Article,
Learning from watching others learn
Networked Learning: Perspectives and Issues. London: Springer, (2001)
Abstract
This Chapter outlines the ideas and assumptions on which the 'Vicarious Learner'
project is based, describes some attempts to test the ideas empirically, and
considers the exploitation of the approach in education. The basic idea – expressed
in our use of Bandura’s term vicarious learning - is that through technology we are
now able to capture, store and retrieve the records and outputs of real learning
episodes, and to make these available for new learners. One important question is
whether a database of such material might essentially represent a new kind of
courseware, easier and less expensive to generate than conventional courseware.
Our project has attempted to demonstrate how the idea might be exploited in
practice, and we describe our design of a system, called Dissemination, which
compiled such courseware from the recordings of students and tutors engaged in a
specially-devised set of ‘task-directed discussions’. In an experiment comparing
subjects who were offered this material in addition to conventional courseware we
found that those students who chose to use the vicarious resources tended to model
in their own performance the tasks, language and approaches used in the
discussions they had viewed vicariously. We tentatively conclude that the
experience of watching other students learn helped the new learners to model the
basic task of learning more effectively. We ask: is this an effective way of 'learning how to learn'? Certainly, though, this is only part of the story, and in the
latter part of the paper we consider how the approach might be effectively
exploited.
