Why is Information Processing Online Important?
Social Learning Online
Online learning platforms were created to fill a need for online distance education. The early stages of online learning consisted of mainly e-mail and discussion board communications. New cognitive bridges can be created between social online learning and Information Processing that can lead to learners becoming independent students at a faster pace.
Online learning creates more opportunities for learners to receive tools and support from fellow learners, in order to progress and develop themselves as improved, independent students. For example, the opportunity to interact with peers on a concept helps the student to develop a deeper understanding of, and engagement with, the material. This heightened processing, contributed to by peers, allows for more complex coding and, thus, better recall and retrieval later on.
The addition of new social implementations in the online world not only adds more opportunities for learners to connect with each other in new and exciting ways, but also creates new types of interaction with the information they are processing which strengthens the experience.
Online learning creates more opportunities for learners to receive tools and support from fellow learners, in order to progress and develop themselves as improved, independent students. For example, the opportunity to interact with peers on a concept helps the student to develop a deeper understanding of, and engagement with, the material. This heightened processing, contributed to by peers, allows for more complex coding and, thus, better recall and retrieval later on.
The addition of new social implementations in the online world not only adds more opportunities for learners to connect with each other in new and exciting ways, but also creates new types of interaction with the information they are processing which strengthens the experience.
The Information Processing Approach
Educational technology began its early development stages during the behaviourist period. Its relevance and importance grew with cognitive researchers and instructional designers.
The theories behaviourists developed were too limited to explain the many performance and memory tasks being observed in learners. The model of the computer and its function of converting input and output became the new method of explaining the fundamentals behind memory, basic thinking processes, learning, and decision making.
The theories behaviourists developed were too limited to explain the many performance and memory tasks being observed in learners. The model of the computer and its function of converting input and output became the new method of explaining the fundamentals behind memory, basic thinking processes, learning, and decision making.
The understanding of the theory that includes the processing of different levels of information is crucial to teaching in an online setting. This particular theory of Information Processing contributes to the understanding of the ability to access and retrieve information, with attention to labelling and giving meaning to the knowledge. Online learning environments, and their social aspect, support this type of learning and the adaptations that keep occurring to the information as it takes shape between multiple students, all contributing through input and output. Online instructors can use the basic fundamentals of information processing to gain insight how their students are learning through the observations and the data that is collected and available. For example, when a teacher assigns a research project, he may want to also include an online reflection portion using a discussion forum that includes peer feedback and review. Students can discuss how they retrieved and interpreted the information, stored, encoded, and organized their thoughts throughout the process. Other students in the class can contribute to the discussion; making comparisons to how they completed the project, or simply providing feedback. This open discussion platform allows for new insights and data metrics that are easily observable to the teacher, which may not be the case in a traditional classroom. This may include the ability to observe the sequence of cognitive events, a glimpse of what has been stored in short term versus long term memory, and the ability to validate the understanding of the content the student investigated. Information Processing Theory seeks to understand how people acquire new information, how they store information and recall it from memory, and how what they already know guides and determines what and how they will learn.(Snowman, McCown & Biehler, 2012)
Online activities that support information processing can range anywhere from online class discussion boards, to feedback techniques that allow students to participate in and anonymously provide feedback on their current learning and understanding of material. The analytics collected from the variety of online tools used can guide the direction and optimize the type of instruction the students receive to be as customized as possible for their learning requirements.
Online learning and sharing creates more opportunities for students to learn by doing, construct their own learning and, overall, results in more user generated content. This approach to learning is conducive to what we know about how information is processed and lead to the most effective methods of teaching students how to learn.
Cognitive Load, Memory, and Working in the Cloud
Digital memory has the ability to recall information incredibly accurately, and it is one of the reasons we have been storing everything from the history of the world, to our personal experiences online. Our brains could not accomplish the task of remembering so much information all at once, but we’ve learned how to organize and retrieve information we’ve offloaded from our minds and put into the cloud to use later. According to research conducted by neuroscientists focusing on learning and memory, our brains have the ability to keep up to around four items in our working memory. Their research has shown that each hemisphere can maintain two of these items (Buschman et al., 2011).
Learners have been learning to store and retrieve information into databases and now, with the access to digital databases online, we can access this information more easily than ever before. Students can develop their skills of storing and retrieving information plus supplementing their data by finding new information from different online sources, whether it’s from peers or a larger online community. With the use of online technology, and its ability to use multimedia to engage multiple sensory registers, the learner is utilizing more pathways in the brain which reinforces the learner.
Online learning has the ability to engage the learner in new experiences that help in reinforcing knowledge acquisition. The move from learning repetitive static information, to learning how to retrieve and verify stored information, that is combined with engaging material, demonstrates a potential direction of information processing considerations for online learning.
Information Processing uses the model of how a computer stores information that is received through sensory input and moved into short term memory when accessed and to be worked on. Information that is deemed important is moved into long term memory for later access. When this theory is functionally understood from a macro level, a teacher conducting online learning can examine the details of the model and ask oneself these questions about their students: What sensory input worked best to transfer information from STM to LTM, how much can be stored in short term memory, and what method best activates long term knowledge acquisition and retention? Understanding Information Processing is important to online learning for the teaching advantages obtained from the deeper understanding behind the more observable learning taking place.