Favorite Readings from TRAILS courses

These are readings which we believe may be useful to students taking TRAILS-affiliated courses. This list was put together by asking the instructors of our TRAILS courses to provide us with a short list of readings they consider indispensable.

Theories of Teaching and Learning

These readings focus on theories of teaching and learning as they apply to the kind of constructivist, project-based courses taught in affiliation with TRAILS.

• Bransford, J. et. al. (2000). How people learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Solidly grounded in the latest educational research and lucidly written, this book is an excellent introduction to theories of learning. Chapters 1 and 3 are good for contextualizing students, and Chapters 6 and 9 help students think critically about the design of learning environments and the use of technology to support learning.

• Collins, A., Brown, J. S., & Holum, A. (1991). Cognitive apprenticeship: making thinking visible. American Educator (Winter), 6-11, 38-46. Available online at http://www.21learn.org/arch/articles/brown_seely.html

Strongly endorsed by Stanford students as a good way to think about supporting learning.

• Oppenheimer, T. (2003). The flickering mind: The false promise of technology in the classroom and how learning can be saved. New York: Random House.

A somewhat depressing book which discusses, quite compellingly, some of the failed attempts to use technology in education. Provocative, and ultimately surprisingly motivational for CS students.

Design Principles and Methodologies

These readings will help ground students in an understanding of design as an iterative, user-focused, and reflective process.

• Schön, D. A. (1992). Designing as reflective conversation with the materials of a design situation. Research in Engineering Design, 3(3), 131-148.

Classic design paper highlighting that design is a psychological phenomenon.

• Norman, D. (1990). The design of everyday things. New York: Doubleday.

A classic treatise on all things interface related. A strange property of this book is that it turns computer scientists into people who care about psychology, but it turns educators into people who substitute usability for learning.

• Collins, A. (1996). Design issues for learning environments. In S. Vosniadou, E. D. Corte, R. Glaser, & H. Mandl (Eds.), International perspectives on the design of technology-supported learning environments (pp. 347-361). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Discusses cost-benefit tradeoffs that designers of learning environments should consider, in the following categories: content (e.g., breadth vs. depth), context (e.g., incidental vs. direct learning), sequence (e.g., structured vs. exploratory learning), and teaching methods (e.g., coaching).

• Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Chapter 1 presents "backwards design", an approach to curricular design that starts by considering what knowledge, understanding, and proficiency a student should have, then determining the evidence that assesses that understanding, and finally, planning the learning experiences and instruction. Chapter 4 presents six facets of understanding that indicate whether a student has achieved in-depth understanding. The six facets are: explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge.

• Gruen, D. (2000). Storyboarding for design: An overview of the process. (CUE Technical Report #00-03). IBM Watson Research Center.

A concise step by step guide for organizing a storyboard to communicate a design idea. This paper is really about goodstorytelling, not about making a visual impact.

Educational Game Design

A subset of the literature on software design deals specifically with games. Of course, games are not always designed with educational outcomes in mind, but our instructors considered these readings valuable.

• Rouse, R. (2001). Game design: Theory and practice. Wordware Publishing.

Great source from which individual readings can be selected. The book covers a wide range of topics, including game analysis, how to write a design document, and war stories from working game designers.

• Bos, N. What do game designers know about scaffolding? Borrowing SimCity design principles for education. Center for Innovative Learning Technologies, University of Michigan. Available online at: http://playspace.concord.org/Documents/Learning%20from%20SIMCITY.pdf

This paper analyzes the popular simulation game SimCity with the goal of identifying design principles that would be useful for educators.

• Klawe, M. (1999). Computer games, education and interfaces: The E-GEMS project. Proceedings Graphics Interface '99, Kingston.

This paper reviews seminal research in the area of educational games from 1992 to 1998 conducted by researchers at the University of British Columbia. Klawe describes controlled studies that were used to determine what software features were important for learning, based on pre- and post- tests. Klawe reflects on the key advantages offered by her educational games

User Testing and Observation

An important goal of TRAILS courses is to give students experience in testing their creations with end-users. The following readings will help students set up user-testing and gain the most value from the experience.

• Hoadley, C. (2002). Creating context: Design-based research in creating and understanding CSCL. In G. Stahl (Ed.), Computer Support for Collaborative Learning 2002 (pp. 453-462). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Discusses the importance of learning context for design, and also highlights how research and design support each other.

Multidisciplinary Teamwork

All TRAILS courses entail having students work in teams. The following readings have proven to help students think metacritically about the process of teamwork and communication.

• Bolton, R. (1986). People skills. Touchstone Books.

Chapter 4, "Four Skills of Reflective Listening," is an excellent practical introduction to thoughtful listening and effective dialogue in groups. A very good reading for helping students think metacritically about group dynamics.

• Johnson, R. & Johnson, T. (1994). An overview of cooperative learning. Originally published in: J. Thousand, A. Villa and A. Nevin (Eds.), Creativity and collaborative learning. Baltimore: Brookes Press. Available online at:
  http://www.co-operation.org/pages/overviewpaper.html

An excellent overview article, defining cooperative learning and documenting its benefits. Crucially, the authors write, "There is a difference between having students work in a group and structuring groups of students to work cooperatively." The article goes on to discuss key elements of cooperative work such as positive interdependence, individual accounability, personal responsibility, interpersonal and small-group skills, and self-reflection.

Additional Readings for Instructors

The following readings are more suitable for instructors or graduate students than undergraduates. They articulate theories and principles which can inform the design of TRAILS courses.

• Roschelle, J., & DiGiano, C. (to appear). ESCOT: Coordinating the influence of R&D and classroom practice to produce educational software from reusable components. Journal of Interactive Learning Environments.

Reflections on the success factors that allowed the ESCOT project to generate a series of interactive math puzzles over two school years. This paper emphasizes the importance of design perspectives from different disciplines and a structured design process. Long, but useful background, since the ESCOT project spawned TRAILS.

• Hoadley, C., & Kim, D. E. (2003). Learning, design, and technology: Creation of a design studio for educational innovation. In A. Palma dos Reis & P. Isaís (Eds.), Proceedings of the IADIS International Conference e-Society 2003 (pp. 510-519). Lisbon, Portugal: International Association for the Development of the Information Society IADIS.

The author writes: "This article embodies some of what I'm trying to get across when I teach design—it's not necessarily a great teaching article, but good for explaining how I teach to other people."

• Agre, Phillip (1996, 1997.) “The Internet and Education.”
  http://www.spectacle.org/1197/agre.html

A stimulating article about how technology development should be situated within a larger awareness of the needs of communities and individuals. Agre writes, “We know that we have really begun to develop a socially-driven agenda once the technology seems contingent -- no longer inevitable or monolithic but a matter of choice that we can shape in a conscious way.” To this end he suggests that key concepts in the minds of technology developers should be collective cognition, community systems design, and developmental democracy.

• Fincher, S., Petre, M., and Clark, M. (Eds). (2001). Computer science project work: Principles and pragmatics. Springer-Verlag.

This book is highly relevant to instructors planning a computer science project based course. It categorizes project courses, presents case studies, describes common issues and potential pitfalls and presents alternatives for addressing them, and describes best practices. It touches on the Close support and Collaboration parts of TripleC.

• Fruchter, A. and Emery, K. (1999). Teamwork: Assessing cross-disciplinary learning. Computer Support for Collaborative Learning (CSCL) 1999: December 12-15, 1999, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, pp. 166-173. http://www.ciltkn.org/cscl99/A19/A19.HTM

The paper describes experiences from a similar kind of course to what TRAILS is attempting to design. It involves architecture, engineering, and construction undergraduates and graduates. The authors take an interesting theoretical stance, that cross-disciplinary interaction fosters communities of practitioners. They place high value on the need for students from different disciplines to negotiate different languages and cultures.

• Koschmann, T., Kelson, A.C., Feltovich, P.J., & Barrows, H.S. (1996). Computer-supported problem-based learning: A principled approach to the use of computers in collaborative learning. In Koschmann, T. (Ed). CSCL: Theory and practice of an emerging paradigm. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

This paper outlines a methodology for conducting theory-based research in the learning sciences. The authors identify some very useful principles for thinking about learning in open-ended, ill-structured domains, such as the Principle of Activeness, the Principle of Authenticity, and the Principle of Termlessness.

Is your related reading missing from this list?

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0205625. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.