Instructional Principle: Students will generalize what is learned in one situation to other settings if specific steps are taken to assure transfer of learning.
To be useful, what is learned on the computer must be transferred beyond the setting in which it is learned. CITE The principles of generalization are no different for computerized instruction than for any other type of instruction. When the computer is used as a tool to support one area of the curriculum, learning can be expected to transfer beyond the original setting in exactly the same ways that it would after any other effective instruction.
One of the most useful principles in promoting transfer is to have students focus their attention on what they did that was successful. The teacher needs to ask questions that cause students to label the processes used in their thinking: "How did you figure it out?" Concept development depends on language development. Until the student knows a name (label) for a concept, it is practically impossible to apply it or transfer it to a new environment. Therefore the teacher should often ask students to reflect on what they have constructed. If necessary, the teacher should give prompts to help students realize what they have done and to put their insight into words.
The teacher should ask reflective questions at the end of the lesson, prompting the students to identify the strategies learned or applied in the lesson and to predict in what other situations they might use those same strategies. For instance, after a lesson using MECC's World Geograph or any other computerized database, the teacher might ask the students to describe other times in school when they are asked to think as they did while conducting the database search. Likewise, if a group of students using Oregon Trail first fail to make the trip successfully, the teacher might help them analyze their mistakes and change one variable at a time on subsequent trips in order to determine what factors cause success on the simulated trip. The teacher could then focus attention on the fact that this is an application of the scientific method that they have been studying in their science class and encourage them to identify other areas in the social studies curriculum or elsewhere in which the same experimental methodology can usefully be employed. With appropriate prompting, thoughtful students often think of numerous applications.
Transfering knowledge across subject matters is not a problem that is uniquely present only in classrooms that use computers. However, the fact that computers are visible evidence that tools can be used in more than one discipline might serve as a stimulus to encourage students to look for opportunities to transfer learning among disciplines. Table 3.2 lists several examples of both computerized and non-computerized programs designed to encourage students to apply thinking skills in more than a single discipline. Teachers should look for opportunities like these to promote transfer of learning across subject areas.
ADD NEWER EXAMPLES
When teaching a content lesson requiring a previously taught concept or thinking process, teachers can induce the students to look back by asking "What kind of processes did we use when we solved the problem in ...?" By teaching the process in isolation and asking the students to predict when they will use it (anticipation of transfer) and by applying the process to content by asking students to look back at the processes used previously (reflection to engender transfer), the teacher can move into and out of context transferring the processes as necessary. The teacher should constantly look for opportunities to encourage transfer by using, the "Remember when...? Now let's..." rule: "Remember when we used careful observation and predicting outcomes to sequence events in ------------? Now let's see how we can use that same strategy with this story...."
As we have stated, the principles described in this section are not unique to computerized instruction: they are simply good pedagogy. We have focused specific attention on them to promote the widest possible generalization of skills learned at the computer.
Transfer of Learning
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