Tools to Assist Learning by Doing

Learning by doing is a central way in which people acquire substantial expertise. It offers a number of advantages over other learning approaches. Most important, it avoids many aspects of the “inert knowledge” problem. Because principles are acquired through experience, the terms used to state those principles have clear referential meaning, at least within the scope of that experience. Learning by doing also affords opportunities for learning how to manage the full complexity of a real domain, at least when the learning tasks are of the same difficulty and complexity as the harder tasks posed in real life. In this chapter, I explore some of the tools and approaches that allow learning by doing to be a powerful scheme for education and training. I also discuss some specific difficulties in developing learning by doing technology.