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Frontiers and Advances in Positive Learning in the Age of InformaTiOn (PLATO)
The Internet poses not only great opportunities but also many challenges for university learning. Filtering and processing enormous amounts of information is a challenge for all students. Relying on the first few search hits and avoiding contradictory information, they may overlook or ignore facts and well-founded knowledge in the vast masses of information. To reduce complexity and increase time efficiency, students (perhaps subconsciously) may start outsourcing thinking processes and complex information processing to online tools (e.g., it is easier to Google a fact than to remember it). Knowledge acquired in this way is not only rather episodic, inert, not well interconnected, and difficult to retrieve, but can also impair a deeper understanding of subject content or contexts and can lead to misconceptions. This phenomenon of insufficient information processing is referred to as negative learning (NL). NL usually occurs unintentionally and subconsciously and is therefore difficult to avoid, particularly online, as it can easily be amplified through distorted or counterfactual information. Although current learning research can describe what is (not) learned on the Internet, it cannot explain the underlying processes or how learning can be effectively fostered. We do still not know which factors promote or mitigate NL in the interactions between human learning and dynamic, partly artificially intelligent (AI)-based online learning environments. In PLATO, the Internet is modeled as a learning space that comprises both the theoretically available online information resources and the resources students actually use in their course of study in higher education. On this basis, disciplinespecific and individual “information maps” are created and new integrative theories and models for the explanation and prediction of NL are developed, which are then tested in experimental and longitudinal studies. Using innovative approaches from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, computer science, pedagogy, media and communication sciences, linguistics, mathematics, and physics, PLATO models neural, cognitive, affective, and motivational states as well as behavioral patterns in learning on the Internet and examines the way they change during interaction and communication processes. These changes are investigated online and by means of narrative case studies, text and data mining, simulations, big data analyses, and other v apodolskiy@hse.ru technologies. The results are then incorporated into the development of practical application tools to prevent and transform NL. The PLATO research program, as well as this volume, would not have been possible without the excellent collaboration of several experts from various disciplines and research fields. This volume is based in particular on the national and international dialogue that enabled unique insights into the most recent, in part not yet published, research projects and developments. We would especially like to thank, among others, Patricia Alexander, Rainer Bromme, Jay McCelland, Onur Güntürkün, Jacqueline Leighton, Thomas Metzinger, Robert Mislevy, Roy Pea, Michael Posner, Manfred Prenzel, Christiane Spiel, and Sam Wineburg for their active contribution to the PLATO program. Of course, not all colleagues and experts were able to contribute to this volume. However, we are very grateful for the collaboration of the abovementioned colleagues as well as many more researchers, as they have made a significant contribution to PLATO. We also thank all the authors who have supported us with their excellent contributions. In particular, we thank our graduate students at the University of Mainz for participating in the PLATO program and for providing tremendous support in preparing this volume, especially Jennifer Fischer and Mirco Kunz. We also thank Katja Kirmizakis and Annika Weibell for editing and proofreading the articles. Finally, we would like to thank the university administration of the JGU Mainz for supporting the PLATO program.
