EVOKE H20 Project

This is a project I just finished.  It is a six weeks challenge (assignment) for 7th grade science students.  All TEKS that are meet are listed on the website.  This challenge was inspired by the real ARG Urgent Evoke.

This type of Reality Game is hopefully where educational technology is heading.  It is more Organic in the learning process.  When creating this project I did not look at the website and computer I already had.  I found the issue to solve and the TEKS that could be learned along the way.  Then I use technology to make it happen!

Building a Scale

So my first big light bulb moment occurred this past weekend in CECS 6510.  Dr. K has been telling us that we are learning to build a scale and then learning how to measure something with it.  Well I guess I am just really hardheaded because I just got it!

We are essentially looking for connections in our survey questions and answers that build constructs.  We are doing this by using SPSS to analysis our data.

We follow a set of processes that brings our data from random questions to a set of questions that builds a strong construct leading to our development of a scale.  This process can be long and arduous, but filled with reward.  I will now attempt to summarize the process we are using in these classes.

This process is Cybernetic in nature (meaning it never ends and is a constant loop of knowledge acquisition). Here are the Cybernetic steps I am currently working with to build my first scale:

1. Descriptive Statistics (determines if all items contain real numbers)
2. Reliability Analysis (check Cronbach’s α)
3. Factor Analysis (look for constructs)
   1. After looping 2 and 3 for a while I run with the best construct and run some other analysis.
4. ALSCAL and Hierarchical clustering (looking for more groupings or better groupings)

After repeating these steps 1,000 times I found one very strong construct with a Conrbach’s α of .92.  I turned this construct into a single domain or box  to compare with my demographic info.  This new domain is my scale. YEA!!!  I am just about to finish my second scale based off of my second construct, wish me luck . . .

Cronbach’s α = Confused ∞

Thank goodness for SPSS.  When I started CECS 6510 and CECS 6800 I was very nervous about statistics.  I mean come on, I stink at math!  When I was growing up I had dyslexia and no one knew it.  They just kept trying glasses on me and placing me in math classes that I could survive.  I missed some important steps in the learning process, but I am going to survive!

After the first 2 hours of Dr. K’s class I already understood more than I thought I would the entire time.  He did a great job of explaining in layman’s terms.

I have purchased SPSS and am playing with the data the Dr. K provided us.  So far I have remembered how to do factor analysis which is Cronbach’s α.  I am not sure of all the math involved here, but at least I can read the numbers and know that we are shooting for .8 or higher!  This however makes me crossed eyed:

Next I ran the reliability analysis, looking at the construct validity of the tool.  I still don’t understand all the math behind it, but am getting a vague idea of the analysis.  It seems that it delves into the psychological trails of the answerer.

The one I do get the math and can do is the Coens D

Well this may be true, but after working on all of this group work at a distance, I am not sure that technology makes it any better, just probable!  From technical difficulties to miss-communication distance makes synchronous actions confusion.  Distance seems to add fuzz or gray matter to the conversation requiring an almost never ending loop of miss understanding.  With out the physical presence of a person (even in video) it is hard for me to pick up on instinctual context clues.  A project that should take us about 30 minutes to make decisions and move forward requires 2-3 hours.

I welcome change and would love to find a way to fill the gap between people.  I can not wrap my brain around a way to accomplish this task? Video/audio chat does this well with only two people conversing.  Make that number 3 or more and it seems that I cannot keep up with all the conversations and thoughts.  Even if everyone is on the screen in video form, they are in their own boxes.  I think of it like trying to have a conversation in an office building with others that are in adjacent or not adjacent cubicles.  This would be confusing the natural flow of conversation would be interupted because each person could not read the conversation clues given by each member.  I am sure this feeling is what persons with social disorders feel like.  They can’t read others context clues and just say what they are thinking or feeling at any time (maybe way off)?

Found this comic funny on the surface and yet even funnier when you think about it!  Media communication is created by humans and is limited to our perspectives.  So in our quest to communicate better we have limited ourselves!  Another element that makes me laugh is the thought of if we could actually read minds, the amount of information would make us crazy!  Much like the vast amount of information of the internet being projected into our heads all at one time.  Maybe that is the problem too much info our brains cannot handle it!

Paper can be found here: Dean Surface Learning Theory

This is my visual representation of my Cybernetic Distance Learning theory, I call this the Cybernetic Cognition Loop.  It contains elements from three various learning theories, some that deal with distance learning and some that do not.  The first theory is that of the learner’s cognition based on ACT-R theory of John Anderson. The second theory is that of Habermas and Warren, LTCA.  The final component is that of Cyberneticist Pask. Please let me know what you guys think about this theory.