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Cortex Futura
@cortexfutura
@ejames_c
Do you know if there's some work on this in the literature you've been exploring? It's naturally at the root of any training program design, so I suspect there must be?
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Cortex Futura
@cortexfutura
Aside from KhanAcademy, what are some good illustrations of knowledge dependency graphs? I.e. "before you can understand Y, you need to understand X"
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
Replying to
@cortexfutura
Actually what I'm finding in the NDM/cognitive systems engineering literature is the opposite: they don't pay attention to knowledge dependency graphs but instead do tacit knowledge extraction from experts directly. Then they build training programs on top of those mental models.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
Replying to
@ejames_c
and
@cortexfutura
This is one of the 'bombshell implications' of the screenshots I posted yesterday — knowledge dependency graphs often do not reflect what is in the heads of actual experts, so incremental complexification of training tends to not accelerate expertise.
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Cortex Futura
@cortexfutura
Replying to
@ejames_c
Hm, very interesting! Might this be a question of level? I.e. for a novice programmer you have to introduce variables before talking about refactoring, but for experts that's taken as a given?
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
Replying to
@cortexfutura
Yeah at first I thought that they were aiming for “how do we get journeyman level to expert level” type training programs. (Expertise acceleration). But they also assert that these methods may help accelerate novices getting to a min proficiency level. So I’m not so sure.
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Cortex Futura
@cortexfutura
Replying to
@ejames_c
Very curious, will have to read more! From my own experience I can say that there seems to be some sort of "complexity threshold" below which I *really* benefit from very clear, stepwise progression.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
Replying to
@cortexfutura
I think the danger they warn against is that often, the mental models built from simplified lessons are often slightly flawed, and must be broken to reach higher levels of expertise. Given their goal is to accelerate expertise, they argue: skip this.
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Cedric Chin
@ejames_c
Replying to
@ejames_c
and
@cortexfutura
Again, the context matters: the explicit goal of the book is that the military tasked these researchers to speed up expertise acquisition, so it makes sense that they break a lot of more mainstream, commonly accepted pedagogy ideas.
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