Facilitating learning transfer through students’ schemata
Instructional Designs that Reflect How the Net Generation Learns
Cognitive and neuroscience research has found that people who grow up with different cultural experiences don’t just think about different things, they actually think differently (Nisbett, et al. 2001; O’Boyle & Gill 1998). Due to the affordances of technology, today’s students think differently. Although more research is needed, initial results indicate that when instructional designs utilize students’ social and cognitive-connectedness schemata (SCCS), they can better reflect how today’s millenial students learn in the digital age.
6th grade middle school students participated in a unit of study based on the SCCS learning theory. During the unit, they uncovered enduring understandings in Virgil’s Aeneid, and then role-played characters from the story in an online virtual world. The research study found that instructional strategies based on students’ social and cognitive-connectedness schemata facilitated greater learning transfer than traditional instructional designs.
