See also the discussion of emotional connection in the "mnemonic video" section of this essay with , on how MOOCs struggle to leverage the emotional range of video while also supporting detail: numinous.productions/ttft/#mnemonic
Conversation
Are you sure you were exposed to programs of instruction like those arranged by Skinner in
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Your descriptions appear wildly incompatible with the general principles presented in Skinner's "The Technology of Teaching" which can be read here bfskinner.org/wp-content/upl
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Specifically, very little of any part of Khan Academy resembles the interlocking verbal contingencies arranged by Skinner or mentioned in The Technology of Teaching.
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Watters and I chatted a bit and both agrees that a lot of people really think they know Skinner but REALLY don't because they are blinded by what history says of him rather than what is recorded from primary sources.
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As further example, there are none of the contingencies which select for effective behavior in any of the videos from Khan Academy: if videos were part of a program of instruction then they were nothing more than the following exhibits
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Note that few of the exhibits are presented as "to be read" and that even those which are read are in no way independent of the subsequent verbal contingencies arranged by the meager technique of vanishing.
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For particularly relevant writings from Skinner see chapter 8 on "the creative student" in his Technology of Teaching . You'll note some of your criticisms are overtly mentioned and dealt with when further care is taken to learn from the science of behavior.
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Broadly, your questions and comments do not appear to have their origins in Skinner's work beyond what others have reported on it.
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Thanks for these. You're right: I haven't read Skinner's work, at all, and I'm really using his name as a handle for the understandings typically deployed in ed-tech. If I want to understand this better I expect I'll need to read that book—thanks for sharing.
Watters gets the history right in her book, but the science is not as strong. This is in large part because Skinner wrote to change the public rather than continue the technical work which established his experimental techniques as scientific fact.
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To date, Skinner and Forrester's "Schedules of Reinforcement" remains the analog of Kepler's tables and charts in the science of behavior. It is essential reading because it grounds the remaining work in concrete experimental techniques bfskinner.org/wp-content/upl
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