Roger Schank

Don't teach content. Teach your students how to think on their feet in the problem domain.

Schank's "cognitive processes" in no particular order: Planning, Negotiation, Judgment, Evaluation, Teamwork, Prediction, Influence, Modeling, Diagnosis, Experimentation, Causation, and Describing.

A possible organisation of Schank's elements:

As a whole class we planned how we would divide into two teams. Team A were the science-minded among us, and they were to design and create the Product. Team B were the business-minded among us, and they were to establish a market and a supply chain.

{ Planning

   { Teamwork

      { Prediction Modeling Experimentation Causation }

      { Diagnosis Judgment Negotiation Influence }

Describing Evaluation } }

This is my interpretation of Schank. Line one above "Don't teach..." is my meaning constructed out of my understanding gained by reading his papers and watching his video lectures. While the words "Teamwork, Planning..." are his, the curly braces and the indentation are mine. This organisation of Schank's discrete elements aligns it with Gagnon & Collay as I show in an another article RS+GC. Also, the curly braces separate what I see to be a hard approach, and a soft approach. These are cognitive skills, and, staying true to Schank I have left both Negotiation and Influence there even thoughit seems to be duplication; I take negotiation to be negotiation, and influence to be leadership and/or power. Below I suggest an alternative scenario which might be suitable for cross disciplinary student project run over a semester or even over a whole year. Moodle would be an ideal vehicle for managing such a project.

Another possible organisation of Schank's elements:

In our teams we drew up a plan, and we used our judgment and negotiated our position. We came up with a hypothesis, and built a model on which we ran one or more experiments to determine the causation. We wrote up our experiment and we evaluated the method and the validity of the findings. Using this knowledge we were able to diagnose the problem and we have written a paper which we hope will influence others in this domain.

{ Teamwork

   { Planning Judgment Negotiation

      { Prediction Modeling Experimentation Causation Describing Evaluation }

    Diagnosis Influence }

}

The teams were Team A "Macro" and Team B "Micro".

The Macro team were responsible for Planning, Judgment, Negotiation, Diagnosis and Influence. The members of this team were selected from philosophy, law and political science courses.

The Micro team were responsible for Prediction, Modeling, Experimentation, Causation, Describing and Evaluation. The members of this team were selected from hard science and social science courses.

Team Micro were consultants to Team Macro.

Roger Shank Homepage There are only two things wrong with the education system - 1. What we teach 2. How we teach it. Available from: http://www.rogerschank.com Last accessed: 2011-03-04.