Teaching and Learning in Engineering (TALE)

Prof. N.J. Rao

Lecture - 03
Learning, Instruction and Assessment

Welcome to the module 1 unit 3 which is related to three familiar words namely learning,
assessment and instruction.
(Refer Slide Time: 00:47)

These are what we were doing in the previous unit, we looked at the words education and
teaching. Education as we noted is intentional learning. Generally that is decided by some
agency of the society. Wherein in education really refers to transfer of accumulated knowledge,
values and skills considered necessary and desirable for a profession from one generation to
another. And this is normally done through some designated institutions. It could be a school or a
college or a university. Whereas teaching is facilitating learning through some interventions by
the teacher. These interventions can be many but the choice of this intervention is based on the
preferences of the teacher, or the nature of the subject and the context. So there are a large
variety of types of interventions that can be brought in by the teacher.
(Refer Slide Time: 02:05)
Now coming to our present unit, there are two outcomes. One is again we try to get introduced to
the familiar words, “learning”, “assessment” and “instruction” and also try to understand the
centrality of assessment in facilitating “good learning”. These are the two major outcomes that
we are trying to attain.
(Refer Slide Time: 02:36)

Now coming to the learning, learning can be defined from several standpoints. First thing is
learning is acquiring some new knowledge, skills and values which we did not have prior to
learning. If learning did not make any difference to any of these areas that means the learning has
not taken place. So learning is acquiring new knowledge, skills and values that we did not have
prior to the event of learning.
Then another way of looking at learning is, learning is a process that leads to change which
occurs as a result of experience and increases the potential for improved performance and future
learning. So, what we are saying is learning is a process that leads to some change. And another
way of putting is, learning is a complex interaction of myriad influences including genes,
neurophysiology, physical state, social experience and psychological factors.

As these factors are different for different individuals so what may happen is learning is not
exactly the same for all the learners in a particular during an organized learning experience. And
what happens, as we keep learning our view of the world keeps changing because we are
anything new that we acquire is built on top of what we already know. And sometimes whatever
we learned can make a difference to us, sometimes may not make a difference to us. So but still
in the net our view of the world keeps changing as we learn.
(Refer Slide Time: 04:45)

Now, possession of information is not synonymous with learning. That means merely if you
accumulate information that is not synonymous with learning at all. Possession of information
you may reproduce it but that may not translate into acquisition of new knowledge. So
possession of mere information is not synonymous with learning. A little bit of neuroscience
point of view, learning is stabilizing through repeated use certain appropriate and desirable
synapses in the brain. So after all learning takes place in the brain.
So physiologically what happens is, certain synapses because of repeated use they get stabilized,
they become somewhat semi-permanent. So learning can be interpreted in terms of stabilizing
the desirable synapses. You may also stabilize some undesirable synapses which leads to
acquiring some bad habits. Now another way of looking at again from neuroscience, learning
imposes new patterns or organization in the brain and this phenomenon has been confirmed by
electrophysiological recordings of the activity of nerve cells.

So, what was observed is as you keep learning, new patterns of organization in the brain are
observed through available experimental methods.
(Refer Slide Time: 06:32)

Now there are a whole bunch of learning theories and still newer theories are coming into vogue.
The oldest one that we know of is the “behaviorism”. It is based on saying that we do not know
what exactly is happening inside the brain. That is because this particular viewpoint came into
being during early part of the 20th century. And here the school of behaviorism stated learning is
the acquisition of new behavior through conditioning.

That means people are given some stimuli and they respond in some way by conditioning we can
make people to respond in a desirable way. So that is what the behaviorism is. There has been
enormous amount of criticism of this over the decades but still there are many practices that have
come from behaviorism which are still in use during both elementary to university type of
education.

Then another theory is “cognitivism”, where around 1940s there is a some amount of
understanding what is happening in the brain. Based on that it was it was felt humans learn by
generating knowledge and meaning through sequential development of their cognitive abilities.
We will be spending more time on this cognitive abilities and these include recognition,
recollection, understanding, application, reflection, analysis, evaluation and creation.

These are all the cognitive activities a human can perform. So to that extent our learning can be
looked through this cognitive activities.
(Refer Slide Time: 08:48)

Then came what we call “social constructivism”. First constructivism is what it believes is as we
keep learning our view of the world keeps changing. So we are continuously reconstructing our
view of the world. And then social constructivism says that, we can do that through social
interactions much better. And there is enormous amount of research that is done and some
schools follow strictly their entire school learning through social constructivism.

Techniques like discovery learning, hands-on learning, experiential, collaborative, project based,
task based learning are all based on this theory of constructivism.
(Refer Slide Time: 09:51)

Now, relatively recent one it is called “Heutagogy”, is the study of self-determined learning.
What it means is, it is a form of self-determined learning that is holistic learner centered
approach to learning and teaching in formal and informal situations. Now this can be technically
absorbed under social constructivism but here it highlights this. That means knowing how to
learn is a more important skill than just acquiring knowledge.

And this is where what do you call this also gets reflected in one of the program outcomes that
we are going to look at namely the what do you call a graduate of engineering program should
know how to learn by himself. Because of the constant change in the structure of our
communities, work places, technologies you cannot remain static and you have to constantly
learn on the fly.

And that is how heutagogy becomes a dominant is considered important in present era. Similarly,
“paragogy” is also can be considered as a part of social constructivism. But again it highlights as
paragogy deals with analyzing and co-creating the educational environment as a whole by the
peers who share their learning situations and experiences benefitting from information
technology.
That is you learn better through social interactions and one should actually plan the learning
situations like that and the role of information technology is that the peers need not be always
face to face. They can interact with each other over the internet.
(Refer Slide Time: 12:17)

Then another learning theory is “connectivism”. This is still the result of today’s growth in the
information technology. Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network
and complexity and self-organization theories. We consider the knowledge exist in a diffused
way in a nebulous environments.

So what happens as you keep exploring. for example as a learner, you yourself can explore what
is this concept of connectivism and how it is going to be useful to you with respect to your
subject. When you explore, there is a tremendous amount of knowledge that is available in
various notes that means various websites that you will have. Depending on how you keep
traversing that, your learning will differ.

So your connectivism to that extent is a means of or means of learning which you can consider
nonlinear and it cannot be exactly decided in advance this is the way you have to learn like
reading a given textbook. So these are some of the learning theories. There can be, one can
maybe list some more but these are the present day dominant learning theories.
(Refer Slide Time: 13:56)
Now educational psychologists derive principles of learning process and some of the principles
of learning, some examples are “contiguity”. That is how two topics are related to each other. So
one topic becomes a prerequisite to the next one which is a fairly simple thing to understand.
And another one is “repetition”. As we know through repetition we can understand or learn
better. That is practicing some problems you keep on repeating, repeatedly you read something
and similarly “reinforcement”. Your understanding of a concept can be reinforced by a large
number of examples. You should be able to relate to that. And similarly if you look at
“sociocultural context of learning”. That means learning depends on the context in which you are
learning. Okay this is where issues like negotiated meanings, situated cognition, activity theory
etc. start becoming relevant.

We are not going to explore these things but all that we need to realize is there are several
principles of learning that have been identified over the years.
(Refer Slide Time: 15:26)
Now come to the another topic “assessment”. What is assessment? Assessment is a measure of
performance. For example, how do I know a learner has learned something? So as a consequence
of learning, he has to perform. This performance could be like solving a problem or making a
presentation or performing an experiment in the laboratory, it can be, there are many such
activities which can be used to measure to what extent a student has learnt.

And what happens once somebody perform something like performs an experiment then
evaluation is interpretation of assessment. That means once the instructor observes to in what
way the student has performed the experiment and got the results he will give a mark or a grade
to that. That giving a mark or a grade is considered evaluation.

Unfortunately, even in the teaching community, the word assessment and evaluations many times
are these words are interchanged. So there should be a clear difference between assessment and
evaluation. Now what happens students how do they prepare, how do they plan their learning
because at the beginning of any semester, a student really wants to do well in the examination.
He wants to get a good grade. And how does he get a good grade?

It depends on how well he has performed in various tests that have been designed. It could be
class test, it could be assignments, it could be laboratory or it could be the end semester
examination. So what happens, he has to find out or the teacher has to tell him what kind of
assessment tools towards which they have to prepare themselves. So essentially you are telling
through your assessments what is considered important. Because after all the student will spend
time on what is considered important.
So putting it in another way, teachers can guide students to learn through their assessment by
working out a problem in the class or making them work out a problem in the class or giving the
right kind of questions in the end semester exams you are able to guide the students to learn well.

So if you, your assessment is poor, automatically the students will, the learning by the students
will also be poor. So in a way assessment is a glue that links the components of a course, that is
its content, instructional methods and skills and development, okay? So in summary you can say
assessment really drives student learning. So to that extent assessment is really central to
learning.
(Refer Slide Time: 18:56)

Now, what are the types of assessment that you have? A formative assessment and summative
assessment. Formative assessment means you are using assessment as a means of facilitating
learning like for example you are asking a question in the classroom or you conduct a quiz for
which you are not giving any marks but it essentially serves as a feedback both to the teacher as
well as the student.
And that is what we call as formative assessment or it is also considered assessment of learning
or educative assessment in the sense that no marks are given. Whereas summative assessment is,
you are assessing to determine to what is it that the student has learnt either up to a point or at the
end of a course. So that is where you are actually grading or marking the student’s performance.

Some purists believe there should never be summative assessment, there should only be
formative assessment. That is the best way to learn. But unfortunately what happens formative
assessment once the student knows that it is not going to make a difference whether he performs
or not in that he may or may not put the required effort to perform. He may be capable but he
will not put the effort and this also has been observed universally, so, to that extent formative
assessment while it is certainly desirable we cannot completely depend on that.
(Refer Slide Time: 20:45)

Now, another important feature of assessment is the “alignment”. Assessment should be in

But in actual assessment you only ask the theory of a device or describe a circuit or find out what
is the function of the circuit. If your assessment is only limited to that, that means your
assessment is not in alignment with the stated outcome. This is one of the very important
properties and unfortunately today if you look at majority of the test papers or the university
exams, there is a total lack of alignment between the assessment and at least perceived outcomes
of the course.

So a systematic effort should be made in designing your test papers to ensure there is adequate
alignment between assessment and the stated outcomes. We will be seeing more of this in later
units.
(Refer Slide Time: 22:34)

Now come to the third topic namely “instruction”. Purpose of instruction is to help people learn
and develop. And learning and development as we will see in later units can be looked at 4
levels. It is a cognitive level, affective, it is not really, domains of learning you can say cognitive
domain, affective domain, psychomotor domain and spiritual domain.

While all the all of them are important to varying degrees in different situations, especially while
affective domain is very important but as of now we really do not know how to integrate the
learning in the affective domain with the cognitive domain. So at present the learning is
dominantly is kept at cognitive domain and some courses, some type of topics, psychomotor
domain may also become important.
Like courses on theater, drama or paintings, music, sports and so on, psychomotor domain
becomes important. And what should be realized is learning can certainly occur without
instruction. Nobody need to hold out hand. Just if you live your life possibly you are constantly
interacting with the outside world and you are leaning. But if you want a student to or learner to
acquire some outcomes then the instruction becomes important.

Now instructional designers apply the principles of learning to the design of external events we
call instruction. So instead of leaving it to chance occurrence, instructional designer who a
teacher also with a little bit of knowledge can become a instructional designer. He plans external
events. What type of events are we talking about?
(Refer Slide Time: 24:59)

The events could be like demonstrating some new knowledge or conducting a quiz or asking the
students to discuss with each other. Or asking individual student to solve a problem in the class.
These are all instructional events and an instructional designer or the teacher will organize these
events in a proper sequence. That is what instructional design is. And we need some principles of
instructional design. What would they do?

This if you understand the principles of instructional design, they would help instructor to decide
when practice and feedback will be most effective. That means at what point of interaction in the
classroom or otherwise you have to make student to practice something and when do you take
the feedback? You have to choose the right kind of movement for it to be most effective. And
when do you actually want to work students in groups?

Some exercises are best done in groups. Some are not suitable for group activity. So an instructor
will have to decide when actually when is it beneficial to put students into groups. For example
what we call we will again elaborate problem solving higher-order learning skills. How do you
take the student through various phases so that he is going to acquire the higher-order learning
skills and what are the prerequisites and how do you sequence them.

And these principles of instructional design would also help producers of instructional materials.
Instructional materials are what an instructor uses. Curriculum material developers, that is the
material that is going to be used by the learners and web-based course designers, knowledge
management system designers, these principles of instructional design would be beneficial to all
of them.
(Refer Slide Time: 27:26)

And what is instructional design theory? It is a theory that offers explicit guidance and how to
better help people learn and develop. So there are several design theories as we see. They offer
explicit guidance and how to better help people to learn and develop. It is a design oriented
theory. We will presently see what a design oriented theory is and these theories will also identify
methods of instruction and the situations in which those methods should and should not be used.
Every type of instructional method should not be used in all conditions.

So an instructional design theory will also kind of help you in choosing the right kind of situation
for applying a method. One thing should be remembered, any method that is suggested is only
probabilistic rather than deterministic because learning as we noted is a function of a large
number of factors. It is impossible and each student is different from the other. What works for
one person will not work for another person.

But so to that extent any methods that you suggest we can only say the probability of the student
learning better improves if you follow this instructional method. So everything is probabilistic.
(Refer Slide Time: 29:07)

And what are “design theories”? Design theories are different from what we call descriptive
theories. Most of the research that we do in any particular discipline is dominantly descriptive
theory. Descriptive theory means a cause A leads to effect B. You may hypothesize and then
either experimentally or theoretically you prove or disprove A leads to B or not and much of the
research is done like that.

Whereas design theory is prescriptive in nature. So what happens, prescriptive means if you do
like this you will reach your goal better. That is what we mean by a prescriptive thing. So to that
extent all instruction design theories are design theories in nature and they are intended to
provide direct guidance to practitioners about what methods to use to attain different goals. But
results are not guaranteed. So when do you consider a design theory is good? That if one theory
leads to better achievement of goals when compared to another theory, then we consider it is a
better designed theory. So you consider the measure is preferability. That means one particular
theory is preferred over the other. That is the nature of design theories.
(Refer Slide Time: 30:51)

Now, this is one example of design theory. What it says, it may look pretty obvious but stated in
a, in clear steps. Clear information should be provided to the student. That is descriptions and
examples of goals, knowledge needed and the performances expected. Thoughtful practice,
opportunities for learners to engage actively and reflectively whatever is to be learned.

This is very important. Unfortunately in our current practices we do not give adequate
opportunity for learners to engage actively and reflectively. We focus more on information
transmission or information transfer and leave the learner’s engagement to either chance or you
expect them to do on their own. It is not a guided activity. And the moment you bring that into
the classroom, it is going to take considerable effort, considerable time for that.

So thoughtful practice how to integrate into the regular classroom work is a major challenge.
And then third point is informative feedback. Clear, thorough counsel to learners about their
performance helping them to proceed more effectively. That means constant feedback has to be
given. Once again it is a challenge. You cannot give this feedback to each and every individual
separately.

So you have to work out a method of giving feedback to the maximum number of people. For
example, tutorials do help in this process. Strong intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. That means
activities that are amply rewarded, either because they are very interesting and engaging in
themselves or because they feed into other achievements that concern the learner. What it means
is, all activities that we plan should somehow be of interest to the learner.

Either he considers, yes it is a bit challenging. The learner likes to work on such a thing. Or he
thinks that solving this problem or learning something will lead to achievement of things that he
is truly interested. So and both of them, both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations will have to be
arranged for the student. A trivial thing is you can say those who solve the problem first in the
class can be rewarded by let us say you give a small reward. That itself can sometimes can be
motivating to students.
(Refer Slide Time: 33:57)

Some more theories of instructional design call it direct approach, discussion approach,
experiential approach, problem-based approach, simulation approach. These are all theories of
instructional design. Some of them we will be looking at during the module on instruction.
(Refer Slide Time: 34:21)

Now coming to the end of this unit, we have looked at three familiar words. We have been using
these words for quite some time namely the learning, assessment, and instruction. We tried to
give very specific meaning to these words and now coming to the assignments, you write a small
note which one of the learning theories you can relate to more in your experiences and why? A
maximum of 250 words can be written.

And second one is why do we need to be concerned with assessment in engineering education
and how? How do you in what way if you are concerned about the assessment, how are you
going to where is it going to reflect, what are the planning to do. Once again, write a few maybe
build up points maximum 250 words. Give two examples of your approaches to instruction you
felt led to better learning by students in the courses you taught or experienced.

So take two examples from your own course which you have taught several times and try to take
an example from that you thought by following that the students have learned better. Write
maximum 500 words for each example giving some evidence of better learning. It is not your
view alone, but some evidence will have to be given on basis on which you learn you thought the
students have learnt better.
(Refer Slide Time: 36:14)
Now when we go to the next unit, we attempt to now understand the features of outcomes and
outcome based education that make the education student centric. As we said right in the first
unit, the major shift that is taking place is making the education student centric. So we try to
establish through the next maybe two units that outcome based education truly makes the
education student centric. Thank you.