SECTION C: Project Description
C.1 Results from Prior NSF Support
NSF DUE CCLI EMD 998121705/01/00 08/31/01$79,999
Proof-of-Concept: The Mind Project Online Curriculum in the Cognitive & Learning Sciences PI: David L. Anderson Inst: Illinois State University
The Mind Project is an interdisciplinary, research and curriculum project in the cognitive and learning sciences. Sponsored by Illinois State University, there are dozens of instructors and experts in the field that have contributed to the project during the past five years. There are also hundreds of students who have participated in undergraduate research projects. The Mind Project website [http://www.mind.ilstu.edu/ username: mindproj password: robots] helps bring together students, instructors and researchers who are interested in working together to create undergraduate research projects and effective curriculum for students of all ages and levels of expertise. For the year 2000-2001, The Mind Project applied for full funding for an online, interdisciplinary, research-oriented curriculum in the cognitive and learning sciences. The NSF, in its wisdom, recommended that we begin with a proof-of-concept grant to test our design plan and funded us at $75,000 (with a $5,000 supplement added later). We are grateful to have had this initial time to test out our strategies. Many important lessons were learned and the shape of this new proposal has been markedly altered by what we learned this past year.
The goal of the proof-of-concept (POC) grant was to develop and pilot sample online curriculum modules. We created sample modules appropriate for use in introduction to cognitive science courses and as short 1 3 week "enhancement" modules in traditional disciplines. All of the curriculum modules have been completed (except for one to be finished this summer with the supplemental $5000) and they have all been piloted in one or more of a dozen different courses at three universities. Following is a summary report of the objectives and the results produced by the POC grant.
The Audience: Much of the curricula used in undergraduate cognitive science courses is accessible only to advanced undergraduates with an appropriate background in math and science. Our goal was to create curriculum materials that presuppose no previous background and so can be used with virtually any undergraduate audience. The materials were designed as a series of distinct modules, any one of which could be used alone or combined with other modules. The modules are equally appropriate for undergraduate cognitive science courses and for use in traditional introductory courses in psychology, computer science, philosophy, math and biology.
Pedagogical Philosophy: There are two basic types of content featured in the modules: (1) interactive online activities that provide students with rich, hands-on experiences of distinct research methodologies from a variety of disciplines, and (2) introductory level materials with numerous interactive flash animations that help explain key foundational concepts so as to prepare students for more advanced materials. All of the introductory modules are designed with the assumption that students have no previous background in the subject. This means that the modules can be used in virtually any course where the specific topic is appropriate. There are many courses in the sciences, at both the introductory and intermediate level, that teach students about various research methodologies. Traditional textbooks, however, can only provide a static description of the method and report the experimental results. Our modules ask the students to be engaged more actively with the methodology. Students do not merely read about Muller-Lyer studies, they will be the subject of such a study and will then explore its design, along with claims about the significance of the resulting data B the very data that their own class produced. Students do not merely read about computer programs, they are asked to write simple programs (with no previous experience) and use them to accomplish a cognition-related task. Students are taken into an active world where they are participants in the process of scientific inquiry.
Some of the curriculum we will produce will take advantage of a pedagogical method known as Problem-Based Instruction (PBL). Problem-based learning is an instructional strategy that places students in problem solving situations which rely less on lecture-based learning while placing more emphasis on independent learning and problem solving. A goal of this strategy is to allow learners to develop an integrated knowledge base that is better retained in memory and more accuratly recalled in real-world situations (Barrows and Myers, 1993). In contrast to other instructional methods, a real-world problem is distilled down to managable size and presented in class prior to the relavant course material. These problems provide a context for knowledge acquisition and development of problem solving skills, and require that students identify the questions that they will need to address in order to solve the problem set forth (Albanese and Mitchell, 1993).
The description of our implementation of this approach in a course taught by Busey is described in an article to be published by College Teaching (see appendix). We plan to incorporate PBL into many of the software applications we create, which will allow the instructor to easily integrate the philosophy and principles of PBL into an existing course unit.
The Curriculum: Initially, we planned to focus the sample modules almost exclusively on issues of perception, showing how each of five disciplines (psychology, math, computer science, biology and philosophy) brings its own methodological approach to the study of perception and makes an important contribution to our understanding. While those goals were achieved, we soon discovered that we could not remain so narrowly focused on perception because the study of perception raised fundamental issues in other areas. And since we were committed to creating a curriculum the presupposes no prior background from the student B we had to supply a simple, accessible introduction to these other topics. So, for example, we realized that we couldn=t just begin talking about the contribution of computer-modeling to the study of perception, without tackling the question, AWhat is a computer?@ B which is a controversial topic in the field and required some ambitious flash animations to introduce the topic to a novice audience. Other modules were likewise added to meet the demands of a genuinely introductory curriculum. The Proof-of-Concept grant funded a wide range of sample modules, including modules on the following topics:
$ Introduction to Neurons in the Brain
$ Computer models of neurons: From
McCulloch Pitts to connectionism
$ Introduction to Vision Science
$ Research Methods in the Study of Vision
$ Conducting a Real life Vision Experiment!
$ What Is a Computer?
$ Computer Types: Digital vs. Non classical
$ Robots Using Symbols
$ Robots Making Connections
$ Artificial Intelligence: Can a Machine Think?
$ Introduction to Connectionism
$ GNNV: A Graphical Representation
of an Artificial Neural Net
$ Functionalism: A Theory of the Mind
$ Chain Codes (Introductory Level)
$ Introduction to perception
$ Methods for Studying Perception
There are two places to learn about the content of these modules. The first is in Appendix A of this proposal, which attempts to provide an informative overview of a number of the modules together with screen shots of interactive java programs and flash animations. However, there is no substitute for the real thing. We recommend engaging the curriculum itself online. The website requires a password [username: mindproj password: robots] and can be found at: http://www.mind.ilstu.edu/rescur/toc/tocsamples.html [NOTE: There are some system requirements for the proper functioning of a limited number of the online activies. See webpage for details.]
The Piloting Results: Dr. Neil Stillings, an expert in curriculum assessment, wrote a full report on the materials produced in the POC grant. His reports was informed by interviews with students, with faculty who used the curriculum, and with the faculty who created the materials. He also helped develop assessment tools (both affective and cognitive) which were given to the students who participated in the pilot. His report indicates that the proof-of-concept project accomplished many of its goals and that it provides a strong foundation on which to build a more ambitious curriculum. Stillings says that the material is well designed to help students with no relevant background to understand key aspects of the discipline:
Overall, the materials produced during the project are comparable to the best textbooks available in the field and show unusual attention to the challenge of making cognitive science understandable to beginners.
With regard to the online vision experiment, he says
Students can run themselves in the experiment and later learn whether the data for their class confrimed the hypothesis under test. The experiment is particularly interesting because an accessible hypothesis is tested and because the surrounding curricular materials motivate both the hypothesis and the empirical study of perception with unusual care.
And finally, he speaks to our goal of creating a genuinely modular curriculum.
The Mind Project=s goal of curricular modularity should be considered co-equal with the goal of software-based interactivity. . . The current project was a rather impressive demonstration of the promise of modularity. On the one hand, the materials produced are coherent in design and intellectual level, and a student could work all the way through them to get an introduction to a good chunk of the field. On the other hand, during pilot-testing, different combinations of modules were assembled into packages that were used successfully in a range of courses that differed in subject matter and level.
Dr Stillings= assessment also pointed to several ways in which a more ambitious curriculum project could bring in other, pedagogically effective online resources that were not in evidence in the POC materials. For example, he says that while the present interactive elements are especially good to support basic concept mastery, they are less well suited to Amore advanced or higher-order learning goals such as the ability to pursue extended inquiry or to analyze complex problems.@ He rightly speculates that the lack of such programs is a result of the budget limitations of the POC. In the project description below, there are numerous modules that incorporate just those elements.
C.2. Project Description
C.2.a Goals & Objectives
(i.) Background: The cognitive and learning sciences comprise a rich, interdisciplinary field of study that has emerged over the last 25 years and that draws on the disciplines of psychology computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy and anthropology. Institutes, centers, and even departments of cognitive science have been established in a wide range of universities and colleges. This is an exciting and profoundly important field of study that has the potential to attract the best and the brightest of undergraduates to the study of science, math and technology. It also produces research results with an ever-increasing impact on society. With each passing year, it becomes more pressing that all citizens have an informed appreciation of the many areas in which the cognitive sciences affect our lives, including the areas of education (e.g. learning & cognition), medicine (e.g. neurological disorders, drug addictions, aging) and technology (e.g. artificial intelligence, robotics, neural networks, genetic algorithms). This is not a subject matter that can be left to professional researchers and a few senior honors students. It must be given its proper place within a general undergraduate curriculum.
(ii.) The Problem: Schools with abundant resources (diverse faculty, research labs, money for release time, etc.) have proven that instruction in this field can be extremely effective at the undergraduate level, both as a minor area of study that bridges between the sciences and humanities and as a full blown major. In fact, cognitive science is almost an ideal field for creating a thoroughly interdisciplinary undergraduate program that takes an intrinsically fascinating topic cognition and learning and uses the resources from across diverse parts of a university or college to address it. However, to do this properly requires special resources, resources that most institutions whose chief mission is undergraduate instruction, do not command. Consider some of the obstacles that must be overcome simply to mount a high quality introduction to cognitive science course.
First, there is the inherent difficulty of the subject matter. The esoteric and technical aspects of the discipline tend to intimidate students so that enrollments often remain low. A similar difficulty arises with faculty. The interdisciplinary character of the discipline makes it difficult to find an instructor competent to teach such a course alone. The most common solution to this problem is to create a team taught course, where faculty from four or five disciplines participate.
But this leads to a second obstacle, the practical difficulty of developing and staffing a team taught introductory course. Most undergraduate institutions are not able to release four or five faculty from their regular teaching duties, nor are they willing to pay that many people to teach a single course. If introductory courses in the cognitive sciences are to be well represented at undergraduate institutions, it must be possible for one person to teach them, and to teach them with the resources (time, equipment, expertise) that undergraduate instructors can reasonably be expected to have. Junior faculty are most likely to have the relevant interdisciplinary training and interests, yet because of their need to establish themselves in their discipline and to gain tenure and promotion they can rarely afford the extra time that it takes to develop demanding new courses of this type. Established faculty often have not had such training but do have expertise in their own field that could play a crucial role in an interdisciplinary program in cognitive science if only there were a curriculum that could itself provide the interdisciplinary expertise.
The third obstacle involves resources. Undergraduate institutions are ill equipped to supply either the equipment or the supervision needed to provide students with the hands on research experiences characteristic of the best cognitive science programs. It is difficult to learn cognitive science from a textbook. But where are the resources to make student research experiences possible?
The foregoing obstacles are all on the side of the delivery of the curriculum. But obstacles also abound on the student side of the equation. In the first place, most students don=t even discover that cognitive science exists until late in their undergraduate career, and then only if they have progressed far enough into a major in psychology or computer science to take a course which engages the field (like, for example, cognitive psychology or artificial intelligence). By that time, it is often too late to choose an undergraduate program that would be good preparation for a career in this field.
One problem, then, is to find a way to inform the general student population of the exciting opportunities in the cognitive and learning sciences, early enough in their career to influence their choice of undergraduate program. It is not enough, however, merely to find an appropriate context in which to introduce this field of study. There must also be a way of introducing the topic that deals responsibly with the content without intimidating those freshman and sophomores who immediately resist anything that appears too esoteric or Atechnical@.
(iii.) The Solution: This Mind Project is committed to developing a research oriented curriculum in the cognitive and learning sciences and to create the resources necessary for the curriculum to be delivered at primarily undergraduate colleges and universities. The curriculum will consist of dozens of modules covering most of the major disciplinary areas that contribute to the field. Each sub-field will give prominent place to the research methodologies characteristic of that discipline, giving students as much hands-on engagement with the tools of scientific inquiry as is possible. Every disciplinary area will have introductory level materials that will presuppose no previous background and so will be accessible to freshman and sophomores, even if the student has read none of the rest of the curriculum.
A curriculum of this type will provide what is lacking at most undergraduate institutions: a practical way of giving students not merely the abstract descriptions of research methods found in textbooks, but the experience of engaging in scientific inquiry, observing the methodologies close-up. This will provide a single instructor with all of the resources necessary to teach a responsible and exciting course in the cognitive and learning sciences. Such a course will no longer require a team of specialists, nor a person with an interdisciplinary degree in cognitive science. The required research expertise will be built into the online curriculum, which the students and the instructor will engage together.