Abstract
The goal of this paper is to consider two distinct orientations toward learning within the context of twenty-first-century higher education that have implications for assessment of outcomes internationally—information management and knowledge building. These two orientations are compared and contrasted along various dimensions, and potential contributors to the pervasiveness of the information management profile within the current generation of undergraduates are explored. With this background established, pertinent steps toward fostering more effective information management and enhancing knowledge building in higher education contexts are shared with specific attention to the role of assessment practices.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ackerman, R., & Goldsmith, M. (2011). Metacognitive regulation of text learning: On screen versus paper. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 17(1), 18–32.
Alexander, P. A. (1997). Mapping the multidimensional nature of domain learning: The interplay of cognitive, motivational, and strategic forces. In M. L. Maehr & P. R. Pintrich (Eds.), Advances in motivation and achievement (Vol. 10, pp. 213–250). Greenwich: JAI Press.
Alexander, P. A. (2014). Thinking critically and analytically about critical-analytic thinking: An introduction. Educational Psychology Review, 26(4), 469–476.
Alexander, P. A. (2015a). A+ students/c- learners: Education’s report card. Psychology Today, American Psychology Association Blog Series. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psyched/201502/studentsc-learners-education-s-report-card
Alexander, P. A. (2015b). Information management versus knowledge building: Implications for learning and assessment in higher education. Affiliated meeting of KOKOHs, competence modeling and competence assessment in higher education, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz Germany and the American Educational Research Conference, Chicago.
Alexander, P. A., & Knight, S. L. (1993). Dimensions of the interplay between learning and teaching. The Educational Forum, 57, 232–245.
Alexander, P. A., & Murphy, P. K. (1998). Profiling the differences in students’ knowledge, interest, and strategic processing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 435–447.
Alexander, P. A., & The Disciplined Reading and Learning Research Laboratory. (2012). Reading into the future: Competence for the 21st century. Educational Psychologist, 47(4), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2012.722511.
Alexander, P. A., Jetton, T. L., & Kulikowich, J. M. (1995). Interrelationship of knowledge, interest, and recall: Assessing a model of domain learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 87, 559–575.
Alexander, P. A., Dumas, D., Grossnickle, E. M., List, A., & Firetto, C. M. (2015). Measuring relational reasoning. Journal of Experimental Education., 84, 119. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220973.2014.963216.
Alexander, P. A., Singer, L., Jablansky, S., & Hattan, C. (2016). Relational reasoning in word and in figure. Journal of Educational Psychology, 108, 1140–1152.
Alexander, P. A., Grossnickle, E. M., Dumas, D., & Hattan, C. (in press). A retrospective and prospective examination of cognitive strategies and academic development: Where have we come in twenty-five years? In A. O’Donnell (Ed.), Handbook of educational psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Au, W. (2007). High-stakes testing and curricular control: A qualitative metasynthesis. Educational Researcher, 36(5), 258–267.
Biggs, J. B., & Collis, K. F. (1982). Evaluating the quality of learning: The SOLO taxonomy (Structure of the observed learning outcome). New York: Academic Press.
Bok, D. (2009). Our underachieving colleges: A candid look at how much students learn and why they should be learning more. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Braasch, J. L., Rouet, J. F., Vibert, N., & Britt, M. A. (2012). Readers’ use of source information in text comprehension. Memory and Cognition, 40(3), 450–465.
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (1999). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Bråten, I., Strømsø, H. I., & Salmerón, L. (2011). Trust and mistrust when students read multiple information sources about climate change. Learning and Instruction, 21(2), 180–192.
Dinsmore, D. L., & Alexander, P. A. (2012). A critical discussion of deep and surface processing: What it means, how it is measured, the role of context, and model specification. Educational Psychology Review, 24(4), 499–567.
Dumas, D., Alexander, P. A., Baker, L. M., Jablansky, S., & Dunbar, K. M. (2014). Relational reasoning in medical education: Patterns in discourse and diagnosis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 106(4), 1021–1035.
Durkin, D. (1978–1979). What classroom observations reveal about reading comprehension instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 14, 481–533.
Entwistle, N., & Entwistle, D. (2003). Preparing for examinations: The interplay of memorizing and understanding, and the development of knowledge objects. Higher Education Research & Development, 22(1), 19–41.
Entwistle, N. J., & Peterson, E. R. (2004). Conceptions of learning and knowledge in higher education: Relationships with study behaviour and influences of learning environments. International Journal of Educational Research, 41(6), 407–428.
Evans, J. S. B., & Stanovich, K. E. (2013). Dual-process theories of higher cognition advancing the debate. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(3), 223–241.
Foehr, U. G. (2006). Media multitasking among American youth: Prevalence, predictors and pairings. Washington, DC: Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
Franco, G. M., Muis, K. R., Kendeou, P., Ranellucci, J., Sampasivam, L., & Wang, X. (2012). Examining the influences of epistemic beliefs and knowledge representations on cognitive processing and conceptual change when learning physics. Learning and Instruction, 22(1), 62–77.
Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2004). Does your assessment support your students’ learning? Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 1(1), 1–30.
Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). A meta-analysis of writing instruction for adolescent students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99(3), 445–476.
Hattie, J. A. (1993). Measuring the effects of schooling. SET, 2, 1–4.
Hattie, J. (2013). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge.
Hembrooke, H., & Gay, G. (2003). The laptop and the lecture: The effects of multitasking in learning environments. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 15(1), 46–64.
Hofer, B. K. (2000). Dimensionality and disciplinary differences in personal epistemology. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(4), 378–405.
Kulikowich, J. M., & Alexander, P. A. (2010). Intentionality to learn, in an academic domain. Early Education and Development, 21(5), 724–743.
List, A., & Alexander, P. A. (2017). Cognitive affective engagement model of multiple source use. Educational Psychologist, 52, 182. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2017.1329014.
List, A., Grossnickle, E. M., & Alexander, P. A. (2015). Undergraduate students’ justifications for source selection in a digital academic context. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 54, 22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0735633115606659.
Marton, F., & Säljö, R. (1976). On qualitative differences in learning: I—Outcome and process. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 46(1), 4–11.
Mason, L., Ariasi, N., & Boldrin, A. (2011). Epistemic beliefs in action: Spontaneous reflections about knowledge and knowing during online information searching and their influence on learning. Learning and Instruction, 21(1), 137–151.
Meece, J. L., Blumenfeld, P. C., & Hoyle, R. H. (1988). Students’ goal orientation and cognitive engagement in classroom activities. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 514–523.
Murphy, P. K., Rowe, M. L., Ramani, G., & Silverman, R. (2014). Promoting critical-analytic thinking in children and adolescents at home and in school. Educational Psychology Review, 26(4), 561–578.
Nandagopal, K., & Ericsson, K. A. (2012). Enhancing students’ performance in traditional education: Implications from expert performance approach and deliberate practice. In K. R. Harris, S. Graham, & T. Urdan (Eds.), Educational psychology handbook (Vol. 1, pp. 257–293). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Nelson, H. (2013). Testing more, teaching less: What America’s obsession with student testing costs in money and lost instructional time. Washington, DC: American Federation of Teachers.
Ophir, E., Nass, C., & Wagner, A. D. (2009). Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(37), 15583–15587.
Pellegrino, J. W. (2006). Rethinking and redesigning curriculum, instruction and assessment: What contemporary research and theory suggests. Washington, DC: National Center on Education and the Economy for the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce.
Pellegrino, J. W., Chudowsky, N., & Glaser, R. (Eds.). (2001). Knowing what students know: The science and design of educational assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants: Part 1. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1–6.
Richtel, M. (2010, November 10). Growing up digital, wired for distraction. The New York Times, A1.
Rideout, V. J., Foehr, U. G., & Roberts, D. F. (2013). Generation M2: Media in the lives of 8-to 18-year-olds. Washington, DC: Kaiser Family Foundation Study.
Rosen, L. D., Whaling, K., Rab, S., Carrier, L. M., & Cheever, N. A. (2013). Is Facebook creating “iDisorders”? The link between clinical symptoms of psychiatric disorders and technology use, attitudes and anxiety. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), 1243–1254.
Schmidt, W. H., Houang, R., & Cogan, L. S. (2011). Preparing future math teachers. Science, 332(603), 1266–1267.
Selwyn, N. (2003). Apart from technology: Understanding people’s non-use of information and communication technologies in everyday life. Technology in Society, 25(1), 99–116.
Singer, L. M., & Alexander, P. A. (2017). Reading across mediums: Effects of reading digital and print texts on comprehension and calibration. The Journal of Experimental Education, 85(1), 155–172.
Stanovich, K. E., West, R. F., & Toplak, M. E. (2011). The complexity of developmental predictions from dual process models. Developmental Review, 31(2), 103–118.
Wickelgren, W. A. (1977). Speed-accuracy tradeoff and information processing dynamics. Acta Psychological, 41(1), 67–85.
Wood, E., Zivcakova, L., Gentile, P., Archer, K., De Pasquale, D., & Nosko, A. (2012). Examining the impact of off-task multi-tasking with technology on real-time classroom learning. Computers & Education, 58(1), 365–374.
Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(2), 64–70.
Zusho, A., Pintrich, P. R., & Coppola, B. (2003). Skill and will: The role of motivation and cognition in the learning of college chemistry. International Journal of Science Education, 25(9), 1081–1094.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Alexander, P.A. (2018). Information Management Versus Knowledge Building: Implications for Learning and Assessment in Higher Education. In: Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, O., Toepper, M., Pant, H., Lautenbach, C., Kuhn, C. (eds) Assessment of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education. Methodology of Educational Measurement and Assessment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74338-7_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74338-7_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-74337-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-74338-7
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)