplishing the task (Clark, Andy 56). From the above illustration it is evident that when agents such as robots are used then the task of learning becomes easier. They are very useful in content teaching and learning because they make the student able to grasp the concepts easily through application. They also improve motivation and therefore increase the interest of the student in the lesson. They make the student more alert hence increasing the quality of learning. If the perceptual experience is rich then it means the mental perceptual simulation gotten is also rich. The resultant product is that the student learns in a better way and understands in a better way. Agents make learning more realistic and the concepts learned become more conceivable (Pfeifer & Bongard 36) GEMM motivation to students Student motivation would definitely result from the GEMM. Since the GEMM gives the students an environment in which they can be able to learn by physical engagement and not just mental visualization alone. Students are motivated because they discover that they are able to learn quickly and grasp concepts by applying their other senses such as touch. The designed learning environment by use of an embodied grounded cognition approach can bring a bout a lot of learning for the students because it enhances understanding as well as performance. The environment provides the student with an avenue through which they can forge interactions with the world hence there is more transfer of learning beyond the setting of the classroom. The use of the embodied computer simulations for example can prove to be an interesting thing to the student. It avoids boredom in the lesson and the student can be attracted to the tasks involved very much to the point that the boredom in the lesson is no longer there (Clark, Andy 59). Activities that are done in the grounded embodied learning environment are engaging to the brain and can help the student to coordinate action and engage actively in the physical as they get the concepts. Physical engagements such as clicking the mouse can add value to learning and stimulate the brain to action. Such kind of activity keeps the student busy hence eliminating the possibility of the student losing interest in the lesson. The learning environment also makes it possible for the teacher to teach well without much trouble. It is easier for the teacher to illustrate difficult concepts which the students find difficult under normal classroom learning conditions. When the teacher is more elaborate and clear then learning and understanding on the part of the student is enhanced. This does much to eliminate lose of interest and steps up motivation (Greeno, & Moore, 144). Assessing the lessons that the environment would help the students to learn can be done with the aid of the physical objects within that environment. The learning environment can be assesses an evaluated using the learning record (CLR) model. The environment can also be assessed as a learning tool using various things such as grades. Grades give an indication of how the learners have met the expectations of the teacher. They show the degree of understanding of the concepts taught hence the quality of the learning environment as a tool for learning (Pfeifer & Bongard 36). The assessment of the lessons that students are to learn should completely be based on the difference between the two learning environments being contrasted. In this case the normal learning environment and the Grounded Embodied mental model learning environment which is based on gestures and physical object manipulation. The assessment should seek to identify the presence of physical objects which are critical and are at the center of learning in the GEMM learning environment. The value of the environment as a learning tool would also be based on its ability to give the students a very practical opportunity for learning. This means the environment has to offer them all the things they need for grounded embodied cognitive learning. It should allow them to apply the use of physical objects and gestures which can enhance their learning. Tests and grades are important in establishing what the students have understood after being taught in the grounded embodied environment. Tests give a reflection of the depth of learning and the level at which the taught principles have been taken in (Clark, Andy 56). Conclusion In conclusion the paper contains answers to a number of questions in which the Grounded Embodied Mental model learning environment has been investigated. The topic chosen for the design of the learning environment is the mathematical branch called arithmetic. It was found that the GEMM learning environment can be very appropriate in helping the student to master the simple arithmetic procedures. Arithmetic involves counting and adding up of things as it happens to be applicable in many spheres of life. It is the oldest branch in mathematics. The grounded embodied learning environment is one that provides the student with the right objects to apply the lessons they learn. It should allow them to have physical manipulation of these objects as well as the use of gestures in learning. The content of learning gets meaning from the use of these physical objects. It is no longer based on concept visualization without seeing or handling anything. Gestures have a role they play in changing the knowledge of the child. This happens directly on the cognitive state of the child or indirectly by affecting the child’s communicative environment. Agents are also important in learning because they make the lesson more realistic. Examples include robots and video games which make learning more interesting and easy to master. Students are motivated by the GEMM since it is a more interesting way of learning that reduces boredom. Using gestures and manipulating physical objects in the learning environment is very entertaining and can increase motivation. Assessing what the students should learn in the grounded embodied environment has to be done based on the physical objects that define that kind of environment. Evaluation of the environment as a tool for learning is best done through tests and grades to establish the level of understanding of the lessons that have been learned in that kind of environment. Works Cited Varela, Francisco J., Thompson, Evan T., and Rosch,Eleanor. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1992. Lakoff, George and Nunez, Rafael. Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being. New York: Basic Books 2001. Pfeifer, R. and Bongard, J. How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press 2006. Clark, Andy, Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again, Cambridge MA: The MIT Press 1997. Greeno, J.G & Moore, J.L. Situativity and symbols: Response to Vera and Simon. Cognitive Science, 17, 49-59. 1993. Read More