Week 1

1/20/09- Assessment CREATEDATE 1/20/09 11:10 AM Learning? a relatively permanent change in behavior. It?s not a permanent change because you can relearn to do things in a different way. Although it is permanent to a certain extent. Overt ? behavior you can see; i.e. the act of riding a bicycle Beginning of our association theorists ? focusing on behavior you can see. Covert ? behavior you can?t see - Formative Assessment before or during instruction identify area?s that need work - Summative Assessment ? This is what we do in this class comes at the end of instruction measures level of accomplishment Objective Testing Not open to interpretations Examples: MC, T/F, Matching Uses both recall and recognition Recall- you activate your memory and you pull up everything that you know and target a particular body of information. Recognition- retrieve only a portion of your memory just so that you recognize the answer. Can include factual info: ?Who is referred to as ?The Father of Behaviorism??? Can include analysis: ?Fred and Barney go bowling every Thursday after work. One Thursday, Fred gets to the bowling alley only to discover he left his shoes and ball at home. If Fred operates under a ?means-end? problem solving strategy, he would?? Assessment Bias ? ?Aspects of an assessment instrument that unfairly penalize a group of students because of their gender, age, SES, race, ethnicity?? Distractors ?Wrong answers offered as choices in MC questions? ? usually 3 distractors in a MC question. Paper Subjective Assessment Open to interpretation Examples: Papers, Essays Difficult to grade Rubrics are important Basis of evaluation Focus attention Volunteer opportunities HYPERLINK "mailto:schoolsofhope@yahoo.com" schoolsofhope@yahoo.com 9 AM-9:50 once a week HYPERLINK "http://www.mscr.org" www.mscr.org - assistant sports coaches contact dbennet@madison.k12.wi.us Associationism ?. pairing? connecting? Examples: Skinner: Stimulus ( Response There is a pairing between a stimulus and a response Response ( Consequence There is a pairing between these two, whether it be positive or not. Pavlov: His aspect of pairing up is actually in the area of excitation in the brain. We know now that this is not really what happened, but he felt that we have- Strong and Weak Centers of Excitation in the Brain i.e. when you put food in someone?s mouth, the area of the brain that is related to that stimulus will excite. Concepts Common to Associationism Antecedents/ Cues What comes first (before the behavior) Consequences What comes after the behavior Reinforcers Pleasurable outcomes Punishment The Consequence is negative; the individual or animal ends up in a state where they are not in pleasure Schedules (or timing) Can be schedules of reinforcement or schedules or presentation of stimulus compared to when we see the response. Theorists in Associationism Pavlov Watson ? ?Father of Behaviorism? Thorndike ? predecessor to Skinner (who focused on positive and negative reinforcement and positive and negative punishment) Skinner Tolman ? a nice in between the theories of Skinner and Albert Bandura Bandura ? Social Learning Theorist ( What to look for in the Video Pavlov Timing of Unconditioned Stimulus (presentation of food) and Conditioned Stimulus (ringing of bell) Order Discrimination of Cues ? timing of a metronome or a whistle vs. a bell Watson The essence of behaviorism Thorndike Pleasurable consequences Trial & Error Learning Skinner Schedules of Reinforcement VIDEO Pavlov- He thought the production of saliva may be part of a fixed reflex (like a knee jerk.) He confirmed the dog?s drooled automatically when their tongues touched food- the salivary reflex. The dogs became familiar with the experiment and started to anticipate the food. Before passing meet through the hatch now, the dogs would hear a ticking metronome. At first, the dogs would salivate only when the food disappeared. But after a number of trials, the dogs paired the ticking, with the meat. Eventually, the dogs would salivate as much to the ticking, as they would to the presentation of food. This new response to the metronome, was the ?conditioned reflex.? Thorndike- an experimental psychologist interested in people, but he used animals to substitute for general laws of learning. Wanted to see how long it took the chick to find it?s way home. On the first try, the day old chicks took several minutes to find their way back to their food and companions. They ended up performing faster with practice ultimately showing the progressive nature of learning. He placed a cat in a box the first time and didn?t see any flashes of insight. The successful actions appeared by trial and error. A well practiced cat quickly acts to get its reward of food. If an action brings a reward, Thorndike believed the action becomes stamped into the mind. He felt behavior changes because of its consequences- ?Law of Effect.?- which explains why even wild creatures create new habits. This ?Law of Effect? can be seen in nature with bear?s trying to learn how to catch fish. Some techniques pay off better than others. By trial and error, the older bears have learned what works best to catch fish. Thorndike emphasized measuring performance. A maze was a useful device for that. Watson- initially showed a flair for studying the nature of behavior in the field rather than the laboratory. Studied birds nests on an island. How did the bird?s learn their own patch of ground? They appeared to locate their own nests very easily. He would take an egg and move it a slight distance from its nest. Would the bird return to its egg? Or to its empty patch of sand?.. it settled on its own patch of sand and even went through the motion of tucking its own egg. The tern eventually retrieved its egg, but showed it was very attached to its original spot that it had chosen for its nest. He then tried altering the height of the nest. This did not seem to disturb the birds at all. Watson concluded that the birds had learned to use landmarks to locate their nests. He concluded that each bird had a path that it followed each time it returns to its nest. Back in the laboratory, Watson was interested in rats behavior and worked with the power of rewards to fix habits. The short distance runner stopped halfway when the food was not in its original place. He believed the environment was responsible for shaping behavior by reinforcing habits. Skinner ? invented the skinner box to mold behavior. The animal learned to tap a disk for its food. The scheduling of rewards affects the speed of learning. Habits were most frequently reinforced by infrequent rewards. i.e. gambling So.. the scientists were focusing on overt behavior. You don?t know what?s going on in the brain so therefore you only measure what you can see and that is the basis of behaviorism. In class notes on the video: Pavlov- Unconditioned Stimulus (food) ( Unconditioned Response (Saliva- the BIG woot woot woot!) ? this is NATURALLY occuring Conditioning Stimulus (bell [little woot woot]- is paired with US) CS (Bell) ( CR (saliva) ? this is a LEARNED Response both of the responses are DIFFERENT even they both result in SALIVA. The difference is only what produces the response.