The Vision for 2020 begins today. The panel recommended using the Space Station as a test case by leveraging existing and leading edge technologies to develop a participatory virtual environment within which the public can assist NASA by using actual data to solve authentic NASA science problems. Technology design, development, and implementation will derive from Vision 2020 first stage participatory and educational goals. Those goals will determine the amount of off-loading designed into each virtual world tool and scenario. The following section introduces the concept of off-loading within the context of trade-offs between the (a) the efficiency and accomplishment afforded by off-loading versus (b) the knowledge growth afforded by scaffolding.

Off-loading.

 Gavriel Salomon edited a volume  about distributed cognition that included discussion of the costs and benefits of off-loading (1997b). Therein, Roy Pea defined off-loading as process through which “mediating structures organize and constrain activity” (1997, p. 48). According to Salomon and Pea, off-loading is a component of a division of labor in which the other (whether machine, tool, person, environment, etc.) carries part of the cognitive load. The trade-off due to off-loading is an increase in efficiency and accomplishment without concurrent increase in understanding. Salomon called this effect “deskilling” (p. 133). In contrast, environments--in our case, virtual environments--targeting learning might concentrate on tools that scaffold understanding and knowledge/skill growth. Pea had defined intelligence as “not a quality of the mind alone, but a product of the relation between mental structures and the tools of the intellect provided by culture” (1985, p. 168, as cited in Salomon, 1997a, p. 112). Pea called for “reflectively and intentionally distributed intelligence in education, where learners are inventors of distributed-intelligence-as-tool, rather than receivers of intelligence–as-substance” (Pea, 1997, p. 82). Speakers at the Ames Virtual Worlds workshop supported this participatory vision for game and virtual worlds. At the same time, designers of NASA’s virtual environments must carefully consider situations, learner/participant characteristics, and learning/participatory research goals to determine the parameters (e.g., when and for whom) under which aspects of the environment should off-load and/or scaffold.

References

Pea, R. D. (1997). Practices of distributed intelligence and designs for education. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 47-87). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Salomon, G. (1997a). No distribution without individuals' cognition: A dynamic interactional view. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations (pp. 111-138). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Salomon, G. (Ed.). (1997b). Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations. New York: Cambridge University Press.