What Do They Learn
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Abstract
Significant learning is marked by transformation in ways of thinking and in the making of meaning. As Winn (1997) put it: “Information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom.” He goes on to point out that “the acquisition of knowledge from information requires effort and involves perceptual and cognitive processes that decode symbols, deploy literacy skills to interpret them, and apply inferencing [sic] abilities to connect them to existing knowledge.” I have argued elsewhere that the instructor must make cognitive development an overall course goal (Payne, 2004). The possibility that there can be developmental change must be an underlying assumption of effective course design. But even given a strong commitment to our students’ cognitive growth, how can we know that the most careful course design and the most thoughtful discussion facilitation are having a positive impact on their thinking abilities? We need some evidence about the impact of our strategies to guide us in improving them. In this chapter, I suggest that the transcripts generated by asynchronous discussion can be more than the objects of quantitative analysis, and that our practice as teachers in any discipline can also benefit by attention to these highly accessible records of our students’ work.