When are powerful learning environments effective? The role of learner activities and of students’ conceptions of educational technology

ion (Gerjets, Scheiter, & Catrambone, 2004) and with a computational ACT-R model of solving mathematical word problems (Gerjets, Scheiter, & Schorr, in press). When intrinsic load is high because of complex learning materials or low levels of expertise and when instructional environments elicit or require activities that are not by themselves helpful for learning – and thus result in high levels of extraneous cognitive load –no resources might be left for important learning processes like schema construction or elaborative inferences. This theoretical perspective may be especially fruitful to be applied to technology-based learning environments that allow for a high level of interactivity. For instance, in computer-based learning environments extraneous cognitive load might result from cognitive processes necessary to operate the computer and to interact with the learning environment. Thus, from the perspective of cognitive load theory, designing technology-based instructional environments should mainly aim at reducing unnecessary extraneous cognitive load and at imposing germane cognitive load by forcing learners to invest mental effort in activities that foster the construction of complex cognitive structures. As demonstrated in the previous section this may involve, however, to reduce learners’ opportunities for constructive, cooperative, authentic, and self-controlled learning. Although authentic whole learning tasks are considered the driving force for learning in powerful learning environments, we acknowledge that their complexity in the form of high element interactivity or intrinsic cognitive load in combination with the load caused by the manner in which the information is presented, may hamper learning by the limited processing capacity of working memory. (Van Merriënboer & Paas, 2003, p. 14) Analyzing learners’ interactions with technological learning environments at a fine-grained level of learner activities, learner goals, processing strategies, and resulting patterns of cognitive load can be expected to predict learning outcomes much better and to inform the design of powerful learning environments in a more efficient way than the coarse-grained analyses provided by many constructivist theories. 23 ha l-0 01 97 41 6, v er si on 1 14 D ec 2 00 7 4. Learner activities in technology-based environments and their conceptions of educational technology According to the analysis given in the previous section it is of vital importance to understand in detail the conditions that lead to the execution of suitable learner activities when designing instructional environments for self-controlled learning. Again, the knowledge on how design features and learner characteristics influence the selection of learner goals and processing strategies has to be rather specific in order to have any impact on improving learning outcomes. Thus, knowing correlations between design features, learner characteristics, and learning outcomes without integrating more specific process assumptions will not be sufficient. Even worse, simply assuming that providing appropriate opportunities for suitable learner activities will be sufficient to elicit these activities is quite naïve and thus might fail to produce the respective learning outcomes. Nevertheless this attitude is quite common within the constructivist framework (Petraglia, 1998, p. 60): The model of a learner who is cleansed of inappropriate attitudes and motivations continues to lie at the heart of constructivist education. Such a learner is not merely predisposed to efficiency and logic, but is affectively compliant with the educator’s desires. This reflects many constructivists’ somewhat sentimental presumption that students are fairly bursting with enthusiasm to learn if only educators would let them. Contrary to this sentimental view, learners may simply not engage in suitable learning activities even when these activities are enabled by the design of a learning environment. Thus, we have to specify the conditions under which learners really engage in these activities and not in less effective activities. Thereby we have to keep in mind that – besides the attributes of the learning environment – there might be a multiplicity of individual difference variables that play a role, for instance instructional conceptions of the learners that are in the focus of this special issue (cf. Lowyck, Elen, & Clarebout, this volume). Many of these instructional conceptions will be important in powerful learning environments independent of whether these environments are implemented by means of educational technology or not. However, there is one specific type of instructional conceptions that 24 ha l-0 01 97 41 6, v er si on 1 14 D ec 2 00 7 will be of particular importance with regard to learner activities in technology-based learning environments. These are students’ ideas, concepts, and theories on educational technology and its use in