A Case for Digital Transformation

Exploring Evidenced-Based-Data Results

 

Many products in development claim Evidence-Based-Data findings.

What is their data authenticity? What kind of testing, and by whom?

This article is in response to my previous “Proof is in the Pudding” discussion, where I self-monitored my internal responses in parallel to the participants’.

Subsequently, my former personal anecdotal review can be validated by lengthy clinical research findings.

Most product-building data collections, unfortunately, are heavily anecdotal, or computerized self-tests, rather than having rigorous scientific analyses.  

Participants can be assessed by informal tests in specific areas, by self or instructors.  Compilations then become compiled by doctoral, or representative students in labs, or by computerized selection formats.

The BTA has applied both types of assessment extensively, through 13 test sites with many 3^rd party evaluators, testing companies, and institutions. 

The treatment outcomes included both criteria- referenced elements (continued to the present time), and highly recognized diagnostic standardized tests, monitored in depth by three independent testing companies, and five universities.

Although the confirmed results are precedingly dated, they remain substantive, as they were evaluated at so many assessment levels, with high level statisticians/evaluators, and circumstances.

Participant longitudinal data is hard to come by, as the learner often changes locations. Parochial schools are preferred, as students often move lock-step from grade- to- grade.

In the 2-Parochial school study, the goal was to determine if the results generalized to higher achievement scores. 

Out of 14 classrooms, only three adhered to implementation protocols and obtained results (two fourth grades and a 6^th grade).

These students, moved forward with new teachers, and were followed by assigned numbers for 2-4 years longitudinally, as long as they remained at the middle school level.

The implementation problem was embedded in the poor technical media applications available in 1996. 

Only three teachers could manage juggling video and audio tapes with an overhead projector, for 48 lessons on a daily basis. 

And, following heavy on-site teacher training, applying students’ handwriting on worksheets.

Surprisingly, these written worksheets, revealed important cognitive changes within the first 20 days.

Interestingly, the two schools with the 4^th and 6^th grades’ high results, elected to verify my outcomes with an independent testing company; Educational Testing Service (ETS) of Princeton, NJ.

Outcomes

The subsequent verification of my results indicated that I needed to wait for the right technology to emerge, even if it took a waiting time.

Broadband internet availability, with finding the right photographer/sound editor, who could incorporate the many embedded instructional layers into one brief, daily filming lesson, was crucial.

Then, hopefully, creating high fidelity, excellent phonological sound quality, with streamlined, engaging, and timing with puppetry.

Subsequently, I waited, and completed the problematic, on-going project’, now prepared for broader digital transformation.

Drahozal, E. (Vice President, Iowa Test of Basic Skills - ITBS testing service, personal communications, technical assistance, April 18, 1998, May 17, and May 27, 1999 and June 8, 1999). Ithaca, IL: Riverside Publishing Company.

Erland, J K. (c February 1986, 1989).  Contrapuntal Thinking and Definition of Sweeping Thoughts.  Lawrence, KS

Erland, J.  K.  (1994).  Analytical skills training through video-tape instruction develops higher-order thinking skills capability.  Journal of the Society for Accelerative Learning and Teaching, 19, (2), 155-227.

Erland, J . K. (1995).  Cognitive skills training improves listening and visual memory for academic and career success.  in ERIC Clearinghouse, Journal of Accelerative Learning and Teaching, 20, (1 & 2) 87-101.

Erland, J.  K.  (October 1997). Fitting into the high-performance workplace. The American Society For Training and Development. KC-ASTD’s VISION. p. 1

Erland, J.  K.  (Fall, 1998).  Cognitive skills and accelerated learning memory training using interactive media improves academic performance in reading and math.  Journal of Accelerative Learning and Teaching,23, (3 & 4), 3-57.

Erland, J. K.  (Spring, 1999).  High performance thinking counts.  Performance In Practice.  The American Society for Training and Development. and KC-ASTD’s VISION, February, 1999.

Erland, J.  K.  (Spring, 1999).  Brain-Based learning longitudinal study reveals solid academic achievement maintenance with Accelerated Learning practice.  Journal of Accelerative Learning and Teaching, 24, (1).

Erland, J. K. (Summer-Fall 2007). Five generations, 27-years of iterative experimentation demonstrates cognitive skill improvement enhances academic achievement and career goals.

Frisbie, D.  (Ed., ITBS, personal communication, technical assistance, June 10, 1998 and August 9, 1999). Iowa City, IA: Iowa Testing Service.

Hoover, H. D., Hieronymus, D. A. Frisbie, D. A., & Dunbar, S. B., (1993)  Iowa Tests of Basic Skills Content Classifications with Item Norms.  Complete/Core/Survey Batteries, Levels 5-14.  Form K.  Chicago, IL: The Riverside Publishing Company.

Riverside 2000. (1994). Iowa Tests of Basic Skills Integrated Assessment Program, Technical Summary I.   Chicago, IL: The Riverside Publishing Co.

Science Research Associates Standardized Achievement Testing (1985). Survey of Basic Skills. Chicago, IL: SRA.

 

Cognitive Skills’ Outcome-Based Intervention Revealed the Latency Effect for Struggling Learners

Published October 22, 2010 by
The Special Education Advisor http://bit.ly/9FYsZv

What are the learning pathways? Research tells us that learners absorb new information through the primary sensory visual, auditory, kinesthetic-tactile pathways, (VAKT: Visual-Auditory-Kinesthetic-Tactile teaching method, http://www.dyslexia-parent.com/VAKT.html) and these entrances must be in working order. They also should optimally function together, or integrate.

One or two pathways may be stronger than the others, and can compete with the weaker ones, creating an out-of-sync learning input structure. Visual processing speed may be faster than a lagging auditory (listening) processing speed, creating a conflict between the two. (Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986). Without auditory-visual integration, (Hessler, 1982) the result is a “slow, inattentive learner” although the student is highly intelligent (Erland, July 1983).

Parents, unaware of the foundational cause of their child’s learning problems, flounder with eliciting expensive tutors, which do some good. Practice “Drill and Skill” software training also helps to some degree, although it is like handing an energizing coke to a runner with a broken leg. Like information processing, the race can not be won until the leg is repaired and mended.

The Role of Cognitive Skills Measurement and Training. Cognitive skills’ retraining of Guilford’s select mental abilities (Guilford, 1984, 1967) can be elected so the student can absorb, learn, understand, and apply new information. Many cognitive skills training programs have been developed by private companies and textbook companies have not absorbed such programs into their product lines. Unfortunately, this sensory integration, or “opening up the learning pathways” should be trained before the child learns basic skills.

Not only does the average parent or young adult learner not understand the relevance of cognitive skills training programs, but locating an efficient one is difficult. Many programs exist, and vary in their testing-measurement, evaluations, and applied methodologies. Those in populated areas may drive miles to obtain training, pay large, ongoing fees for a program that takes years of application to see results. The solution lies in remediating cognitive skills in the classroom, like a teaspoon of sugar to raise student ability levels.

The Latency Effect Revealed. Learning improvement results may not be evident because there is a “Latency Effect” for problem learners to show academic achievement results on national standardized achievement scores. This latency effect was discovered with a two school, eleven classroom experimental, longitudinal study. (Erland, Fall 2000).

Intervention Training Results of Two Fourth Grade Classrooms. I implemented a cognitive skills intervention and measurement study of two classrooms of low-achieving fourth grade parochial school students, (n=44) tracking their test results for the subsequent two years, with minor attrition. (Erland, Fall 2000). The gains can not be attributed to the subsequent teachers’ instruction, because the students were dispersed between three different classes each following year, and their subsequent test scores were reconfigured as the original experimental group. Longitudinal studies are difficult to implement because of transient students. If the students are not present, they can not be subsequently tested.

Most of the students had auditory (listening) weaknesses, and a few had severe visual processing deficits. In other words, they had learning, information processing issues, and their previous the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS, Riverside, 2000) low scores reflected this, falling below the norms as individual classrooms (Erland, Fall 2000, table 1, p. 16). If would be a case where the teacher(s) could have been fired. But, they were, in fact, excellent teachers, and willing to apply a promising methodology that would possibly correct these student processing deficiencies.

The results showed a scaled variation of when, and at what point, the student began to “learn new information.” The fourth grade students in two classes in the ITBS subtests of Reading Comprehension, Math Total, Math Problems, Spelling, language, and Science (Erland, Fall 2000, pp. 32-34) revealed not only some immediate results, but also indicated a range of marked learning growth over a two-years of post-testing standardized measurements.

There was strong change for many at the one-year longitudinal point, and another group showed gains the second year following the intervention. This indicates that once the information sensory pathways are opened, the student can then begin understanding and applying classroom instruction. (Erland, Fall 2000) http://www.memspan.com/jalt.html

Academic Achievement Results Now Expected. School administrators and districts are now increasingly demanding outcome-based academic achievement results. Unfortunately, the pressure is applied to the teacher, who may not have the necessary intervention tools at her fingertips. It is difficult to teach an entire classroom, where many of the students have info processing blockages, and can not, and subsequently do not, attend to instruction.

Administrators and school districts, eager to show academic achievement improvement, should recognize the problematical slow learner-latency effect even having strong classroom instructional input by the teacher. They also might consider accepting and adopting effective cognitive skill programs as a helpful classroom tool to raise the proficiency learning levels of the students. This would systematically raise achievement test scores without resorting to “teaching how to take the test,” which replaces hours of valuable classroom instructional-skills-learning time.

Classroom Partnered Learning. Consequently, with a room with many learning problems, teachers often resort to small group “partnering teams” in a differentiated classroom, where the slow learner copies the information from the more adept processing student leader. Unfortunately, the struggling student is not “learning”, but merely completing an assignment, to receive a grade, which will be an A or B to appease the parent. This student is subsequently, “passed through the system” with perhaps a limited career future.

Response To Intervention. Once students understand the teacher’s classroom instruction, it can be then applied; although this changing-evolutional process may be immediate or take one-two years. But, even with this latency effect, it is important that gains can be made by even the most problematical learner, rather than minimally or not at all, and then firing the teacher.



Erland, J. K. (Fall, 2000). Brain-Based accelerated learning longitudinal study revealed subsequent high academic achievement gain for low-achieving, low-cognitive skill fourth grade students. The Journal of Accelerated Learning and Teaching, 25, (3&4).

Erland, J. K. (July 1983). Methods and techniques of Cognitive Behavior Modification for accelerating both visual and auditory memory in learning disabled adolescents and young adult through inter-hemispheric specialization strategies. An instructional workshop session and manuscript.

Guilford, J. P. (1984). An odyssey of the SOI model: An autobiography of Dr. J. P. Guilford. Tokyo: Japan Head Office International Society For Intelligence Education.

Guilford, J. P. (1967). The nature of human intelligence. New York: McGraw Hill.

Hessler, G. (1982). Use and interpretation of the Woodcock-Johnson psycho-educational battery. Hingham, MA: Teaching Resources.

Riverside 2000. (1994). Iowa Tests of Basic Skills Integrated Assessment Program, Technical Summary I. Chicago, IL: The Riverside Publishing Co.(a subsidiary of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

Rumelhart, D. E., McClelland, J. and the PDP Research Group. (1986). Parallel distributed processing: Explorations in the micro structure of cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

VAKT: Visual-Auditory-Kinesthetic-Tactile teaching method, http://www.dyslexia-parent.com/VAKT.html